Leaves in the mist

Another of the samples I have been working on is creating leaves receding into the mist.  The actual sample is not entirely finished, but the misty part of it is.

In my fist sample, I started by  glueing down my leaves on a background fabric.

Then I stitched them down.

I added a layer of frost net (which is a non woven fabric, like very fine interfacing, It is made from recycled bottles and I got it at the hardware ) and then added more leaves over the top.

I stitched these leaves down.  You can already see the leaves from the layer below receding.

Another layer of frost net and more leaves.

More leaves and then some scribbling on the background.
I like this sample, but wondered if other sheers might give a better effect, so I tried a few.

First I tried tulle, which gave only a little misting and was not as dramatic as the frost net.

Next I tried organza, and although it layered down the colour, the shine of the fabric interfered with the effect.  Now that I think of it, chiffon may have worked here.

And last, the frost net, to compare with the other two and it still wins, hands down.
So now to the next stage of my sample, which is some 3d bits on top.

Take time to create.

Landscape part 3

Finally, let's pretty up that landscape.

Here is our landscape as we left it, above.  I am going to show you a couple of flower embellishments to put in the foreground at the front. First we are going to do some tall, lavender-like or delphinium stems.  I will show you a few ways to do these first.

Here are two ways to add leaves (above), on the left, a simple fern stitch and on the right, leaf shapes, which you can leave unfilled, or fill in.  You actually need to add the leaves after, but I am showing you the shapes here because they apply to all three flower stitches.  Remember that the picture above is a 10x magnification at least.  At a normal magnification, they will not look as rough.

The first flower stitch can use granite stitch, or circles with straight stitch to make flowers on a long stem (left, above), then put the leaves in (right).

The second way to make these flowers is to use a fern stitch, then add the leaves.  On the left, I have gone over the flowers twice to show you that if you want more colour, you can.

Another way to add more colour, is to make the fern/flowers, using a narrow zig zag.  Above is a sequence diagram showing how these are made.

The left sample uses the leaf shapes, on the right fern leaves.  I will make the first layer using the first two alternatives.
Below shows these two steps on the landscape.  First the flowers, then the leaves.

This layer might seem very pale, however, it is simply a background to the final layer and so I do not want and very vivid colours that will draw the eye.  Also, you can see my travelling stitches between the flower stems.  These will be covered up by the next layer.  If all I was going to put were these flowers, I would make them brighter and I would have gone off the edge with the stems.

For the final layer, I am going to put some organza poppies and above you can see some triangular scraps of green stitched down.  Since these pieces were actually only half a centimetre  in width at the wide part, you can work out that they are fiddly.  Use a bamboo skewer to hold them stable whilst you stitch.  At the top right, you can see my mistake - using too light a thread, and the left top is what happens when you don't hold the fabric down.  At the bottom is a "leaf" secured correctly.  The organza will fray but I like the frayed edge.  If you don't, then you can use felt, or burn the edges which I will show you in a technique lesson soon.  The leaves and the poppies themselves are not accurate.  They do not need to be - They are only an impression.

Above, you can see the green scraps secured randomly over the first layer of flowers.

Above you can see how the poppies are constructed. At the top is a small scrap secured with a granite stitch to represent a bud, and below it a circle of fabric is folded in half and secured to represent a side view.  The bottom two poppies are secured with a granite stitch in black in the centre to represent the stamens. The top flower is one layer, below it is two layers.

Here are the main poppies sprinkled over the foreground.

Next, I added a few side views and buds, then finally a few more leaves over the top.

The foreground gives the landscape a vivid focus and as you can see, the two flowers do not fight for attention.

If you are very observant, you will notice on comparing this final framed version with the one at the beginning of the lesson, I have used a larger mat board, and extended the bottom of the picture by adding more grass and poppy leaves.  I decided that the sky was too limited in the smaller frame, but that I needed a bit more on the bottom to fit in the next frame.

In these lessons we have learned a few basic techniques in thread painting to create a simple landscape.  Make one as a post card for your next swap, or as a gift.  This one is to be a postcard and is going to the USA as a gift in Craft it Forward.  Hope you like it Diana!

My next set of Thread Painting lessons will be a pictorial sampler to accompany the stitch lessons I post each Saturday.

Art begins as an experiment and ends as an experience.

Skeleton Leaves

I decided to do something for myself today.  It is Autumn here, and the leaves in the towns are turning.  A week or so ago, I found a skeletonised gum leaf, and the other day another, deciduous leaf.

 This is the gum leaf, unfortunately, I can't find the other leaf.
So I thought, well, let's try and make one with free motion lace  - so I did.

 I used two layers of water soluble stabiliser.  This is a Floriani one.

 I drew the leaf and veins on the stabiliser, but you can trace.  If you type in leaf in google and select images then line art from the side bar, you will probably find lots to suit you, like these.

 However, there is a problem with these.  The veins do not reach the edges.  You will have to extend the lines so that they reach the edges, otherwise, your leaf will fall apart.  Lines of stitching need to cross to hold the lace together.

 Here, I have used straight stitch to go around all the lines, retracing my route when neccesary, especially in the central part, to build up the stitches.

 I also went around the whole leaf margin and the stem with a very thin zig zag when all the inner lines were done to make a stable edge.

 When I was finished, I roughly cut out the leaves,

And pinned them to some foam, then rinsed off the stabiliser under running water.  I blot them with kitchen paper to remove a lot of water.  It is best to allow them to dry before removing the pins, and you can test them for remaining stabiliser as they dry.  They will be sticky.  Run the under the tap again if they are.

 Here are the two finished leaves.  And below, framed.

  I am pleased with the results, but would use a much thinner and lighter thread next time.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

A Landscape of your own - 2

Well, I have finally gotten this tutorial together for you.  Today we will look at free motion embroidery on our landscape.

Since I am not videoing the stitiching for this tutorial, I have included short videos of the pattern on a whiteboard to help with visualising the motions.  Remember, drawing is great practice for free motion embroidery.
So far we have cut some strips and arranged and fused them.  It is a simple landscape, but a really easy one to start with and one that can be changed in many, many ways.

The first part I do is the sky.  This is a very simple treatment for sky, a sort of flattened stippling.  Look at the video of drawing this pattern on the white board.

Next the far away hills.  I have used an up and down motion to cover the whole hillside.  I used a grey thread and allowed the purple to show through.  I also used two different greys in the bobbin, which was loose so the colour spotted.  Darker towards the bottom and lighter towards the top.  The reason I use grey, or sometimes a grey blue colour here is that these colours will make the hill seem far away.  See the whiteboard video for this stitch pattern.

The next hillside was with a matching olive green thread and grey in the bobbin.  The bobbin thread was loose so it spotted from time to time, helping to meld the two into the distance.  I used granite stitch along the edge of the hill here.  Watch the whiteboard video of this pattern.

On the next hill, I again only stitched the top edge.  Variety in textures will give depth.  The thread was a slightly lighter thread with no spotting, starting to move forward in the picture with brighter colours.  The pattern here was a  horizontal zigzag (using straight stitch) down the diagonal slope.  Watch the video below for a clearer idea of the pattern.

In the layer above, I used a bright green with balanced tensions (no spotting) and drew grass shapes of uneven heights.  The white board video is below.

In this last layer, I actually did two different threads.  The one above in a dark green with the same pattern as the previous layer, and the one below, where I used a variegated thread.  The pattern is the same again, grass shapes, but I spaced them apart.  You can also see at the bottom the stitches going left to right, where I was marking time waiting for colour changes in the thread.  Again, this has led to a serendipitous change in my plan, which I will discuss, but first, here is the pattern video.

Below is my practice fabric.  I always have a practice fabric, made up the same way as my piece, so that I can test out tensions and patterns on it before I begin on my actual work.  When you change colours and bobbins and bobbin tensions frequently, you need to test everything on a similar piece of work - every time.

OK, so here is the piece in a piece of mount board 3x5 in.  The serendipitous part is that when I put this on the scanner, the fabric slipped a bit and uncovered that little bit at the bottom.  Now that I have seen that bit at the bottom, it looks like the side of a road to me, so road it shall be, and perhaps we need a fence post as well? 

All art, if it is good art, takes us on a journey, and sometimes that journey is not where we intended, but somewhere better. 

I will show you the decorative stitch tutorial tomorrow, hopefully.
vicki

Thread painted tree

So it's thread painting Thursday and today I made a small freestanding applique for the waterfall piece.  It is the tiny tree that you can just see at the top of my design from yesterday.

To make this tree, I put some water soluble stabilizer very tightly in a hoop and started thread painting with straight stitch and a variegated brown thread.

Here, you can see just the basic outline of the trunk.  I made the shape up as i went along, but you can draw first if you would rather.  I find it easier not to have a line, so little mistakes and wobbles simply become part of the piece.
Next, I filled in the trunk, making sure I went back and forth over and over so the stitches interlocked.

And here is the finished trunk.
Next I  filled in the leaves.  Most thread artists tend to use a tiny granite stitch for this, however I like to use up and down strokes, simply because that is what Eucalyptus trees are like.  If I was drawing a deciduous tree, I might do it differently.
I loaded two values of khaki green, lighter in the bobbin and tightened the top tension so the lighter thread would show at the tips.  This is called colour spotting (see Encyclopedia of machine embroidery, or Beginner's Guide to Machine embroidered Landscapes)

This was taken at 10x using my digital microscope.  You can see the tiny bits of  lighter thread comming to the top.

here is the tree, with the foliage done.

These three pictures show the final steps.
While the work is still in the hoop, I pin it to a piece of poly styrene












Next. I release the hoop and trim of most od the stabiliser

Finally, I hold the piece under running water until the stabilizer has washed away
 The work the needs to dry
If you are impatient like me and If your poly styrene is very thick, you can push the pins right down and  use an ironing cloth over your work, lightly ironing until it is dry.  This will still take a fair amount of time, because you need to make sure the polystyrene doesn't get too hot and melt.
Your small piece can be used as an applique, or in another fibre work.
Hopefully in a week or so you'll see this one in the final waterfall piece

Tomorrow we will look at another fibre art technique in Friday Focus