Embroidered Collage

It looks awful while you're stitching it.  Seriously.  This has surprised me each of the times I've used the technique.  When you do this needlelace stitch close together, as the traditional lacemakers did, every part fits together and it forms a dense fabric, but when you do it further apart, trying to get a lacy network like the one in yesterday's piece or the one in Layered Leaf, everything seems to be off.  I took a picture of the red layer in progress.

Maybe some stitchers can control their tension well-enough to avoid this phase.  I can't yet.  And, honestly, I'm not sure I want to, since if there are loose bits it makes the effect when you put in the last layer of securing stitches more interesting, like this.

Doing the lace this way did make adding that last gold layer more challenging though, because I was trying to guess where to put that extra tension in order to have the border of the piece be square.  I need more practice - or to just accept and play with the limitations of the technique as I currently do it and make sure my bottom edge can be uneven.

This abstract 6"x6" came about because I wanted to play with needlelace again.  I thought it would be interesting to try out the layering that I had read about.  The effect is interesting, but it needed the beads to set it off and pull some of the dramatic black into the rest of the piece.  I have more ideas for developing this technique in my work and am looking forward to trying them out.

The background is the last of the four with the flame paper that I started way back in June - the one in the upper right of both pictures.  After I decided to work in strata I added more paper to it, but my camera ate the work in progess picture.  I then toned it down a little with some dry brushed gesso and gold point before I stitched on it.

This piece has a little more character around the edges than some of my others - it's a little lumpier because of all those layers of paper being folded on top of one another at the corners during the stretching process.  If I want a neat look then I need to use fewer layers of paper at the edges or develop a different technique doing the corners.

I haven't figured out what to call it yet, though.

Two and a half years ago I was making my first artist trading cards.  It hadn't really registered how little time had passed until I was looking through the backup of my previous computer and found some photos and scans from 2004.  I was in many yahoo groups at the time, so these pictures were posted in various places as I took them.  I didn't begin blogging until May 2005, so I thought I would show them to you now.  I can see both how much and how little my work has changed.

My first ATCs were ocean themed and made for a swap on a fabric ATC group.  I remember being amazed that some swappers were going to make multiple sets of ten.  Of course, as I found out later, they were making small quilts by machine - still a time consuming endeavor, but not as much as the way I approached the challenge.  I stitched on the fabric and wrapped it around playing cards and sewed it in place.  I had recently discovered that needlelace could be interesting and artsy instead of traditional and closely worked.  These were also my first experiments with those techniques.

These were among my first collaged atcs, done for one of my first swaps on Nervousness.org, home of many of my mail art endeavors in the months to come.  At the time, I was thinking of the collage as a setting for the stitching.

These were my first experiments with acrylic paint, with a few collage touches.  I received a large art set for Christmas 2004, one of those with a little of many media, and began to play.  I forget what the theme of the swap was, though.

This time I ran through a bunch of the needleweaving stitches in Jill Nordfors' book.

The weaving stitches are not horribly entertaining in and of themselves, but they would be fun to play with in layering with various weights of threads and such.  The woven band variations were supposed to form patterns, but I think they needed to be much closer together together and I'm not that patient nowadays unless I use really thick thread.  The way they were done was interesting, though.

The honeycomb filling is supposed to be more regular than that.  I like the idea of crossing from multiple directions, but I won't be following a regular pattern like this was supposed to be.  There are interesting little swirls at the intersections of the double bar filling and it was fun to work, but the twisted lattice was my definitely my favorite.  I wonder how I can vary it.  I don't see myself using the laced lattice filling, but it does look kind of neat. 

Cretan filling will be another fun way to play with a weave.  I've used it before in traditional settings.  All three of these fillings were fun.  The movement of the ghost stitch was very soothing and watching the pattern develop was nifty.  The overcast fillings on the grids tantalize me with thoughts of different weights of thread, just like the weaving.

Another ceylon stitch variation; I like the look of repeating the loops.  Another double buttonhole, this time with the return.  It evens the pattern out, which I suppose could be desired or not.  Knotting made the double buttonhole more controllable, as it had with the single.  My diamond filling was not as even as it ought to have been, but it was interesting to stitch.  I think it would take quite a bit of practice to get it consistantly even, but it could still be useful in the meantime.

The detached buttonhole, with and without return, took a little more thought to get the movement right.  I probably will use the double buttonhole instead, but I can see how the way the threads lay differently could be chosen for a subtly different effect.  The tulle stitch was fun to work.  It had a good rhythm, but it wouldn't be very flexible for irregular patterning.  The hollie stitch is a twisted version of the buttonhole with return and another enjoyable stitch to work.  It's a little more stable and has more verticality to it.

I didn't enjoy the double buttonhole stitches when I first did them (on the right) because they kept getting out of control.  Stitching was easier and the effect was more attractive when I put them closer together.  That little larks head effect does add a nice bit of texture to the pattern. 

The knotted buttonhole changed the look of the stitch from the plain since it preserved that little loop.  I remember doing this one quite a bit on some of my early atcs, more by accident since I couldn't get the single buttonhole to behave properly.  I tried a pattern stitch, but it failed miserable so I ditched it and tried some random play instead, changing the distance between stitches and how many buttonholes and so forth.  I'll definitely be using this effect on my art somewhere.

The venetian stitch was another I tried in two concentrations, to see if it made any difference.  My fingers fumbled a bit on this one and at first I couldn't figure out why someone would choose it over the knotted since it was more difficult, but the join is more subtle and more attractive.  It's unlikely to matter on my work, but I'll keep it in mind. 

The ceylon stitch was a horribly loopy pain to work, mostly because I was following the instructions to make the loops quite a bit looser than I thought they had to be.  And it did turn out well, but it seems to be just another name for doing buttonhole around the eye piece instead of around the loop piece.  Making a ladder-like border of it was kind of fun, though.