The Accidental Embroiderer – Page 59 – A blog about the joys and frustractions of designing for computerised machine embroidery

The final version of the aviary panel

31 May 2011MiaFabric painting / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

At last I’ve managed to stitch together the squares of the painted fabric aviary birds to make a panel. I posted a picture of the unpainted and unstitched panel some time ago but here it is again

The aviary panel in an unpainted, unstitched state

Those were the embroidered birds straight off the embroidery machine, with no additions at all. Since then I've added painted details and stitched the whole thing together

The finished panel, just in need of a little final topstitching

I still have to add the final smooth zig-zag stitching between the squares, but the appearance of the panel will be much the same as it is now

Some of the birds are better than others, but on the whole it’s worked pretty well. I do like the effect of the painted embroidery – it gives a little vitality to the birds and adds some interesting details which it would be unrealistic to get simply through embroidery. Looking at the finished panel, though, I really should have tried adding a few details to the backgrounds. However it isn't too late for that, as I can easily paint the fabric even when the birds are stitched together.

I'll keep on trying the fabric painting on some of my future projects. The only problem is that painting can really only be used on things that aren't going to be washed. I've tried washing painted fabric, and even though many paints are advertised as being colour-fast and "washable", I've yet to find one that really is

A patchwork fish

20 May 2011MiaNew approachesLeave a comment

A long time ago I played around with the idea of adapting a pieced crazy-quilt effect to designs of animals and plants, and I tried the idea out on a couple of a couple of embroidered birds (10 January 2011). Neither of them worked very well so I set aside the idea for a while. However I’ve come back to it recently and have done a fish which I think is a big improvement on my first efforts. I’ve learned that for this effect to work you have to draw the design to suit the decorative stitching, and not just add the stitching afterwards in a “where-can-I-put-this-decorative-stitching” kind of way. Well, of course that should be obvious and I should have seen it from the beginning!

A A patchwork fish with decorative crazy-quilt stitching

I still want to use this method to add interest to flamboyant Jacobean flowers but it’s been surprisingly difficult to draw florals where this kind of stitching can be used. But I’ll keep at it, because if I can work out how to use these stitches in floral designs they should be very effective

The Charley Harper style

13 May 2011MiaSketches of new ideasLeave a comment

The other day, purely by accident, I came across the work of Charley Harper, which was entirely new to me. I always associate this clean, geometric style with 50’s design, and although this isn’t my favourite decade I love the stylised birds and animals that Harper does in typical 50’s style.

Charley Harper's highly stylised, geometric birds

These designs would translate perfectly to appliqué, pieced quilts and many other fabric arts, and in fact I think there are some needlework kits out there which are based on Harper’s work

Although I’m not interested in copying his work directly, I’ve begun a series of sketches of birds based on his pared-down, geometric style. I find it difficult to simplify these designs as much as he does, and have included a lot more in the way of pattern and detail than you’ll find on his birds.

Two drawings of birds done in a modified Charley Harper style

I think these will make interesting appliquees, and may be adaptable to quilt designs. I've finished digitising these two and will post pictures of the sitchouts next week

The third zentangle animal

8 May 2011MiaZentangle styleLeave a comment

And here is the third of the zentangle animals, a green Aries ram.

Aries the Ram in a zentangle style

I will mount him together with the other two Zodiac animals to make a triptych of zentangle art, to show at a local exhibition here in September. With hindsight I think they would have looked better if I'd reversed them, so they all looked to the right. However this will just about do.

The zentangle zodiac triptych (mocked up on the computer)

And now I think I’ll give the zentangle style a rest for a while. I still like it, but the drawing, digitising and stitching out of these complicated designs takes a lot of time, and really the style is rather limited in what you can do with it. After a while, it all begins to look the same

More painted aviary birds

3 May 2011MiaFabric painting / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

I’ve now finished the painting of the embroidered aviary birds, for the time being at least. They still need a bit of work but I’ll wait until I put the panel together before I finish off the details. Here are before and after pictures of a few painted birds. They're not perfect but all the same you can see the difference that the painted details make

Another zentangle animal

24 April 2011MiaFabric painting / Zentangle styleLeave a comment

Here’s the second in the series of zentangle animals of the Zodiac: a yellow Taurus to go with the blue Capricorn. I’m currently working on a green Aries which with luck should be finished later this week

The zentangle bull

As usual, I've painted both the background and the applique fabric. The background motifs are stitched in thread that closely matches the background colour, so that the designs appear contoured rather than embroidered. The body is done in stronger colours to contrast with the background

An experimental lizard

17 April 2011MiaFabric painting / New approachesLeave a comment

I haven’t had time to do much work on new projects in the past week, so here’s something from the files. It’s the first time I ever tried combining fabric painting with embroidery, and I remember being surprised at how easy it was, and how effective. The paints are acrylics (not fabric paints) and they were actually much easier to use than genuine fabric paints.

The painting itself is nothing to write home about but this was strictly an experiment, and I was trying out the effect of the paint on the appliquéd fabric, on the background fabric and also on areas of embroidered stitches. The little stripes on the right side are just me trying out my brush. I quite like this little lizard so I might stitch him out again, and next time I’ll take a bit more care with the painting

My first try at painting embroidery

The Aviary (continued)

11 April 2011MiaFabric painting / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago (on the 23rd of March) I posted the picture of a stitch-out of an aviary design inspired indirectly by one of my mother’s drawings. The embroidery consisted of small squares assembled into a small panel, and the whole panel was only about the size of an A4 piece of paper. Some of the individual squares were very small indeed – the smallest were only an inch square. I liked the aviary idea but began to be irritated by the smallness of the designs – there was no room to add intricate detailing to the individual birds, and I thought that such colourful birds deserved a little more thought and a little more detailing.

So I doubled the size of each bird and redigitised each one as an appliqué, and added a lot more detail to each one. As my machine is now repaired (thanks to the skill and kind attentions of Lubka, at David Drummond) I finally managed to stitch all the squares out, using my own painted fabric both for the background and the appliquéd birds. When it was assembled, the finished panel was about 28 inches tall, and certainly gave enough scope for intricate detailing on the individual birds.

The aviary panel, laid out but not yet stitched

But somehow it still didn’t work. It was decorative enough but it looked a bit flat and boring. The birds needed even more detail and more vitality So after some thought I started to use acrylic paints to add more character to each bird, and this did a lot to add to the interest of the whole thing. Each bird now has its own character and a lot more energy than the original plain appliquees. I’m still not finished with the painting, but here are some pictures of a couple of the birds before and after the over-painting.

Green and yellow birds, before and after over-painting

I have to admit that seen close-up, they do look a bit crude. However when they're all assembled into the final panel and seen from a few feet away, I think they'll do a lot better. You have to exaggerate some things to make them look better when seen from a distance.

Now I just have to finish adding the details to the remaining birds and then see if I can manage to stitch the whole thing together

The zentangle goat, part two

2 April 2011MiaZentangle styleLeave a comment

I was so interested in the zentangle goat drawing that I went ahead and digitised it straightaway. It took a VERY long time and was technically very challenging, but I eventually got it finished.

It was clear that the stitch-out would need some thought. The design was so complex that if the wrong colours were used, the whole thing would just turn into an unintelligible mess. I sent the file to Cherri and we each did our own version of the design. I have to say that I love both of them

Cherri’s zentangle goat: the bold version

My zentangle goat: the understated version

I really like these unusual images and am currently working on some more zentangle animals. Because of the slightly mystic nature of the zentangle approach, I’m doing (among other things) a bull and a ram, to complete a triad of zentangle zodiac animals

Butterflies to birds: Margo’s butterflies morph into an aviary

23 March 2011MiaMargo HoffLeave a comment

Here’s another of my mother’s crayon sketches. As I’ve said before, she didn’t give titles to any of these little pictures, but this one could only be called “Butterfly Collection”.

Crayon sketch by my mother, Margo Hoff

I love the juxtaposition of the rigid boxes and the delicate, fluttering butterflies, and this drawing could have been digitised directly to make a lovely little embroidery. But my mother insisted on originality in all art (as a child I was never even allowed to have colouring books) so I wouldn’t dare copy any of her work! Instead I thought of ways to use the idea of wild things enclosed in boxes, and came up with the idea of an aviary. Here’s the original sketch, made up of boxes arranged on a grid, with a bird enclosed in each one.

Sketch for an aviary panel

I digitised and stitched out each bird individually, using painted fabric appliquéd as a background, and then Cherri Kincaid once more took pity on my technical ineptitude and stitched them together for me.

The aviary panel, v. 1

As an interpretation of my mother’s idea, it has its weaknesses. For a start, the birds are very hard-edged, with none of the delicacy and spontaneity of their insprations. But then it is a different picture, with different ideas behind it, and anyway I don’t want to copy her pictures exactly. The panel has possibilities, but it seems to be the start of an idea rather than a finished piece in itself. There is more to do on this one.