Scrimshaw skull

Look I finished a thing!!!

At the start of the year I decided to do a sketch a day for a year. It didn't last very long as I quickly accepted that most some days I don't have the time or the inclination to do it, BUT I did end up with a nice little pile of 'to-be-stitched' sketches and this is based on one of those.
This idea has been blowing around my headspace for a while and I actually have few sketches on this theme. This wee guy is a child's skull with traditional-ish scrimshaw design on it. It's fairly small, about 4 inches high and stitched with 1 strand of floss.

I initially didn't have the clouds but am so glad I added them- they made it work. The seagulls make me laugh because my art teacher at school absolutely hated birds drawn as 'm' shapes! I had to sneak a whale in there too hiding in the water.

I sort of love the back of it too- I always have messy backs and they remind me of sketchy drawings.

So now it's back to the sketchbook to pick something else to stitch...

Robin and whale

A big hello to anyone reading this- it's been ages since I last posted. I have moved down to Cornwall, started a new job and there has been a lot going on lately, which is why I haven't been posting regularly lately but I thought I'd pop by and share some recent stitches.

 I stitched this little guy over Christmas whilst I was feeling festive!  It has reminded me how much I love stitching birds.
The colours aren't perfect because I just used what I had to hand but I quite like the orange flecks through his red breast.

I've also been sketching whales a lot lately- I've fallen in love with them! I made this tiny felt embroidery based on a sketch. 

(Scuse my bony fingers- they are there for scale ;) )

I might make him into a brooch- I think he is cute.

 I have the feeling whales are going to feature in my stitching a lot this year. It's about time whales were 'in'; we have had an owl trend,a fox trend, birds on everything, everywhere so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a whale trend!!

Toms Diner

My last post featured the piece I made for the &Stitches swap and this is the piece I received in return. It was made by the fabulously talented Broidrage who in her own words is a New York pop culture junkie so it was fitting that she stitched me a NY icon; Toms Diner- y'know the one from the Suzanne Vega song and from Seinfeld.

It was a perfect choice for the 'Places' theme and I love it!

Battersea Power Station

Over at &Stitches there has been a swap going on. The theme was places and I was assigned a lovely partner who makes the most awesome things. After much ummming and ahhhhing I decided to make an embroidery of a British landmark- Battersea Power Station but given a bit of a twist. I have stitched it as a silhouette filled in with fossils for no other reason than 'fossil fuels'. Now I know that these fossils probably aren't the type commonly found in coal (a quick google suggests coal has mainly fossilized ferns) but I chose ones I liked and thought would look good. The main part is using silks but I switched to white embroidery floss for the famous white chimneys. When I first finished it I wasn't all that sure whether I liked it but looking at it now I think it was quite successful. 

I had to send it a bit crumpled because the purple fabric pen was taking a long time to fade out - you can see it round the chimneys above, and I didn't want to risk 'setting' it with a hot iron (I have know idea whether it would does anyone know?). Hopefully my partner won't mind a few wrinkles

I'll be back soon to share what I received from my partner.

Work in Progress

WIP

This is what's in my hoop at the moment, a few years ago I made something similar for a swap and I really liked it. My style of stitching is more intricate these days and I have altered the face to give better detail. I might have to unpick some of his skinny leg later if it looks too odd and give him more muscle!

It is also a lot bigger than the original, when finished it will fill an A4 frame.

I am using a dark grey floss, I am tending to use dark greys, browns or blues for this style of single colour embroidery. I just prefer it to black right now, but I may well go back to black at some point in the future.

The lines I'm following are drawn on faintly in pencil- I just draw on the outline and freestyle the rest - I'm using a print out of my original for my pattern and tweaking it as I go along (the original was drawn from a vintage photo of boxers and a photos of hares)

the original

Wasp

A while ago I signed up for a Phat Quarter swap... erm quite a while ago actually, I had to contact my partner (the very cool Mr X himself) and ask for extra time because I was making something odd that I had no idea how to make.
Behold the 'sort of' stumpwork stiletto wasp:

The main part of the body is embroidered in floss, the face is fake leather appliqued onto kid leather, the legs are wire and the wings are tracing paper stitched on gauze with paper covered wire stitched on for the veins. It is huge because stiletto wasps are a mythical beast from the Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies - it's a great book, the second in a series (the first The Lies of Locke Lamora is even better)- I used a description of the wasp in the book to design my version.

 I was pretty pleased how it turned out - not bad for a first attempt at something like this. It was very challenging, as I was making it up as I went along. I had to make the wings twice as my first set didn't have the tracing paper and were awful- they needed something to give shape to the gauze.

Next on my embroidered object list is either a fish or something like an urchin or starfish (think french knots and plenty of em) whaddya think?

Johnny 5 is alive!!

Do you remember this film? Short circuit!! Me and my brother watched it all the time as kids.

I watched it again recently with my oldest, Jake, who is a fan of robots- he was very taken with Johnny 5.

So I made this- it's on a pillowcase. I simplified him down quite a bit but think he is still fairly recognisable. I wanted it to look like a tattoo design but could have spent more time planning out the arrangement of the leaves underneath- my original sketch had a better layout but I didn't trace it well and just freehanded it in the end, oh well.

The stitching isn't a smooth as I would usually make it because it is a cheap pillowcase and fairly thin so I didn't want the stitching too heavy- you can see at the bottom of the  leaves it is puckering a bit. Now the best thing to do would have been to unpick and back the area that was going to be stitched with stabiliser to make it stronger but I wasn't too bothered about a little  bit of puckering on this piece so I just tried to keep my stitch length long and not make my stitches too tight to keep the fabric as flat as possible.

Now it is in use the pillow smooths the puckers out mostly. It fits in well in his robot themed room.

Woolly bullion knots

I'm making the reindeer pillow from this book by Clare Youngs. It's not finished yet but I wanted to share how great the bullion knots look when stitched in crewel wool. They are so tactile- it's tempting to cover a whole cushion with them- maybe that's a future project! I would like to see what these knots would look like mostly in white but with the occasional coloured one scattered amongst them. why does every embroidery project seem to result in more new ideas? I feel like I will never find the time to make all the things I have planned.

I am using my beloved appleton crewel wool and the fabric is actually wool fabric from an old coat!

Hope you are all nearly done with your Christmas crafting- work those needles ;)

Honeycomb 5 by Olisa

This is the piece Olisa created for me in the Phat Quarter swap- Honeycomb 5.

Isn't it beautiful?

 Olisa has stitched over a watercolour background. Different colours of floss spring to the foreground depending which colour they are lying on. The yellow floss demands attention against the purple but recedes against the green.  I like the contrast between the repetitive grid and the watercolours blending into each other.

It's one of a series of stitched grids that Olisa has made;

http://cocoaeyesthestitcher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/scenes-demaking-marks-with-paint-and.html

http://cocoaeyesthestitcher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/so-many-colors-so-many-grids.html

I love Olisa's abstract stitch experiments- each one is so different. The stitched grids would be amazing on their own but with the addition of the painted backgrounds they come alive.  I was so pleased that she made one for me!! 

To see all the swap pieces have a look HERE!

Tall ship

Another scrimshaw influenced embroidery- this time of a tall ship. I am really enjoying using stitch to imitate engraving all those little lines. Really, really loving just playing around with shading and the effects it creates. Do you think if I did a large piece in this style using crewel wool I could ink up the embroidery and print with it or is that taking things a step too far?! (I am seriously considering this!)

This little ship is tiny - the embroidery is around three inches wide and is worked in a teal silk on white quilting/craft cotton. In the next one the waves will be more precise and will be stitched in minuscule sashiko. I think I'll have to go slightly larger though to achieve that- not massively bigger but enough to be able to fit in a few short stitches to create the shading on the waves.

Thanks for visiting, please say hello and if anyone tells me to go ahead and try printing with a crewel embroidery I promise to give it a try ;)

Illustration Stitchalong piece

This quarter we did a free choice on the illustration stitchalong and I chose to stitch up a Matt Sewell illustration from the book Our Garden Birds. I thought it lent itself to wool embroidery- these are all Appleton Crewel Wool threads. The bright sunlight here shows where I've used two colours together in the needle for a blended, tweedy effect- it's actually a lot more subtle in real life. This little guy is so cute it is begging to be made into something else- I think it might end up on a tea cosy or something.
This round of the stitchalong has been a bit quieter than the Edward Gorey and Tim Burton ones but I think more people will join in next round for Dr Seuss stitching!!

Uh Oh

This piece is far from finished but I'm sharing it now because I have had a bit of a mishap with it. As you can see there is some cross stitch on the woodpecker and I used soluble  canvas to achieve it (LOVE that stuff!) unfortunately when I rinsed away the canvas the thread I've used for the wood has run creating a pinky brown halo around the stitching.
Is it salvageable? Maybe. I think my options are a) bin it, b) paint in the background to conceal the stain c) have the piece completely filled in with stitching including the background - it isn't a huge piece so doable. My gut instinct is that I should go for option c but I'm not feeling excited at the idea of all that fill stitch. Any better ideas?

By they way the woodpecker is complete there is shading to do and detail to be added to the face- he will hopefully look a lot better once that is done, and once he has some legs of course! I also plan to break up that big expanse of tree with some details but not sure what I'm going to do yet.

Has this ever happened to you? Were you able to save the piece or not?

DOTD skull and scrimshaw sketches

A little finished embroidery. I bought this fab book of transfers, it a bit of a bargain as you get quite a few patterns and most of them are very cool. Some are very detailed though so would take a long time to stitch. The pastel colours on the skull are from sublime stitching floss- I am pretty pleased with my colour choices on this one. 

I thought I'd share some sketches I have been doing- these are destined for embroidery- they will be framed in a tooth/tusk shape as you can see on the whale. I want them to look like scrimshaw, I'm thinking probably a tusk shaped tea dyed cotton with the embroidery on, which will then be appliqued onto a dark (navy) background or possibly just a large piece of cotton lightly tea stained with a darker tea stain applied with a brush around the tusk.

I might do some mini ones to try it out- it's nice to be thinking about doing something of my own again rather than working from a pattern. I have a couple of other WIPs nearly done, I might not have blogged much recently but I have still been stitching!!

Stick boy's festive season

I stitched this up for the illustration stitchalong on Flickr. It's a Tim Burton illustration and I though it would make a funny addition to our Christmas decorations this year! An antidote to all the glitz :) Slightly strange to be stitching something Christmassy quite so early (although I will be starting on proper Christmas stuff soon- anyone else starting to think about Christmas presents, eeek!!!???). This was a really quick embroidery because it's fairly small. I think the next one is a 'free choice' one so will maybe pick an illustration from one of my favourite comics or from one of the kids books for that one, although I'm tempted to do a quick Spike Milligan one as well! Why not join us?

Baby presents from Sublime Stitching Patterns

 A close friend recently had her first baby I wanted to include something stitched in with the gift I sent her. I used patterns from sublime stitching (Black Apple and Kurt Halsey). They are embroidered on muslin cloths which was slightly tricky as they are a fairly loose weave so I had to be careful with the thread tension- also they are quite see through so these embroideries had super neat backs- a first for me!!
I'm glad I chose muslin cloths though- I used muslins loads with both of my babies and I think I'd have liked some cheerful ones. If you zoom in you'll see I used quite a lot of split stitch and tiny chain stitch as these seemed to work best on this fabric. I used the cloths to wrap the baby clothes I bought and tied it up with some ribbon- it looked very sweet. Another nice idea might be to dye some muslins or add applique, I think most new mums would appreciate some pretty muslins to cheer them up when they are mopping up dribble and milk!

And I just want to share this, the other day my robot-obsessed son (nearly 4-eeek!) was quietly crafting in the dining room so I went to see what he was up to and was greeted by this;

:D

Fox embroidery

This little guy is stitched using a pattern by Erin Paisley for Sublime Stitching. You can buy the pattern here : http://www.sublimestitching.com/collections/patterns-all-mix/products/erin-paisley-embroidery-patterns

It is one of a set of four and the plan is to stitch them all and then make a patchwork wallhanging using them. I love these patterns- they are cute but not typically cute. I think this fox looks quite sneaky!
I was bold with the colours - the pinky orange was a risk and I wasn't sure as i was stitching but now it's done I like these colours together. Using a pattern was great as I instantly have four designs that go together and I still get to have fun deciding how to stitch them. Much as I love coming up with new ideas for things to embroider it is so nice sometimes just to grab a pattern and get stitching without having to plan beforehand!

Do you use embroidery patterns or design your own or both?
 Has anyone else stitched the Erin Paisley designs? If you have leave me a link in the comments!!

finished skeleton embroidery

My skeleton piece is finished. The pastel baby colours work so well and I think the effect is beautiful. I like the way the skulls seem to be dissembling and merging because of the symmetry. To me it seems like they are in motion which was unplanned but a happy accident.
It definitely gives the impression of the skull being split apart into fragments rather than moving to join together despite it being a scientific diagram that is intended to illustrate how the parts fit together. I wanted to illustrate both the amazing engineering that we contain and also the vulnerability and fragility of our bodies.

This piece took a long time to stitch as the outlines were so intricate. There was a lot of fill stitching too but I quite enjoyed that. The black thread I used was a cheap floss from a multipack- and it was horrible! My advice would be that cheap floss is fine for chunky stitching but when split into strands like here it is too weak and not smooth enough- there are so many knots on the back of this piece! I plan to get this framed- I'll stretch it over some mountboard first.
I'd love to know what you think of it- please let me know.

Edward Gorey skeleton embroidery

 As I mentioned in my last post Nicole  and Bridgeen have organised an illustration stitch a long on Flickr based on Edward Goreys work. I have put so many hours into this piece- but I think it was worth it. I'm not sure whether I am 100 per cent happy with the placement on the pillowcase- I didn't want to make it any bigger but there is a lot of space above and below. I am considering adding a sprinkling of tiny skulls above and below but think this might spoil the 'classic' effect of the vines. I might also add some initials to the middle oval.
The way the images are framed is perfect isn't it- I am going to steal the idea for some of my own designs.
Here are a couple more photos for scale and placement:

The design is seriously tiny- I used 1 strand of dark green floss throughout. I love working on this scale but think I need to invest in a magnifying hoop for my eyes sake!

WIP skeletons everywhere

 This is for the Edward Gorey stitch-a-long on flickr organised by the very friendly and talented Nicole. Still time to join in if you wanna join in. I wanted to work the design up fairly small as I'm stitching on the edge of a pillow case but it does mean those tiny leaves are a bit of a brainache to stitch- I'm doing then in satin stitch, for scale the skeleton is just over an inch high... yeah I know... I'm going to go blind stitching this. Also I have no idea how I'm going to do the shading - which in the original illustration is cross hatched because I'm already using just one strand of floss - I'm considering using sewing machine thread but that might be a completely crazy idea- or using one strand of a lighter coloured floss (this is actually stitched in a dark green although it looks black here).
I hadn't heard of Gorey before this stitchalong but wanted to join the fun so bought Amphigorey  (an anthology of some of his work) it is so darkly funny and I love the style of his illustration, especially all the haunted looking sunken eyed children. If you aren't familiar with his work look him up ... maybe you'll find something you can't resist stitching!

I've also been making some progress on this skeleton- I am loving how it looks all filled in baby pink. It is almost pretty! The mechanics of how all those pieces would fit together to make the framework for a face is fascinating me- and look at this how they have laid it out in a heart shape -  could very well be my next project.  Hope you are enjoying seeing this piece grow. I have to go now, back to sitting and stitching and ruminating on how we are all bags of bones!

WIP - bones

This is what is in my hoop at the moment- a infant skeleton with a disarticulated skull. I know some people might find this image macabre or maybe even violent but it's just an anatomical diagram that shows how all the bits fit together and I think that makes it really fascinating and beautiful. The finsihed piece will be this image in a mirror image with one side filled in baby pink and the other baby blue so yes, I am playing on how we react to images like this, especially those of babies but if it works out the way I envisage it I think the end result will be very striking.
I would love to know what people think of this as it's not like my usual embroideries but I feel quite excited about it, so please your feed back-I won't be offended if you hate it!