Anybody who reads this blog will know that I have a major obsession with birds. There are just so many things you can do with a bird’s image – it can be dramatic, artistic, colourful or natural, and still look good. So at the moment I’m working on several new collections of birds of different kinds, and here are two of my recent “Comic Birds”. They both started life as herons, as you can see, but they’ve rather developed into comic creatures

Maybe an ex-blue heron?

Yes, who would meddle with him, indeed!

Rather to my surprise, I sold that last grey heron at a recent exhibition. It was bought by an elderly Scots lady who for some reason took a strong liking to it. However she wanted me to add something to it – she wanted me to embroider the words “Fa wud meddle wi’ me?” underneath it. And if, like me, you’re not all that familiar with the Doric dialect (which is spoken in Northeast Scotland), apparently that means “Who would meddle with me?” said in a warning, aggressive tone of voice

As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I was brought up in a family of artists in Chicago. Among my parents’ friends was Max Kahn, a kind and gentle man, and a well-known artist and lithographer. Not only was I fond of Max, I liked his work as well

The other day I found an old card featuring one of Max’s lithographs, and it took me back to the old days when we would visit Max and his wife, artist Eleanor Coen, in their studio and see their recent work.

Max’s cat – the original

After some thought I decided to try and express Max’s idea in embroidery. I don’t usually copy other people’s work, but I didn’t think Max would have minded, and I thought that embroidery would express the texture of the cat’s coat and the little girl’s hair

A tribute to Max’s cat

I’m not sure if it’s a success or not, but it reminds me of those old days. Who knows – if he was still with us, maybe Max would have tried designing for machine embroidery himself!

Oh well, that’s enough of arty things. Next week I’ll be back to the more decorative

A couple of months ago I was busy preparing pieces to exhibit at our NEOS show. I had recently finished work on a flock of siskins – those little brightly coloured birds which we have in abundance here in the Scottish Highlands.  I chose a simple light green background to stitch them out on, but when I saw the result I wasn’t happy. These little birds are always scurrying around in the middle of leafy trees and bushes, and the stitchout just looked too plain and bare to me

 

Simple siskins

So I painted a background that reflected more accurately the leafy background that you see where they usually live, and tried again

Well, it was certainly a more realistic background, but again I wasn’t happy. Was it maybe too “busy”? Could you see the little birds clearly enough?

Complicated siskins

In the end I chose the second “busy” version to frame and exhibit, and it was sold, but I’m still not sure which was the best. And I’m still brooding about it!

I won’t be posting for a while now as we’re going down to Edinburgh for a short break, but I”ll be back later in the month

As usual, some people have been having problems downloading the last freebie.But I've had a very interesting message from a blog reader who has some advice that might be useful:

 

"I could not download the design by just clicking on  the design , but when I  used my  mouse and right clicked on the pes file  and did a save as, the design came right up."

 

This might be worth trying

Well, I’m pretty much recovered from all the stresses of the NEOS exhibition, and I see that it’s about time for a new freebie. I found this design in my old files and have no idea where it came from originally, but it’s pretty much in a Pennsylvania Dutch style so I suppose it must have come from my old folk art days

An unstitched folk art bird

I did stitch it out but the stitchout seems to have disappeared and I think someone must have bought it at the NEOS show without my noticing. But because it’s gone I can’t post a scan of it, so this image taken directly from the design file will have to do. The design is HERE: it’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and it’s in .pes v.6

Now – some readers may remember that for a couple of months now I’ve been having major problems uploading these files. It had something to do with some things that had been happening at Typepad, but I HOPE they’ve got it sorted out now. Anyway, if you want this design but can’t get it, drop me a line via the “Comments” section, and I’ll send it to you directly.

Good luck!

Going over the collection of embroideries that I had at our NEOS exhibition, I see to my dismay that I seem to be doing the same things over and over again – colourful birds in green bushes, fish in Celtic scrolls embellished with Mylar – always the same things. I MUST find some other sources of inspiration.

Since I’ve realised this I’ve begun to work on some definitely different things, but they’re not yet finished, so for the time being I’ll just have to post some of the “old school” designs and hope that too many people don’t unsubscribe in weariness at the same old stuff

So here are yet more fish with Mylar, in the same familiar style. I can’t seem to keep away from Mylar fish, and they do look very appealing. These were one of my most popular pieces at the exhibition and commanded a lot of attention – most people just couldn’t imagine what gave the fish that interesting shine – and the framed picture eventually found a new home

 

Do they look familiar?

Anyway, now that the show is over for this year it’s back to normal design life, and I’ll now work on a freebie or two for next week

Well, that’s our yearly exhibition over, and as usual it was fun and exhausting at the same time. The North East Open Studios event is always well-supported, and involves almost all of the artists who live in this area, and our local exhibition was as popular as always. There was a great deal of interest in the embroideries – people weren’t used to seeing embroidery used in a way so different from the usual cross-stitch and crewel work. I was particularly pleased to see that the pieces with Mylar were of particular interest, and they also sold well. I must do some more of those!

Anyway, here are a couple of photographs of my table and some of the works 

The table, with the machine set up and loose embroideries scattered around for people to handle

 

Some of the wall art pieces, a few of which I’ve shown in past posts, and others which I still have to post. 

 Well, it isn’t quite the first of the month but it’s not long away from it so I think I’ll just post September’s freebie now. And it will be as well to do it now rather than wait until next week when I’ll be up to my ears in preparing for our NEOS exhibition.

A flowery medallion

This is another simple medallion shape, similar to last month’s freebie, and again, although it’s maybe not very exciting, you might be able to find a use for it. The background of the medallion is appliqueed fabric. I suppose you might be able to stitch it without the appliqueed background and just leave it stitched on the background fabric. However personally I think it looks better with the applique, and also I’d worry that it might not be very robust if just done on bare fabric – it might flop around a little. But it’s up to you!

Here it is, in .pes v6

Now  you may remember that there was a huge amount of bother last month, when the freebie was just un-downloadable and a lot of people had major problems with it. However I’m hoping against hope that Typepad has now got its act together, and that readers will be able to download the file as usual. If you do have problems, just let me know by writing a request in the “Comments” section of the blog and I’ll send you the file as an e-mail attachment. Just be sure that you’ve given your e-mail address to Typepad so I’ll know where to send the file

Right – that’s it for a while! You probably won’t be hearing from me for a couple of weeks, until the exhibition has opened, closed, and the dust has settled. I’ll report back later in September

Well, touch wood, Typepad seems to be able to publish images again, so let’s hope for the best…

Anyway, as I’ve probably bored you with before, all my time over the past weeks has been spent desperately trying to finish all the things I want to exhibit at our yearly NEOS (that’s North East Open Studios) event. This consists of a huge number of art events all over Aberdeenshire, and our local art group always has a big exhibition where I show some of my things and also give demonstrations of machine embroidery

Last week I took everything in to the framers to be finished off properly, so I can now draw a deep breath and relax a little. At least I’m not short of a few new things to show here! 

Looking at the list of exhibition pictures, there are an awful lot of birds – probably 10 out of 12 pictures involve birds in some way. OK, I do tend to draw birds a lot more often than anything else, but I really should try to extend my repertoire! Anyway let’s start with one of these. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but for some reason I wanted to do a picture in dramatic shades of black and white, and this bird with the feathery tail came to mind. It’s unusual but it has a certain drama, so I’m reasonably happy with it

 

Featherbird

It has a certain Baroque feeling to it, and I think I feel a series of Baroque birds coming on. We’ll see what happens…

It was bad enough that I had major problems uploading the last free designs, but now I can't even add an image to my posts, and as there's not much point to a design blog without images, I'm well and truly stuck

I will try and sort this out with Typepad but meanwhile please don't think that I've forgotten the blog – nothing could be further from the truth

See you later – I hope!