Things I Love Thursdays

I love stitching,

and winter,

and white,

and a combination of those three.

Sedna's dress, detail

i love stitching snow and beading ice.

Yay!  Wait... What's that?  Do you hear that?  I think I can hear Karen Ruane all the way from the U.K. shouting, "Whoopee!  It's about time!"  lol  That's right, the Winter Dress is on it's way to becoming a reality...

White Threads for the Birds

I'm not a cat person.  I like dogs.  Mostly, I am a bird person.  I love birds (and moose, and cows).  I put birds in my landscapes a lot.  They make me happy.  For a while now, I've had ideas to stitch birds.  That is as far as I have ever got with it though.  Yesterday I tried some free motion quilting / thread painting with the machine set on zigzag a la Alison Holt.  (By the way, I discovered Alison Holt's work AFTER I started my threadpaintings FYI.  Look her up, she's awesome!)  I was doing free motion with decorative stitches before, but the Horizon seems not to like it at all.  It likes the needle plate engaged, and then I'm stuck with a straight stitch only.  Plus, this technique is very difficult with a computerized machine.  You need the old-fashioned dial model.  Still, I gave it a try with Fiona.  I used white thread on top and white on bottom.  Generally, this old Kenmore has serious tension issues with free motion.  I quilt trying a long time ago, so I'm pretty happy with my results this time.

great for grasses!

I see evergreen boughs and/or bird feathers.

Cool!  I'm also loving the look of all white on royal blue.  It reminds me of my mother's blue & white dishes.  I thought I would jump right in and draw out one of my finches to stitch.  Meet Cocoa.  : )  He's like a little teddy bear.  I love him.

Cocoa (my bird) and Star (Arwen's bird)

I hooped up some blue fabric and traced using the screen as a light box.  I must say, I love love love my Bohin white chalk mechanical pencil leads!!

Tada!  Very easy to do...

Yes - I could have drawn it free hand, but since my focus was to practice and experiment with stitches, I decided to just trace him out.  I barely got the hoop under the low shank foot of my old machine!  I outlined with straight stitch free motion, and then tried to fill in with the feathers / zig zag.  It's not art... just an experimental sketch...  I have to get used to sketching with zigzag!  I like my samples much better than my bird here.  Still - it's a bird.  Birds make me happy. : )

I strongly dislike using hoops.  I find it very limiting.  I'll try some more experimenting my way - on buckrum, hoopless.  It seems to be easier on my hands too.  I could also come in and embellish things with white cotton thread.  Things just always sparkle with a bit of handstitching.  ; )

Speaking of handstitching, and white... we did get a teeny bit of snow, and so I'm feeling pretty inspired to get back to this arctic corset today!  ; )  Karen Ruane will be so proud of me.  I am her ultimate tardy student.

That's what I'm up to.  Playin' around.  I'll be starting two new commission soon, so keep posted!

Linking to The Needle & Thread Network.

Contemporary Embroidery in Progress

This fall, I signed up for a 6 week online course by Karen Ruane in the U.K. called 'Embroidery, Embellish, Create'.  That was about 7 or 8 weeks ago.  I think everyone in the class is done.  I am just able to start now that our show is over.  I have kept up with reading all the emails & PDFs as they came.  I also watched each of her many informative videos.  This class was SO worth it.  (Karen, you did a GREAT job!!).  Here begins my cloth construction.  Karen's work is all white on white, and I can't help but envision layers of ice and arctic snow for my piece.  Here are some detailed snapshots of my project so far.

It is to be all hand stitched.  I did zip this through the machine to hold the cheese cloth in place.  (I know!  I'll be in trouble for that one!)  I chose to do this because I really wanted these fibres, but every time I touched them, they pulled apart or snagged on my fingertips. 

Lots of feather stitches and herringbone.  I had so much fun making this section.  It's like old fishing nets.  The knots are like pebbles or seeds... maybe fish eggs?

much more to stitch on here...

Here is the piece near the top of the section.  It's very light and icy.  The turquoise can be sky or frozen seawater in the icebergs.  I just love this landscape!  Karen encourages us to use a variety of cloths in our piece.  I have been saving whites for a winter piece for a long, long time now.  The big threads you see are just the basting threads that will be removed later.

Karen's class actually helped my through the creation of my prairie dress.  In a couple of her videos, she said, "Nothing is insurmountable.  If you dream it up, you can create it."  Let me tell you, that was where I paused the video and wrote that down on paper!  You know what?  She was right.  So here I am now, creating my longstanding dream of stitching out an arctic landscape.  This is the first big art project where I am not working from photos.  I'm working from intuition only.  As I stitch, I can't believe how well this is playing out.  I see fish bones, ice, dark water, pebbles, broken fishing nets... and I'm reminded of the story of the Inuit deity Sedna.  I think this is becoming a shrine to her.  If you aren't familiar with her story, you can find one version here.  So far, this piece has all the elements: beauty, fragility, rawness, crude harsh cold, and flowing life right through it.

So there you go!  That's what I've been up to.

: )

Linking on Wednesday to The Needle & Thread Network.