embroidery Archives - Page 6 of 19

Blanket stitch is like the rhumba

My post last summer about how to teach embroidery was just the beginning of my contemplation – for me, writing is an essential part of the thinking process in addition to its expression. I was scheduled to teach embroidery tonight, so it’s been front of my mind again.

Unlike crochet, there is no clear order in which to teach the fundamentals of embroidery (arguably there are at least two orders for crochet – sc-centric vs. dc-centric – but embroidery doesn’t even have an argument).

That makes it a bit like ballroom dance. I took ballroom dance lessons for a few years in my mid-20s, and I was always interested to see what order dances were taught in, and what dance would be chosen for an isolated lesson to a wider audience. There are straightforward dances, dances that allow you to do a lot with a little bit of knowledge, dances that look impressive, dances that can be done in a wider variety of settings… but nothing that satisfies all desirable criteria at once. Furthermore, of the more interesting and applicable dances, a straightforward basic step often goes with trickiness as soon as you want to learn a turn. How to choose, even after narrowing to a certain category of dance? I have the same problem with ordering stitches in teaching.

Here’s my incomplete and stretched analogy.

Running stitch and backstitch are like proper dance posture and partner hold: clearly necessary and willingly learned, but not what anyone is actually there for.
Blanket stitch is like the rhumba: desirable and useful (such as when The Drifters come on at a wedding reception), with a reasonably straightforward basic step, but unexpected complications related to turns (I couldn’t resist, though with blanket it’s really starting and stopping more than turning).
Chain stitch is like salsa: fun, appealing, widely applicable, with a complicated basic step that can trip you up even after you’ve done it a while, but fairly easy to learn the other moves once you’ve mastered the basic.
French knot is like the waltz: seems like it ought to be straightforward, but is actually a bit subtle and can be hard to do smoothly and consistently.
Cross-stitch is like merengue: there’s almost nothing to it – it’s all in what you do with it.
Feather stitch is like the foxtrot: A little weird at first, then fairly easy as long as you don’t overthink it.
Achieving even stitch size and consistent tension are like leading with finesse and following responsively: Teachable to a certain extent, but impossible to really learn without extensive practice, preferably in a variety of stitches or dances.

Of course with these I’m thinking of just the fundamental parts: the basic move, turns, breaks; or alternatively, starting, stopping, and turning the basic stitch. You could think of all the fancy moves that you can learn in any dance as akin to fancy variations on stitches – woven, knotted, et cetera.

Any dancer-embroiderers out there have more or alternative matchups?

Embroidered denim shirt

My mother requested an embellished denim shirt for Christmas and sent a couple of photos for examples. She has one she likes, but it’s autumn colors and an autumn leaf design, and she wanted one that was both less season-specific and more “her” colors. I went to the store and picked up some fat quarters and embroidery floss, got home, realized I had no idea how to use the fabric on the shirt in a way that would be appealing, and decided to just embroider. A look through one of my embroidery stitch books brought me the feathered chain stitch and I set to work. Thanks to my husband for better photos than I could have managed with the lighting available!

(as always, click to embiggen, but the real beauty shots are below)

Feathered chain is an awkward stitch because the needle points every which way throughout the making of it. Not an issue if you’re stitching up and down in separate motions, but I wanted to hide the stitch backs between fabric layers (and nearly succeeded) to minimize snagging possibilities, so I had to choose between constantly turning the work or pointing the needle in uncomfortable directions that were harder to control.

I would say it’s not my neatest work ever, but the truth is I’m not a particularly neat or careful embroiderer. Mom liked it, though, and that’s all that matters.

Floss was DMC 333 (purple), 601 (pink), 3812 (teal), and 3845 (bright blue). I stitched with three strands, always two of one color and one of another to make my own sort of variegated floss. One side of the back is worked, outside-in, with two pink and one teal, one pink and two teal, two teal and one purple, and one teal and two purple, one eighth of the width of the back apiece. The opposite side is the same but with blue in place of teal, and the button placket is the same but with the pink at the center and purple at the ends. Since the motif in center back was mostly purple, I made the pocket stitching mostly pink.

First Friday

This month we start my ambitious First Friday efforts with art journaling. “Art journal” is a difficult idea to pin down (read: search for), and can mean a lot of things:

A record of art projects (dates, materials, patterns, etc)
A book in which to try out artistic techniques and materials
A book-scale version of a vision board, or an active meditation
A diary in which words are augmented by or replaced with images

All but the first are typically included in blogs and advice sites about art journaling. The last idea is the one I want to focus on, though with “diary” meaning any remembrance or meditation on your life – so the third version is intertwined with it. The important bits are that it is personal, drawn from and expressing your thoughts and experiences, and visual, in addition to or in place of being verbal. This allows you to engage with your feelings in a different way, or express the parts of your life that just don’t want to be put into words. It will almost certainly also be distilled or abstracted; instead of a story of all the details of the day, experiences will be presented figuratively, or individual pieces drawn out and given special prominence.

I feel safe saying that most people who art journal do so with drawing, painting, or collage. The fiber arts seem likely to be adopted only by people who feel a special connection to them. One such person is Susan of Plays with Needles, the inspiration for this month’s topic. I was fortunate to happen across her blog about the time of her first post about her Scotland travel journal. It is a work in progress, and I get excited whenever a Gaelic title shows up in my feed reader, knowing she’s sharing another part of her trip or her book. She’s given me permission to share photos.

The book itself has Scotland-themed fabric pages with pockets, places for needles, scissors, and floss, and a paper notebook tucked in the back. She made it in advance of her trip, to collect ideas and materials specifically for needlework, and is now turning it into a memento of the trip.

The photos come from a post preceding her trip where she describes her intent, and one since her return in which she also talks about how she made it – click through for many more views. Susan is also posting about “fiber tourism,” we might call it, including an antique needlework exhibit and Harris Tweed. You can see them all here.

Although it is nothing like a book, Melanie Testa’s project to journal via embroidering her clothing and bags is closely related; a shirt in that article has embroidery related to a trip she took, and on her personal journal she follows up with many posts about small bags she’s embroidering with skylines she sees, a profile of her cat, and other personal images.

I’m a slow embroiderer, but I love it, and now that I’ve discovered the joys of non-cross-stitch embroidery on evenweave I could see undertaking a project like Susan’s or Melanie’s. Or something smaller scale, like Jennifer Hunold’s daily journal embroidery on a single piece of fabric.

Thinking about fiber journaling reminded me of a daily quilting project I read about over a year ago. After a lot of frustrated searching (where is that website?!?), I determined it was “Quilting Day by Day,” an article by Nancy Halpern in the May 1997 issue of Threads magazine. I no longer have the magazine and the article is not available online (the part of me that never wants to get rid of anything began cackling triumphantly at this point), but I know she made a square every single day for a year, even if it was nothing more than a piece of appropriate fabric. I remember in particular a pieced airplane, tilted slightly upward, that she made several times for days taken up in travel, in different orientations to represent the direction. At the end she sewed the squares into a large irregularly-shaped sheet. It inspired me to think about doing such a thing for myself – but what a commitment! I didn’t even start. You can find other people inspired by Nancy, though, such as Laura West Kong (all posts about that quilt are here), Karen of Hat on Top, Coat Below, and Carla Louise of Oh Sew Addicted.

Fiber art journals are a difficult topic to search for, and the only other book-formed journal I found besides Susan’s is monthly paired mini-crazy quilts and embroidered journal panels from Million Little Stitches. In that vein, Doughty Designs made nine months of monthly journal mini-quilts, all separate. The embroiderers are in on the monthly journal projects as well, with a Flickr group begun by The Floss Box.

Of course many art journalers incorporate fiber into their paintings and collages, but I would be interested in seeing more work entirely in fiber art. The larger time commitment means some immediacy is lost, but also can make for a more thorough meditation on the topic. Have you journaled with fiber?

The stitching at the top is mine, presented to you courtesy my scanner (!) in this gloomy weather we’ve been having. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember…” But if it looks like pine, well, that’s fine; pine symbolizes creativity.