A Little Bit High, A Little Bit Low

Yesterday was a studio day.  Lots and lots of sewing ensued.  Even a little wackiness (Lilo and Stitch on the DVD player, earlier McCartney on the turntable, some Shiva Nata in between to loosen up and calm down).

Butter and Egg Road, still in process, the photo print and the fence sewn in place.

A view of the printed out journal page, embellished with machine embroidery.

Detail of the stitching on the image.  I outline stitched the main images once the piece was sewn to the quilt base with satin stitch.

The apron sewn down and the piece is complete with the exception of the sleeve and label.  I really like how it turned out.  When I was in college, my watercolor instructor told me “you really like to work high key”.  I am embarrassed to admit, I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but I can see that in this piece.  It’s very pale, with just the hints of reds in the apron and hollyhocks to make it pop.  No embellishment needed.

And now on to the next piece:

“Day of the Cichlid”, machine embroidery with bobbin drawing, and reverse applique.  The piece at the bottom is auditioning.  When it is complete, it will also have cutouts like the top sections.

Detail of the bobbin drawing.  I used crochet thread for those passages.  Looks like this will be another high key piece.

Back to work, I have circles to cut out!

Alice in Finishland

After about a month and a half of on and off work:

Basic line drawing on felted background.

Everything but the pinafore and sleeve.

The stitching is finished.  My fingers are sore and I have watched all of season two of Torchwood and the series ending Children of Earth series, eaten dinner from a box and let the housework slide (oh who am I kidding on that one, the housework always gets to slide except when company is coming), but the stitching is finished.
Now I get to go through my stash and look for backing and binding fabrics.  I probably will go with pink, if I have enough yardage in the right color.  And I think there may be mother of pearl button details on the pinafore ruffles.
Just in time for the opening of Alice in Wonderland this week!

The Last Completed Artwork of 2009

Last week I shared the embroideries for my new series “Alice and Friends”, including The Queen of Hearts and The Frog Prince, both of which were in progress. 

I like to end the year on a high note, and try to wrap up at least one piece, and have another piece in process so that I can carry the energy into the new year.  With that in mind, I present the last completed artwork of 2009:

The Queen of Hearts 14 3/4” x 14 1/2” hand embroidery on hand knitted felt, backed and bordered with hand-dyed twill.  Commercial polyester felt and Crafty Chica embellishing glue  from Duncan Enterprises.

And the pieces which carried over into the new year:

The Frog Prince

Alice

I am actively working on completing The Frog Prince first.  As you can see, all that is left of the embroidery is half of the lily pad.  Then it will be up to the studio, where I will find some backing and bordering fabric.

I learned a lot between making the two pieces.  The first piece was made on a background which was a knit checkerboard.  I had left the floats between each color change, since there were only five stitches for each block.  I assumed that I wouldn’t need to wrap the yarn in between, and so made sure the floats were a little longer than normal, to account for the shrinkage which occurs when the knitted fabric shrinks in the felting process.

Overall, that idea worked, but as you can see here, there was a bit of puckering.  The hand-stitching really helped to push down the ridges, but it involved stitching a lot in some areas because the initial stitches would get lost in the gaps.

 

For The Frog Prince and Alice, I wrapped the floats every three stitches, regardless of where they fell in the color change pattern.  When I felted these pieces, both came out a lot flatter and a lot more even. 

There is still the rough surface that comes with the hand-felted surface, but the ridges from the first piece are practically non-existent.  I am fairly confident that this is due to wrapping the floats rather than the choice of yarn.  I chose to use Lana Loft for the first piece, while the second piece is made with Ella Rae Classic, and the third piece is knit in Cascade 220. 

The next piece will be a mermaid, inspired by some floss I found while searching for colors for the last three pieces, and the background of it will probably be a beautiful gray and blue colorway I found in Plymouths’ Boku yarn.  The colorwork in that base will be provided by knitting it in the entrelac technique.  I am excited to see how that turns out.

But first I’m going to finish The Frog Prince and make some more progress on Alice. 

In the words of Willy Wonka “The suspense is killing me.  I hope it doesn’t end.”