Yarn Speak

Earlier in the year, I did a project article for the UK Embroidery Guild's Stitch magazine entitled, Letting the Yarn Speak.  It was about stitching with variegated yarns and changing the stitch when the colour changed - literally letting the yarn dictate the stitches.  I've done a few samples, inspired by an experiment I did that ended up in the Prairies show with Focus on Fibre Arts last spring.  With the end of my grant deadline fast approaching, I suddenly BURST with the desire to do just one more embroidery...

I'm so happy I did!  It's 8 inches / 20cm square.  It consists of seed stitches, and three knots: blue French Knots and Colonial knots, and yellow Sorbello Knots.

It's a good size (ignore the oversized pen there, it's throwing off the perspective!).  It's really quite full of texture too!

I just want to JUMP RIGHT IN!  ; )

I had a fun time photographing it's lusciousness!  : )  Stitching it took a long, long long many days.  Using these yarns was no nice though.  Each stitch was like a swoosh of blended paint.

I had originally stitched the top third of it with single French Knots of yellow, and decided it was horrid.  I cut them all out.  I changed to these big Sorbello Knots which look much less boring.

plus... yellow rhymed with sorbello.  lol

It doesn't have a name yes, and won't be framed for a couple weeks.  But... ta-da!  : ) I don't know if these images do it justice.  I am really proud of it, and proud of myself for not tossing it half way through.  In hand stitching, the 'ugly phase' seems to drag on a bit.  I perservered!

Next project, I plan to set a timer each time I sit to work to see how long these things really take.  : )  I'm really proud of this new body of work.  I have a couple pieces at HandMade House and last week I got the most wonderful reactions.  It's exciting to be there when it happens!  This one might just end up in Handmade House unless it gets snapped up beforehand.  My new work is moving pretty fast so if you ever see something you like, just say so.  Otherwise, I'll let you know when the next show & sale is.  There's one in September just outside of Saskatoon.

Enjoy the summer!
xo

Things I Love Thursday

I love fibres!  In particular, I love these fibres!

One of the class participants who came all the way from Manitoba had this amazing box full that she said she bought in PEI.  Looooovely.  : )  These curls are to die for!  She let me oogle over them after class and let me adopt this sweet little bunch.  ooh yummy.

I made up a bunch of new stash pack colourways.  They are yarns to dmc, silk ribbon to 12 weights.  I am really enjoying putting these together.  It's like creating paints.  I'm surprised how creative I feel when I'm making them.

I love this next one too!  It's threads and yarns from walmart to the the local kitting shops, garage sales and special hand dyes from garage sales.

Someone asked, 'what on earth do you do with that!?'  (They weren't a fibre artist.)  I suppose I cold be honest and say, 'ah... just stare at their lusciousness, then go put together more'.  However, the intention was to use them for embellishing postcards and little art quilts.  I've been selling them for a couple years now on Etsy.  Recently I made this embroidery sampler to show another method of experimenting with the different thicknesses, sheens, and colours.

These were Sorbello Knots that Margot Lindsay taught me when I first met her.  They are so wonderful.  I did a 'Jan Beaney style' experiment here and just loaded them up.  I chose to use thickest first, thinnest last.  I love how fun it is to try this out!  I want to try the berries colours next.

I want to try lots of fibre things next.  !

And - thank you.  Thank you to all the readers, followers, FB stalkers, and folks from near and far who sent their love and congratulations over the weekend.  It was really wonderful.  (Hello Miriam!  Your fabulous postcard arrived today!!  Thank you xo)

Happy Thursday to everyone.

Lichen Sorbello

I'm liking the Sorbello knots.  Margot taught me them a couple years ago.  I believe she learned them Jan Beaney.  We enjoy drooling over her work.  I'm putting together a project that is predominantly hand stitching, and tried a little impressionistic / abstrct work this weekend.  I am TERRIBLE at abstract, but I am trying.  I think I did pretty well at pulling this one off.

You might be thinking, 'whaaaa???'.  It's based on all the beautiful colors I photographed on one of the huge rocks at the shore of my mom's home.

I'm displaying the art with vertical lines, so people don't assume it's a landscape.  I love all the lichen on the blue. That photo is so interesting to me.  I started with some tyvek from Margot and painted it with Heather's favorite Luminiere paints.  I fused it like Jan Beaney, and melted some of it away to reveal the cloth underneath.  I did it at night with a candle in my studio.  (Not recommended!  lol.  All is well.)

Then I layered some dyed cheesecloth and stitched and stitched and stitched.  I stitched on the stitches.  I layered thick and thin, lights and darks.  Now i can't stop photographing it.  : )  I keep enjoying little parts of it as much as the whole.  It's abstract, but it's not accidental art.  It's full of intentionally placed stitches.

If you would like to learn the Sorbello knot, I made up a tutorial a long time ago (excuse the poor photography).  ; )  Click here - Saturday Stitches / Sorbello Knot Tutorial

linking to The Needle & Thread Network for WIP Wednsday.  **ps.  I am still looking for a volunteer to take on the 'Feature Friday' hostessing once or twice a month.  email me if you are a blogger who would like to do this for a little bit.  Thanks!  Have a great week,

Snowing and Stitching

Stitchin' away.  I am still making up some hand-stitch-only project samples.  We had a small dump of snow so I thought it would be fitting to work more on the 'Spirea Over the Snowbank' pieces.  Remember those?  I started them last year after snapping pics from a neighbor's front yard.  The leaves, branches, and seeds were just poking out of a huge bank.  They were fun to stitch out.  I used Sorbello knots for the clove-like seed pods.  Since then, they've just been been sitting in a box.  After finding that shimmery, glowing white nylon embroidery tubular thread (no, that's not 80's slang...) I knew it would be perfect to stitch ice crystals on the snow.

It added just the effect I was looking for.

I did some weird looking stitching in variegated yarns.  They are inspired by something completely different than what they look like.  I'm not even going to tell you what plants these sprung from.  lol  They look evergreen, and so you and I will just pretend they are.  lol

Like I said... this was just a playful experiment.  I really enjoyed stitching the layers: branch over branch (haha they weren't even inspired by branches!).  I really loved seeing how the colors worked themselves out. The contrast is interesting.  Perhaps I'll try out more based on this theme and see what it develops into...

It reminds me of juniper berries.

What else?  I started a more threadwork from the photos I took up on the hills overlooking Jackfish Lake.  This one will be a pretty good size.  I'm hoping to put it into my show at the Centre Galleries for December.

I'm purposefully hiding the sky.  It's a good one.  It's the last little hand dyed scrap I think I have left from Heather Lair.

Gosh I miss her.

I still have moments of having her in my every thought when I am preparing classes or thinking up new ideas.  She was such a wealth of knowledge.  I miss our conversations.  She always had SO much to share.  I wonder if she kept sketch books or sewing diaries.   hmmm.

Well - on that note, I have no idea how to end this post except to wish you a wonderful day.  If you have snow, I hope it lights up with sunshine today!  That's my FAVORITE thing about winter.  So sparkly, so bright, so crisp, so fresh.  Take care!

me.  last winter.