The Long and short of it

The fourth square of my holiday piece is based on the magnificent bronze bull standing outside Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre.  It's clearly a popular attraction and I found I couldn't take a photo without including other tourists. 

The bronze bull complete with tourists

My original plan was to develop a design based on the whole bull but the size constraint of the finished square would not allow for the level of detail required.  Instead I concentrated on his head and started with a pencil drawing.  This looked a bit odd because the bull's head is at a slight angle so I squared it up for the basic design.  

The pencil drawing

The design was too complex for applique so I decided to use embroidery.  I played about with coloured pencils to plot the colours on another outline.    

The colours to be used 

Long and short stitch is often used for a 'painted' effect and I have tried it before but only in small try-out pieces so the next step was to practise the stitch and the graduation of colour. There's no photo of this step!

I'd selected some blue fabric for the background, transferred the image with a fine waterproof ink pen and finally started stitching.  I stitched the horns first starting with a button hole edging.  Initially I used 3 colours, cream, mid-brown and dark brown, the yellow was added at the end to keep the colours on the horns consistent with those on the bulls face.

Partway through stitching the forehead I found a rhythm, long and short stitch became more of an overlapping long stitch which was satisfying to sew and gave a good result.  I also used stem stitch for the strips of plain colour and for the dark outlines which were added at the end.  

My version of the Birmingham Bull, he is just over 3 inches across

Running in circles

The last couple of weeks have seen a lot of messing about with scraps of paper, cutting up fabric, scribbling in sketchbooks, and staring at photos in the hope of inspiration. The holiday challenge is underway! After much pondering, I have decided to make a set of three related pieces using one of my favourite techniques – embroidery in a hoop.

We learnt to embroider as children. I can clearly remember Nanny Edwards teaching me how to do lazy daisy stitch. Recently, I rediscovered an ancient work of art, which I think I must have done in my teens, on material cut from an old sheet (presumably with permission from mum!) It looks like I had a new stitch book and was trying everything out. Autumn colours were obviously a favourite even then, and I still like to stitch right up to the rim of the hoop.

Early adventures with stitches.

I always have some embroidery on the go. In between grander and huger projects, it’s relaxing to catch a circle of fabric in an hoop and just stitch away. I have plenty of hoops, but my favourites are about 10cm in diameter, which means they don’t take long to fill, even if, as occasionally happens, I feel the need to obsessively cover every inch. I like to work on coloured or subtly patterned fabric, usually cotton. Recently I’ve discovered that felt also stretches nicely in the hoop and gives a lovely soft texture to work on, although the smallest stitches sink into it and disappear. I always use single strands of embroidery silk, in many colours; over the years I’ve built up a rainbow collection, all lovingly wound onto thread holders and filed in colour order.

Felt work in progress. This hoop is only 8cm diameter and very fiddly to manoeuvre the needle at the back.

Occasionally, I have a design in mind, but mostly I just start with a line of stitching and see where it wanders. Running stitch is the simplest of stitches, and I like to work it in undulating lines, avoiding using the same colours next to each other. I keep adding lines until it’s as dense as I want it. The ‘in and out’ of running stitch produces a rhythm across the fabric and very slight variations in stitch length keep it from looking too regimented – I have never like to be too neat! This and the wavy lines give the embroideries an organic feel. I have some favourite patterns that sneak in to whatever I’m sewing – concentric circles, spirals, dots and waves.

Pebbles.
The stitching is in continuous lines around the oval shapes, and reminds me of coloured patterns we used to make as children.

 

Because the size is so small, it’s hard to add much detail, so I usually stick to the abstract. This embroidery is one of my favourites – it started as the central circle and I added radiating lines, with a seed stitch and a few French knots. I think of it as a sea creature, floating about with its tentacles waving.

A many-tentacled blob 

This embroidery (nearly finished) unexpectedly sprouted a village with a whirlpool. I thought I would have fun using different stitches for the patterned roofs, but in fact they are so small that you can’t see the detail, and they were painstaking to do. The window panes are about 1mm square.

Rows of wobbly houses are also a favourite theme.

So back to the holiday challenge. For my first embroidery, I’ve taken inspiration from the jewellery factory that Deb and I visited, and combined the shapes of the cogs and handles of the old machinery with the delicate colours of the jewellery in the displays upstairs. The base is blue green cotton, and, as usual, its worked in single strands of embroidery silk. I took a photo after each session to show how the piece evolved.  Unfortunately, this also shows how difficult it is to capture an accurate colour representation, especially as the silks reflect light so well, giving the actual pieces a beautiful rich glow.

Cogs and Wheels -the finished piece.

I need to decide whether to back the finished piece onto card or leave it framed in its hoop. Then its on to my next subject - more about that another time!

A Start on the Challenge

We had so many ideas during our holiday it was difficult to know where to begin but I decided to pick 9 items from my list of images to use in the piece.  7 of the 9 were animals so I thought that was a good idea for the theme. 

To tie the images together I am going to create a canal route in patchwork to represent our journey and I'll incorporate some of the features we saw.  'Flying Geese' triangles are used for locks and create an impression of movement and the canal will be given banks in squares of green, brown and grey.  I've also added a railway line and some bridges which will be embroidered on.  

A very rough plan of the design with the approximate sizes of the images.  The patchwork squares would be a 1/2 inch square.

As you can see in the photo I have tried out making the banking squares irregular and varying the width of the canal squares but further experimentation is required before I make a final decision on this. 

My first piece was creating William de Morgan's red cockerel running boldly across a plate.  I have tried for a realistic copy of the original and fortunately had some bright red and purple batik material in our pack from the show and some matching silk thread.  I started by drawing the outline, then traced it onto interfacing and cut it out.  I stuck the cut out onto the batik and then cut round it to go give an accurate copy of my motif.  I stuck the motif onto calico to give a neutral background.  I have found interfacing and fabric glue are very useful tools in this type of work.  

The feet and chest feathers were added in stem stitch and the white details picked out with running stitch.  Unfortunately the beak fell victim to the added detail and the end of it disintegrated; I remedied this with some more stem stitch in the silk and for continuity picked out his crown in a similar fashion.  

The bold cockerel

The little khaki bear was an obvious choice for this project and his outline was very simple.  He was cut out from brown batik and stuck to pale blue fabric as described above.  The blanket stitching edging reflects his home-made origins from a khaki blanket.  I had experimented with more complex stitching on his features but in the end decided keeping it simple was more appropriate. 

The khaki bear, I have tried to keep true to his character including his skew whiff eyes.

The little scottie dog represents the Jewellery Museum, it was a charm for a bracelet which was being stamped out during the demonstration.  Having drawn the profile I had all sorts of ideas for the background but after some experimental stitching I came back to the simple idea of edging the motif in a close blanket stitch.  Then I spent some time practising the blanket stitch to make sure I could achieve a reasonable finish round the tight bends.  Once again the fabric glue and interfacing were a great help in placing the motif for sewing. Luckily I had some blue/grey background material which is printed with flecks of gold (you may recognise the curtains from the bungalow!).  This was ideal for representing the gold dust and trimmings which were so carefully collected for recycling in the Jewellery Factory.  

The Scottie Dog charm

So 3 down and more fun to be had with this holiday challenge.