Learning and moving on

In one of her October posts, entitled The nature of woven cloth, Jude wrote:

"The basic understanding of your materials is crucial in developing the character and individual style of your craft and the satisfaction that comes with that...."

For folks like myself, just beginning to translate into cloth, this is a fine piece of wisdom. Because, not everything works! And that kind of understanding only comes through experience, trial and error, [and in my case, some pretty steep learning curves!]

This morning I finished the embroidered pillow that I've been working on for the past few weeks. Hurrah!

It's far from perfect! But I did my best, learnt alot, and will be moving on shortly. Before I do that though, I'll share a couple of simple little things that I learnt - or was reminded of - along the way with this piece [although not illustrated by the greatest images!]


















The importance of trying to make even-lengthed stitches, particulary when filling in geometric patterns.


















Blanket stitch twists the thread as you stitch. The finer the thread, [in this case I used a regular black cotton thread to hand piece the central panel to the border] the more it twists. This makes for a lot of knotting when you try to pull the thread through to the back!

White embroidery transfer paper does NOT vanish when made damp, after a while!


















Kantha stitching, on some cloths, acts like elastic smocking. Instead of just adding a pleasing surface texture to the cloth, it gathers the cloth and pulls it out of shape. I started to do a running kantha over the borders of this piece, but ended up unpicking all of it because it just warped the cloth too much, even though it was stitched even and loosely.


















This is the finished center panel before being pressed. I was reminded that I least like the part of construction! Hence, the appeal of moving into scarf design!























And here is the finished item [momentarily stuffed with some kapok to give me some idea of how it will look when it finally gets a pillow inside it]. Wish I had some fancy piece of furniture to model it on, instead of the cream-colored plastic patio chairs that we have at the farm these days [the nicer wooden chairs are in the house in town].

Kellie, forgive me! ;)

I'm hoping that the next time this piece gets featured here, it will be sitting pretty on the sofa that it was intended for. That should be the week after next, as I have an upcoming business trip to Florida. YIPEE! A brief escape and a few hours of in-flight time to work on whatever I plan to do next!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend :)

Still here, still at it.

Thanks to all of you well wishers following my previous post:) We are all doing fine here. Just growing tired of the relentless cold and damp, and hoping that Summer starts soon!

It's still raining.
I'm still stitching this...


















I've sheared of the excess fabric around the edge of this central panel, ready for the next part of the process.

I'm aiming to have this piece finished by the end of next weekend (although, originally the plan was to try to get it done by the end of last month.)

HA! Lesson #1: Never underestimate the amount of work involved in stitching something like this by hand!

I would carry on working on it tomorrow, but I've just realized that I left my iron at the house in town!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend.

Almost!

I have two more weekends to finish the piece that I've been working on all month.























Still impossible to photograph!


















There are still many green flecks and a few more leaves to stitch around the edges, and the petals of the third flower in the central (vertical) row to fill. Then I have to make it into a pillow cover. But I think I might just get it finished!

Strange!

Strange things happen!

For example, all of a sudden I find myself fired up by things that would never have occurred to me previously, - right now it's vintage lace - It usually starts as a glimmer of an idea, something very simple, usually something visual that catches my attention, and I start googling around that initial idea for further images to feed from, and.. POW!... I find myself in a whole new realm, considering new possibilities.

Does that happen to you too?

Currently, Nilo and I are reading C.S Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" from the Narnia series. It just struck me that he had such a good point, about how we come to enter magical "places" (Narnia) by first entering the "everyday" (a wardrobe).

It's interesting, when you think about how much time so many of us - we who blog on cloth and other expressions of creativity - spend appreciating, reflecting upon, and even incorporating into our creativeness, those humble, everyday objects and occurances. And I continue to be blown away by all those who can work magic from it.

From the blog of Pia Jane Bijerk, entitled Enhance The Everyday - a blog that I follow whenever I have the time - I came across this link, introducing the work of Hannah Bertram. WOW! There are obvious references to historical patterns. I think my favorite pieces are those which, to me, have the appearance of vintage lace, and which feature in the series Now they are gone, I hold them. And for somereason these intricate installations also made me think of the shadows cast by plants, particularly at night, and how those are like lace, with their their forms and transparency. Hmmm... hold that thought (since I have no time to play with it at the moment!)

Another strange thing, I want you to meet my new friend. A very special little cat that I spotted running out of the garden of the house we rent in town last weekend. At first, I thought I was imagining it... but no, it's true, he has spots! I have no idea what he is, perhaps a domestic cat crossed with a Marguay? Whatever he is, and wherever he comes from, he sure is adorable! Have you ever seen anything like it?





















We're experiencing a cold front (if you can imagine that!) it rained and rained and the river in the village burst it's banks. This is how the day looked from the balcony of my house...



















The power went out for most of the day, which provided me with the shove I needed to get to work on another billion stitches on my latest piece (which, let's face it, is going to take me FOREVER to finish!)


















This is as far as I've got. Forgive the poor image, taken with the camera on my phone!

Small - and rather over ambitious - beginnings

Well, I'm back at the farm again for the weekend after a very crazy week at work. More tree planting and a day of driving - ok, of being driven - across the southern part of the country looking at plant nurseries, which is always interesting. I'm pleased to say that this morning my pattern drawings showed up. So, little by little, I am edging my way back into it all.

Today I started out just fiddling with white on white, and white on neutral. That's not a new idea, more like a reoccuring interest, and I will definately be coming back it at some point. This is what I came up with:























It's not quite there yet, but I rather like it. I'm going to let the idea rest with me for a while, and then see where it takes me.

But back to those patterns... I have a very good friend who's birthday is coming up at the end of October, and I've been wondering what to give him, and decided that I would stitch something for him. Because, certainly, nobody else is going to gift him with an embroidery piece! A few months ago he took over a new office space, (see image below). Black, white and green being his company logo colors.























And do you notice that white sofa on the right side of the image? Well, I decided to make a cushion cover to go on it. This is the beginning of it (I don't think he's ever read this blog)...






















In stark contrast to where my day started out, the design will be embroidered in white and green on a black background. And after 500 hours of running chain stitch with a single strand of embroidery cotton (I'm such a sucker for punishment!) this is how it's looking...


















And closer up, it looks like this...


















And I can't tell yet whether I'm happy with it or not. Think it could go either way. I think one of the reasons that I'm finding it hard to judge is because these are not colors I would ordinarily choose to work with. What d'ya think?

Months back, I had my mother-in-law - the amazing Mercedes Fernandez - work on the center panel for something (still haven't decided what), using the same base pattern, but in red, green and blue on a black background. This is how it finished up...























More like my colors!

What's interesting is to take this pattern, which was originally born out of an idea for something quite traditional and folksy, and see how, by just changing the color combination, it has a completely different feel. I've no idea if I'll be able to put in the hours to finish this new piece, given that I have a (more than!) full time job now. But I'll keep you posted.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend!