From the sublime to the ridiculous

First off, the big silk shading embroidery arrived at it's destination and was well recieved.

So I was between projects. (Not quite true, there is a belt with a repeating design I am working on as a surprise for a friend, but she's not expecting it, and I kind of can't face embroidering the same flowers in the same two colourways sequentially).




Perfumedwaters (LJ community mostly dedicated to perfume) swappage to the rescue. My swappee loves tigers, apparently so I decided to whip up a quick little beaded tiger design to go on the pocket of a large shopper bag.

Google image search to the rescue, I found a colouring-in page of a stylised Tiger, courtesy of http://www.louiseelliottdesign.net/Download.html which has the cutest animal pictures, which I stylised even more to adapt to embroidery rather than colouring in. I love his little face.

A few beads and some braid from the Big Trim Shop (formerly the Tiny Trim Shop, and it still doesn't have an official name though they are obviously doing well enough to expand) down Walthamstow Market where they have a wall of beads and sequins and another of every trim imaginable (by someone who has really lived and taken substances), and a raid of stash (for the natural cotton drill, and embroidery threads) and I was happily stitching.

I got quite creative with the braid, deconstructing it to add to the variety of beads and trims I had to play with, and layering the flower elements with sequins and beads

I'm rather pleased with him. He took a couple of evenings, and he was fun to do!

I'm less pleased with the workmanship on the bag. My Serger was playing up, and the seams are all bubbly. The top seam was so bad I had to quickly bind it with ribbon (the thing has to go off tomorrow). Apologies for creases, I did iron him, but then I realised I had forgotten to take pics and had to unpack him, snap him and rewrap him.

The Wedding Present Embroidery is all finished!

I'm sorry I didn't post progress pics, I took them but I was kind of up against it to get it done in time for my brother's wedding.

Probably didn't arrive in time anyway thanks to Royal Fail.

But here it is, the secret obsession that has taken up much of my spare time for the past four months!

Apologies for the wierd colour of the pics, I photographed it in various different lights, and it still doesn't look as pretty as it does in real life.

The real thing is almost A4.

The thing itself


Top detail

bottom detail


The forget-me-nots. They are four differnt colours ranging from cornflower blue to a pale blueish mauve. If you ever look at a spray of forget-me-nots the very top ones are mauve or pink!


The top flower. It's abrighter pink that the bottom flower.


The bottom flower.

The bottom forget me nots


Detail of the leaves. I'm not massively impressed with the way the stems join on to the leave, the satin stitch and the long and short stitch don't seem to meld very well.

Ok, so here is how I mounted it ready for framing.

When I took it off the slate frame it was kind of puckered! So I found some instructions for mounting embroidery. You take acid free foam board and pad it with polyester batting, to give a nice smooth surface and pad out any lumps and bumps. OOOPs, no polyester batting. So I figured that they must have used this method prior to the invention of polyester batting so what would they have used. Fabric? Several layers of? So I chose cotton muslin as the loosest weave fabric I could find, and used about eight layers. I think it worked fine, and I prefer it to polyester batting on general principals.



Then I stretched the embroidery over the padded board using pins.


I kept stretching each side repeatedly until all the puckers were smooth.

Then it was time to lace the emboidery over the frame so the pins could be removed afterwards.



Now I'm wondering what to do next! But I have a frock to finish for consequences and a couple of half finished smaller projects so I sould keep busy.

Some progress and a dilemma

I atarted with the small blue forget me nots, as I wanted to get into my stride in a simple part of the design. Initially I did the first little leaf in silk shading, but on that tiny a space I thought it looked wrong, with the medium mulberry silk, which is quite thick compared to the 60/2 silk I usually use, so I redid them in Satin stitch. I think the purity of the satin stitch looks nicer, and makes more of the sheen of the silk so I unpicked the first leaf, and re did it in satin stitch.



This is what I had completed by the end of the day. The thicker silk works up much faster! It takes a bit of getting used to, but I like the effect, it's more like a genuine piece, if you look at 18th century embroideries, or pictures of work by May Morris, it is done in very similar looking silk.

And this is what I have completed since. The silk shading looks nicer on the larger leaves, but I still like the contrast of the satin stitch next to it on the small ones. And I love the colours!


Heres one final gratuitous close up of the bottom leaves.


Next time, I might try photographing this outside, as it is really hard to get a good close up without the camera casting a shadow, or the flash only illuminating part of the design.

Anyway, I'm rather pleased with my mulberry silks, though less pleased with my stem stitch!

Mulberry silks arrived and more investment!

Well, my Mulberry Silks arrived yesterday, beautifully packed and wound and displayed in a lovely palette! And they are indeed yummy. Also, at 30/3 rather thicker than the 60/2 silks I am used to using.

The colours, oh, the colours! And the sheen. It's so easy and lovely to work.

Having said that I have been spoilt by my Handweavers Studio silks, which come in "cheeses" and are sold by weight, at around £80 a kilo. There is a hell of a lot of silk in a kilo! Here is approx £1 worth of Mulberry Silk next to £2 worth of my usual silk.



I'm happy with my Mulberry Silks, and will buy more, because they are not the same thing as my usual silks. They come in every colour imaginable, and are handwound on the spools, they are obviously quality, and they are arranged in palettes and topics, etc by someone who really understands colour. I suspect that that expertise, as much as anything is what you pay for, and rightly so. And these I bought for a special present, because I can't be at my brother's wedding.

But I am also happy to have boxes and boxes of beautiful shiny silk from my local silk shop in quantities that will last me a lifetime, so I can embroider lots of beatiful things for pressies and just for fun, and share them. Not as wonderful as the mulberry silks, but perfectly servicable.

They are moving soon, so today's mission was to pop down to complete my stash, and make sure I wasn't missing any colours. I spent as much as I did on the Mulberry silks and came away with a carrier bag full of silks (approx 20 different colours) two books and a magazine. I now own every colour they do in 60/2 silk, some they no longer do, and a few in other weights. And two of some colours, which I am thinking of sending to Mary Corbet of Needle and Thread, because she likes silks, and she has inspired me lots!

This is my wholestash!


I suspect that when they move they may well become more commercial, with a proper website and sample packs etc. I also suspect the prices may rise, hence my desire to stock up.

Mulberry Silks, and preparing the design

Monday night I transferred my new embroidery pattern for my brother's wedding pressie using the light box.



Such a difference, from my normal method of transferring frim the computer screen. The transferred design has clean crisp lines because I could press as hard as I liked and tape the fabric firmly to the light box to ensure no distortion. I'm going to love working on it.

Tuesday night I weakened and ordered the Antique Palette from Mulberry Silks for the project. Aren't the colours pretty?



Pat was very helpful, offered to do the Palette I wanted in the thickness I wanted although it is not listed on the website, and explained that if I needed more of any of the colours (the greens spring to mind as there is a LOT of foliage on my design) I can order them individually in any size I like up to 100 metres.

They are based in the Cotswolds, and though they mostly do mail order they may be able to see customers by appointment if the date is convenient. Which is a Good Thing as Esther and I are planning to be in the Cotswolds in October!

There was a choice between Fine and Medium. Medium is about twice the thickness I'm used to working with and Fine about two thirds as fine. I chose Medium, as it takes for ever to embroider a large design in very fine thread, and hopefully it will embroider up quicker. I hope I made the right decision. It is for a piece to go on the wall, and my brother's house is huge, so it will mostly be seen at a distance.

Perhaps I should do a small test piece to see if they suit the technique? I'm reluctant to waste any more time, as it'a a big project, and I need to get cracking, but I would also like to see how they work up. There's some lovely small Dillmont patterns in Broderie en Passe over at the Antique Pattern Library, and the more I think about it the more I think it's probably a good idea.

So last night I framed up the new embroidery piece ready to work on, so hopefully my silks will arrive today. I put it in a slate frame, which is time consuming, but I think is worth it, as it allows you to adjust the tension of the design. I backed the silk with white linen, and sewed the silk to the linen with Herringbone stitch, then sewed and laced the linen to the frame. This stops any pulls in the top layer from the lacing holes. The Herringbone has a little bit of "give" which is why I use it.



So here is the piece, framed and ready to go. If I'm being pernickitty I should probably adjust the lacing a little so it is more even top and bottom, but it's a bit of a pain, as the string was a bit short, and I'm reluctant to re do it entirely with longer length of string. Do you think it will make any difference having that slight "bow" at the top?

Scrubs up well, doesn't it.

Here is my cleaned up design for the wedding present with grid lines and smudgy bits removed. You don't have to remove the smudgy bits, but I think it makes for an easier image to trace.

FYI, these designs are produced under a creatve commons licence, and came originally from Dillmont, Th. de. Bibliothèque DMC: La Broderie au passé published in 1900. This means you can dowload them and use them and any derivative works, (such as my cleaned up version) but cannot sell them.

I cannot reccommend The Antique Pattern Library http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/ where these books are stored highly enough. It is a treasure trove of lost arts, with enough ispiration to inspire a lifetime of crafting!

If I did it again I would probably load the foreground brush with a charcoal grey, the bits where I went over the lines in black stand out more than I would like, but it will do to trace.

Next step printing it out and transferring it to the antique gold silk.

Then framing it up, which I always find a bit boring, though it makes a huge difference to the end result, and I'll be ready to start selecting colours and stitching.

I'm feeling quite a naturalistic colour scheme here, soft pinks, blues and greens.

Wedding Present Decision made

I have decided what to do for my brothers wedding present, and it's the second asymetric image with the large flower and the spray of smaller ones. It doesn't really lend itself to goldwork, so I shall do it in silk shading, which I enjoy more, although it takes longer. Maybe a light dusting of gold in the centres, a pailette or two? What do you think?

I aim to clean the design up for tracing by using Gimp Shop (Gimp is an open source picture editor, and Gimp shop is an add on to make it behave more like Photoshop, which I am used to but can't afford. Anyone imagining rows of middle aged blokes in rubber suits and masks, shame on you!). Basically I use the brushes, loaded with white to rub out most of the grid lines, (keeping a few to line up with the grain) and then I go over any faint or uneven bits with a pencil brush loaded with black.

Some people use Inkscape, I don't like the look turning images into vectors gives them. I prefer the cleaned up lines of the Victorian original.

I hope to post it today or Sunday.