Retake: 'Ornamental Pool' piece

Fans of hers will immediately recognise Helen M Stevens' wonderful 'Ornamental Pool' design from the book 'Embroidered Gardens'.  I worked this for my in-laws for their 20th wedding anniversary, but never got a really good photo of the finished item.  We took the original pictures in over-bright sunlight and the end result wasn't as distinct as it could have been.  So, I took the chance whilst over at their place earlier this month of getting it down off the wall and getting some better photos for my own enjoyment.

As you can see, it had never been properly stretched as MIL did it herself rather than having a pro do it (which was both a shame for the finished result and good in that it was easier for Sir to remove the glass for photography!!), so there are some 'waves' showing in the fabric, esp. the top half.  However, try to ignore that and see if you don't love this masterful design as much as I did.=)

Here are some detail photos of various parts:

To be honest, the light was still a little too bright, but, for the first time that I can remember, I reduced the brightness on Photoshop Elements and then increased the contrast slightly and sharpened some shots a little.  Have you ever had to do this?

I'm quite pleased with the results and will have to remember to try that again when something looks rather bleached out.

By the way, have you updated your RSS reader links to Sew in Love?  I noticed on the last day of Google Reader's 'life' that I had 591 subscribers on there.  Imagine how desperately gutted I was to see only 124 when I checked on Feedly today...=(  So, don't forget to update your feeds so you can keep up to date with what's happening in my textiles world.  I'm hoping to make it well worth your while over the months to come, and feel free to make reader requests too as I'd like to know what you like to read and see.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

A sympathy card

My sister-in-law's father died from lung cancer recently, so I put together a small card for her.  Above you can see the materials including the design transferred onto white silk and mounted into the working hoop, and below you can see the Anchor pattern I took the design from.  It was originally a wedding ring cushion!

Below is the finished item (I took no WIP photos this time as it was a quick piece) with a few extras added in to 'pad it out' and the ribbon attached as well.

I'm part way through the last of my DMC stumpwork kits and will report on that soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

A ribbon card to share

A few years ago, in a fit of needing retail therapy whilst I was unhappy in a former job, I went to the Crafty Ribbons site and bought a few of their cut price, end of range kits, some of which I've already featured on blog. This was the last remaining one and the design left me feeling that I could really understand why it had been discontinued.  For one, the design isn't that exciting, but that's nothing compared to the poor choice of background colour - dark green and purple on black!  How they sold any is beyond me, but I got one and tried to make some improvements. 

Naturally, the very first thing was to dump the black background.  This is both an easy thing to do and made necessary by the fact that they always seemed to give you the very smallest scrap of fabric possible to work on - the sort of size you can't fit into a suitable hoop without troublesome mounting with other fabrics etc.  So, that's easy to lose.  I had another go at painting a background for it.  The first time I tried, I did the greens in too 'yellow' a tone and so the rather blue-ish colours went poorly with it.  This time I made sure the tones were all relatively blue themselves, even though they faded a lot more than I expected (again!) by the time they'd dried.

I also jigged around a tiny bit with the design, but I don't think I made any real improvements there, especially as I'm no expert in ribbon work and really only know one or two basic concepts.  What do you think of the finished item anyway?

I like this sideways on view as the light has captured the sparkly elements of the organza ribbon nicely, which is a photographic treat as one normally doesn't get to see such detail.

I've already got the next small stumpwork piece prepared in the hoop for embroidery, so look out for that starting soon!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Completed 'Rolled Roses' Brazilian Embroidery

I'm delighted to announce the completion - and successful framing - of my long-in-progress Brazilian embroidery piece!  HURRAH!

Here are the last two WIP shots from last week.  The first one was what I got done during the rest of the Wednesday that you last saw pictures on and the second is, I think, from the next day's work.

After that, I just pressed on to completion and didn't take any more photos until the whole piece was done!  This afternoon, I stretched it in an 8" embroidery hoop after spraying with a clean water spray to wet the fabric.  It dried beautifully taut and ready for framing.

Last, but not least, I put it into one of those Anchor Flexi Hoop Frames (which I'll be detailing the process of soon, alongside some regular framing as Sir and I are doing a few of my pieces on Sunday afternoons together) and here is the completed item ready to be given as a gift to a lovely Japanese lady who put us up in her Oxford home last winter.  I promised to do an embroidery for her and I think she'll like this!

Do you?

So, that's my first Brazilian piece done.  How do I feel about it?  Well, I'm quite pleased with the finished results, but it was rather tricky to work some of it.  I'm not sure if I really enjoyed it in the final analysis and I can't really see myself ever working the larger kit I own - although I am interested in doing some small sections of it.  Jury's out on this one, I think!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Manicure Pouch - Finished Up!

At last, it's done and even worked out a little better than I'd feared, although I can't say it's quite what I would have liked, but putting piping around the edge was beyond me this time.  I could make the cording OK, but attaching it was more than I was prepared to risk with something that's meant as a gift.  Sometimes I miss City & Guilds ... (the experimental aspect, plus a room full of people who may have more of a clue, and a teacher, and the fact that it's only a piece of coursework and hasn't spoiled someone's pressie...)

So, as promised, here's the whole process:

First I cut some pieces of heavy interfacing to match and backed both the embroidered panels and the corresponding sections of the lining.  The reason for this, and the gap between the panels, was to produce a folio that wasn't too floppy and that could close well.

I next got the contents of the set out and laid them out on the lining, followed by pinning the elastic that would hold them in place.  I know this isn't really the most glam way of doing it, but I couldn't think of much else (except for things that were really too hard me to attempt at the mo).  It could be worse, I suppose..

Above is the elastic stitched in place and, boy, was it hard to keep it reasonably straight!  It had a real craving to go up at each end.  It does a little, but not too badly.

These two shots show (above) the embroidered bit and the lining tacked right sides together, and (below) the proper sewing in place around three sides and a little bit at the outer edges of the bottom as well, plus the excess fabric trimmed away.  What you can't see here (and I didn't take photos of as it was done in poor light) are the ties which are sewn in.  Of course, I didn't think it through properly the first time and ended up sewing one on the inside.  Duuh!  I'm wondering what's happened to my poor old brain of late....

And here is the finished item after having been turned the right way around again, corners pushed out, bottom edges pressed and slipped stitched in place, and a final pressing and rub over with a bit of Sellotape to get the dusty bits off that were beginning to make it look grubby.

(Edit in the summer after handover:  Rosie said, "You are amazing" in response to receiving this, but I think that refers better to my having remembered a many-years-old promise, than to my abilities...  Nice to hear, nonetheless.)

It feels good to have a proper finish and something I can cross off my 2011/2 Goals List, especially as I can't seem to get into my other pieces over much just now.  This is as far as I've got with the rabbit:

She who wrote the article on getting stuff finished is struggling to take her own advice.  Hmmm!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Assembling a Wired Stumpwork Flower

A couple of days ago I posted a tutorial on creating wired needlelace elements for stumpwork, which you can use for flowers, leaves, insect wings and several other things.  Now it's time to fasten the detached elements to the main fabric and complete the motif.

This is the piece I was working on, the now deleted (waaah!) DMC Stumpwork kit 'Poppy and Beetle'.  Those of you who've been following this project will notice that I re-worked the bud to the original design after all!!  Anyway, the poppy was the only part left to complete and you can see where it's to be located, top left..

The first thing to do was to as near as fill that oval shape with beads as the supplies in the kit allowed.  The instructions actually suggested you do this after attaching the petals, but there were two reasons why I decided to work it the other way around: 1) I think it would be very hard to attach or stitch anything when there are going to be a lot of wire ends from the petals in the way on the back; and 2) One can never be sure that the beads provided would fill the space and, if the petals were already in place, then there could be a gap and/or pattern lines showing.  Yikes!  So, beads came first and were attached with one strand of black thread and a beading needle.

Here you can see me preparing the holes for the third petal.  Using a thick needle, such as a chenille type, punch a couple of holes where you want the wires to go through.  I did this as close to the beading as reasonably possible so that printed pattern lines weren't visible afterwards (I can't tell you how much I hate being able to see that sort of thing on a finished piece, it SO spoils it!)

When the holes are ready, poke the free ends of the wires through and pull them from the back so that the petal (or wing, or leaf etc) sits on the fabric.  Don't concern yourself with the angle it sits at just yet.

When all the detached elements are in place, turn the work over and pull them through as far as you can.  Then bend the wires to stop them from going back through again and trim off some of the excess using wire cutters or goldwork scissors (anything toughened, but NOT your regular embroidery pair!)

Using the black thread I still had attached from the beading, I secured the wires to the back of the fabric by weaving it around the wires and taking it through the back of whatever stitches I could.  Whatever you do, take care not to allow the securing stitching to show on the front (which is possibly what motivated DMC to suggest doing this before the beading, but you can see how easy it would be to attach beads through this lot, right?)  Trim the wires as much as you can, but leave enough to make sure they're secured.

Turning back to the front and you can now arrange the petals in any way you like.  The wire bends easily, so it won't be too hard to have them at any angle you choose.

I hope that was helpful and that it's inspired you to have a go at wiring a flower or something similar. If you do, please leave me a link to see your work.  It's rather hard finding blogs of active stumpworkers!

Here's the final piece, the bottom photo of which surprised and delighted me by remaining at number one on the Stitchin' Fingers content and photos leaderbeards for a couple of days!

I still have two more of these kits (see the 'Stumpwork page for the first two that I worked - 'Bee' and 'Ladybird'), which are 'Dragonfly' and 'Butterfly', so look out for those coming soon!

© Elizabeth Braun 2012

Yay! Completed needle painted dogroses

It took something to get me to get on with the side elevation rose on the back of this project (by which I mean it will be on the back of the manicure set, not that it's on the reverse of the main embroidery!!), and there have been a few false starts, but it's finally done.

I got stuck at this point pictured <- here for a while as I just could NOT get the last petal to look decent!  I tried it twice and pulled it out in exasperation.  You would have expected it to be the easiest, being more or less flat, but it was a real challenge to get a flat petal with no real colour change to look even passable!  In the end, I just did it - not exactly 'third time lucky' as I'm still far from content with it, and it'll have to do.

It got to this point and then I realised that the centre and the stamens really weren't the right shade of green and certainly didn't match the corresponding section on the front.  This second shade was much bluer than the very yellowey, browny green of the full flower centre and, as it was supposed to be all the same flower and  a matched set, I fished out the original colour and re-worked it in that.  This-> is the finished back of the piece.

Then it was on to the spider's web.  This was a bit challenging as there is a slight give in the fabric and, if I had it taut in a hoop, then when it was released, the long stitches in the web would certainly sag.  So, I put it in a snap frame and have it held firm, but not tight, then caught in the slack on the reverse for anything that hung a bit.  It looked at first like it went a little too far the other way now and seemed a bit too tight, but it ironed out just perfectly.  It's not needed for months yet, but I'm not keen to re-do parts - I have other projects planned!

The gauge of the Kreinik Cord can easily be seen here.  It's rather fine, isn't it?  I think it works perfectly here.  I didn't have the prescribed Madeira thread and hadn't access to any - and I didn't want to spend money on any more stuff when I surely had something perfectly adequate in my ridiculously large stash!!  So, it was good to finally have something to use the Kreiniks on as I stocked up on a goodly number of those a few years ago in about two thirds of the shades they do.  Time to try and use them more, methinks!

So, drum roll please - here's the finished thing:

Hope you've enjoyed the WIP discussion and like the finished embroidery and also that I can produce one or two in the months to come.=)

© Elizabeth Braun 2012

TAST 2012 - Week One - Fly Stitch

When I saw the ideas and examples Sharon had put up for the first stitch of the TAST 2012 re-run, I was immediately inspired with plenty of ideas.  I also got out my two stitch guides and found enough variations to fuel the creative process further and, soon afterwards, came up with a design plan for my first TAST sampler. I know that most of the notes didn't show up well, so I must remember to use pencil in a better contrasting shade if I want everyone to be able to read what I've written!

Like Jules (whose wonderful dandelion seed head worked in fly stitch you absolutely MUST see!), I plan to do a doodle pad type stitch sample, then try to work it up into something pictorial.  I can't promise that I'll always manage the pic, but I can try and at least got off to a good start this week.

Here's the quick test run of the stitches to make sure I'd got them sorted worked with scrap ends of no.5 pearl cottons on a piece of rather stiff 14ct Aida (that there was no chance of my using for anything 'polished').  The first few are just plain fly stitches, then a few with longer tails, then a few twisted fly stitches.  The second row shows a rather open worked fly stitch leaf (which does not work well on Aida) and then two rows of fly stitch filling.  This is done by working a row of regular fly stitches with the tops of the Vs touching, then working the next row upside down with the bottoms of the Vs joining and the securing stitch being made over the pair of touching stitches.  This filling spoke 'fence' to me.

First I painted some habotai silk to give the relevant colours to the background.  I made the mistake of putting the whole thing rather too far to the right of the hoop.  It would have been better to have been more central.  Still, I soon realised both the error and that I couldn't really do anything about it, except to ditch that piece and start again, but although I found I had more habotai than I'd feared, I'm still not up for wastage.  It was good to try silk painting again, even though I found it a fair bit harder than I'd remembered.  Need more practice, I know and having more fabric than I thought means that I can try this kind of background again soon.=)

So, here's the finished fly stitch pictorial piece.  Most of the stitches are some form of fly stitch, except some stem stitch for the foreground roses and, of course, the ribbon work (although you can work fly stitch in narrow ribbon to good effect).  The peach flowers are just straight stitches in ribbons, and the roses are spider's web roses.  Let me know if you want to know how the latter are done as they're easy, quick and effective.  The grass tufts are individual twisted fly stitches and the rose leaves are worked in closed fly stitch.

On the whole I'm happy with the piece.  The bit I'd most like to change (and could have if I'd been up for a lot of un-picking and re-stitching) would be to work the fence in a narrower gauge of thread.  I feel it's far too prominent, although the basic idea etc is OK.  Even with that, I'm pleased with this first week's work as I've been able to use fabric colouring again, I've designed something completely from scratch with little more inspiration than the stitches themselves and I worked it completely freehand - no pattern transferred to the silk.  Oh yes, and I really know fly stitch and a few variations of it quite well now!!

What's that just about the roses?  Well, of course it's a FLY!=)

© Elizabeth Braun 2012

Needle Painting Progress and Splog Warning!

Here's how far I got with the needle painting project by the end of the day of the last post (Monday, two days ago)

Then yesterday, whilst watching BBC's 'Land Girls' on the iPlayer, I managed to put in the main bloom

And this is how it looks right now:

I'm undecided on whether to put the spider's web in, or consider it finished here.  I'm veering towards putting it in, and I expect I'll have that sorted, one way or the other, very soon.  I think that element will balance it up nicely and my only real concern is whether or not the Kreinik cord I'm planning to use will be too thick when compared to the Madeira thread used in the book.  I'm thinking it will be OK...

So then I'll have the bloom profile to work on what will be the back of the pouch.

Changing the subject completely from the pleasant one of embroidery to the unpleasant one of copyright infringement and theft - I was splogged recently.  'What is a splog?' I hear you ask.  Apparently, that's the name given to a fake blog where the entire contents are stolen from somewhere else.  I'm not sure if they used one of those software nasties that will download your entire blog/site or hacked into my Blogger account (yes, I've changed my password!), but somewhere between the 11th and the 21st of last month, someone stole my entire blog content - 361 postings and re-published them on a fake blog template, re-arranging the order of some postings as if that, in some way, gave them a right to the copyright sign they had the nerve to put on the bottom!

How did I know this?  My blog is registered with Fairshare, which I recommend all of you do with your own blogs/sites.  They then send a notification via Google Reader for each page or excerpt that is re-published elsewhere.  Some may be perfectly legit and some even come in error (one of the RSS feeds on one of the my other blogs was flashed up once), and mercifully they only sent 39 notifications, not all 361.  Anyway, after a few reports to Google, they have removed the offending site.  At first I feared I would have to send in 361 separate reports, but I asked them if they seriously expected that and did they really want to wade through them all, and back came a confirmation that the splog had been dealt with faithfully.  And indeed it has - I checked!

Why do folk do this?  Well, search me, I wouldn't have ever considered it, but I understand some do it to pinch advertising revenue etc.  This wasn't the case with my blog as I've never allowed ads to be shown on my blog and the thief loaded it onto a template claiming to be about pressed flowers and some Fairshare reports were referring to an already deleted blog about where to stay in Paris, (which seemed familiar actually).  So, I have no idea why and when I feared having to file 361 reports, I just reported the URLs of the postings that got me the most traffic so that they at least couldn't steal my readership.

Apart from the slight flattery that my blog was considered worth nicking, (I mean, who'd want to think that their blog was passed up with, 'Who'd want to read that rubbish? Glad I didn't write it!' LOL), this is of course a case of theft and copyright violation.  I know some are, rightly, very concerned about that, considering the amount of time and work they put into their blogs, so I wanted to share my recent experience in the hope it might be useful.  I'll be adding in copyright notifications on all postings from here-on-in (if I remember each time.....)

© Elizabeth Braun 2011