A weft yarn

Back to the Ferry

It is back to the Ferry, I go. It has been quite some time since I've worked on this. It seems I last put needle to canvas in October last year. Perhaps Santa has been getting more than his fair share this 2012 year. Well, what's a fair share?  I return to this structural piece of furniture that requires some thoughtful wrangling to establish a comfortable stitching arrangement. It doesn't lend itself to little bursts of stitching because by the time I've got it in place, and myself ergonomically adjusted to stitch away, I don't want to have to leap up and finish a bit of laundry, or make a bit more of the dinner. The Santa stocking being a slighter little thing could sit next to the chair in the study nook and as I chatted with the kids, I could put a stitch in here, a stitch there.

Once I find myself positioned in front of the Ferry, I get caught up in this tableau. Who is this Nanny? She is carrying the baby and a umbrella. It is clearly a lovely day and they are beautifully dressed. On their way to a party, I think. The umbrella is about shade. This is the baby's first outing as he is only 6 weeks old. His name is Emile and it was an easy birth. He has an older sister, Ernestine. His mother Cecile is still very pleased with his arrival and they are enjoying the warm Spring day.  I'm glad I finished stitching the umbrella to give him some protection on the trip across the river.

 I must admit this technique of multiple needles, multiple threads is driving me nuts on this canvas. The fine oblique slav, which is stitched in stranded cotton in a eucalyptus-like grey-green colour, has to be stitched from the bottom to the top. I wish I'd realised this before I launched into this canvas. I would have held off until I'd put all the fine oblique slav in, and THEN I'd revert to the DSL technique of multiple needles. In the meantime they just get in the way. I've pulled a lot of the dangly long ones up onto a magnetic needleholder but the others then need to be moved as I get to them. Sigh. I thought it was such a brilliant technique when I started. But like most things, requires some thoughtful adaptation.

Ah well. Lessons learnt. I have lots and lots of rippling, painterly, river water to stitch so its probably worth my while to adapt my style.

Previous posts

The Ferry tapestry - progress after Tapestry Guild weekend (October, 2011)

The Ferry tapestry - the 2011 September Tapestry weekend (Sept 2011)

The Ferry - E.Phillips Fox - Baxtergraphix Tapestry (April 2011)

Midnight peacock purse: nearly finished stitching but put aside nonetheless

I am nearly finished the bargello stitching of the Midnight Peacock Purse. I just have to add a few more lines of black and then the blue centres of the peacock tail and then it could be moved on to the next phase.

The phase of being sewn up into a purse. Or rather, I like to think of it as an evening bag. For going out. In the evening. Obviously, it is not for me.

I have actually been out in the evening this year - twice in fact. So there, it is not impossible. One of the events was a friend's 50th birthday party at her house and the other was during the Folk Festival. Not much call for a black evening bag at either of those. Not sure why I'm mentioning all this.

This is not intended for me. I have tried to catch the way the light falls on the stitching and how it sparkles and almost looks like a beaded evening bag. I think...maybe...I might like one of these. If I ever went out, that is. I have run out of one of the black threads, so it might need to sit aside, in the corner of the dining room, until I solve the problem of how to order Kreinik thread in Australia. Trying to buy one reel of Kreinik ribbon for Santa's stocking has been fraught to say the least.

 There is no deadline associated with this stitching. When it's done, it's done. And then it will go live in someone else's house and hopefully it will escort someone out....in the evening. To evening bag type events.

Previous posts

Midnight peacock purse (April 2012)

Update on Santa stocking & how I organise a stitching project

I'm going to put Santa away for awhile and move on to other projects. I reached my self-imposed deadline of one third of the canvas stitched by April 2012 and now fell that my other projects need some love. It was actually kind of weird deciding to put it away because I was quite entranced with this project. Last year we renovated and created a small space for the children to put their computers so they didn't clutter up their rather small bedrooms. This new space, which we call the study nook, has just enough space to put in a comfortable chair and a tapestry frame. It has lovely afternoon light, so after school I've been sitting, while the children play on their computers, and I've done quite a bit of stitching. Often we sit in silence but usually not for too long. One of them will start chatting away about the game their playing or the site they've found and I found I've learnt a lot about Starcraft and the latest Stumbleupon or the TED videos that they are watching. It's been productive and fun for me to sit with them and I think they quite like my company even if they are absorbed by their computer play.

But all good things must come to an end. I hit a stitching block with Santa's beard. The stitching guide says to satin stitch between the continental of the grey lines. At first I put in my satin stitch on an angle and it just didn't look beautiful. I wasn't sure why. So I went to the photo that came with the stitching guide and it appeared that the satin stitch was vertical - straight up and down. So, I did something that I don't do very often - which is to rip out stitching and do it again. And unfortunately it was quite unsatisfying. It was long and fiddly to pull out stitches. I think made much more complicated by my style of stitching back and forth, instead of a block/type of stitches at a time. Then when I put in the vertical satin, it just didn't look perfect. I couldn't even quite finish it. I showed it to Tim who insisted that it was better and that he loved it. Typically, he said it in that humourous way that proves men have sheds and women have tapestry frames. If you don't get involved in the techniques of my beer brewing, I wont have to get involved in vertical vs slanted satin stich. But I really want you to be happy, so I love it. His jokes picked up my spirits, but I still decided to put the project away. Time will tell if that beard grows on me (hah).

 So, in the spirit of being helpful to anyone who is like me, relatively new to organising long  and detailed stitching projects, I offer a few facts about what I do. When you sign up to a modern canvas you can now buy stitching guides. You see it below in the red folder. I know the photos aren't great...but really they are just pointers to what I do...you don't need to work with them..just to illustrate. I then photocopy the original and put it into a folder so I can add my stitching samples and scribble notes all over the guide, without ever disturbing the original.

The stitching guides I've worked with are reasonably brief. They list the part you are stitching - so below, you are stitching the bricks of of the wall around Santa. They then list the threads and type of stitches to use. This guide goes a little bit further and puts in a small illustration of some of the stitches. However, the guide sends you to The Needlepoint Book for additional information and detailed instructions. So below, you can see we are stitching the bricks with three different threads: Impressions 1134 (a soft beige cotton), Kreinik metallic ribbon 1/16, 032 (colour white), and an overdyed floss, 1036 (a kind of self-striping brown cotton). We are to use Continental stitch on the mortar (using the Impressions) and the snow (using the Kreinik ribbon) and then Brick stitch for the bricks (using the overdyed floss). I've made notes about the page numbers and what I learnt from doing the stitching sample.

One of the first things I do when I get the kit, is to put each type of the canvas (eg the bricks or Santa's beard) into it's own little plastic bag. I then stick a piece of paper in with the threads that go with that part of the canvas. So, below there is a little plastic bag which says "bricks, Impressions 1134, 1/16 032, Overdyed floss 1036". You can also see my little bin of cut threads (and that the kids like Pringles - I personally find them kind of odd, as in not food), my notebook recording the hours I put into the project, and my magnifying glasses. I love these. I love being able to see all the fine details as I stitch.

 Below you can see my stitch samples and I've also kept the labels for the threads. I might have mentioned previously what an adventure this tapestry has been - so many new threads and stitches - so I've needed to do samples of many of them, and I've wanted to keep the details of the threads for future projects.

 

 

Anyway, launch in. It's a great craft. I like having things organised, particularly as I'm on a regular rotation of putting projects away and pulling them out months later. It's nice to have it all neat and organised when I pull it out again.

Previous posts

I might make my deadline (March 2012)

Tim's Christmas stocking - delays and pressing on (February 2012)

Christmas stocking (December 2011)

On the frame - Tim's stocking (April 2011)

Tim's Christmas stocking (April 2011)

Midnight peacock purse

I have been working on a small tapestry project from the American Needlepoint Guild magazine that will be made up into an evening bag when it is finished. It is a bargello project using a range of black threads, with the only colour being a Frosty Rays blue. It is done on a black 18pt canvas and it is sitting on my new embroidery stand - which I love. I have made a lot more progress since I've had the new stand. Having both of my hands free while stitching makes the work go faster and improves the quality of stitching.

 

 

This project uses 9 different black threads - most have some kind of shiny, metallic reflective quality to them. The most reflective thread is actually the black patent leather. And as mentioned only one thread with a touch of colour (blue).  The designer Toni Gerdes said that she wanted to 'design a purse that was done entirely in stitching but still had the elegance of a beaded evening bag'. Her pattern can be found in this edition of Needle Pointers.

The article in Needle pointers was quite interesting about the history of this type of stitching. Although referred to as Bargello - it is more precisely called the Florentine stitch, which is a series of straight stitches, all of the same length. Hungarian point is a type of Florentine stitch that uses varying lengths for the straight stitches - if you search images of "flame stitch" you'll find some pretty amazing examples of this pattern; stitching, upholstery, clothing, glass ware. Some hideous, some beautiful and a few quite collectible. I had a bit of a wanty want moment with some of the search term objects.

And while I quite enjoy a bit of historical detail, I'm sure that it is completely irrelevant that this type of geometric stitching that we refer to as Bargello, is actually the name of a building in Florence. The building, is now a museum but given it's been around since the Middle Ages, it has had a number of uses, one of which was a jail. So..the word bargello means a "head of police". You can't find that in a dictionary now though. A google search will tell you that it is a type of geometric stitching. And that this pattern is a pomegranate.

I might make my deadline

When I started this project I set myself some self-imposed deadlines. I wanted to finish it in three years.  So, I marked off what I thought were three reasonable looking sections of the tapestry.

I started stitching in April 2011 so those of you good at maths have probably jumped ahead and worked out a year has nearly passed.

The marker line is on the right hand side of the tapestry. It is a bit of red Kreinik metallic thread sewn into the tapestry. I work by stitching back and forth from top to bottom. I don't do what many creative tapestry stitchers do, which is put in all of one type of stitch (say all the background) and then move on to another type of stitch.

Instead I started with the cuff and then had to put that aside while I waited for some replacement thread to arrive. I moved on and have now stitched the garland, the bricks, the red bows, the window glass, the window supports, the tree, the clown, the bear and santa's hat.

I'm just learning how to use a free online photo editing package and so apologies for the blurry words but here's my attempt at showing you that I am really...quite....close...to...achieving my goal.

In the few centimetres of this stocking that is in view, I have used a huge range of threads completely new to me: Nordic gold, Daisies, Neon Rays, Flair, Ribbon Floss, Burmilana, Splendor, Petite Peluche, Grandeur, Tulips and Felicity's Garden. I can understand now why Mary Corbet asked us "are you an accessories advocate, fabric fanatic of thread junkie?" She self-identifies as a thread junkie and now, having worked slightly less than one third of this canvas and come across so many new and interesting threads, I can fully understand how someone in the needlepoint world could become fascinated by all the variety of threads on offer.

As I work through this project, I've also been so impressed with the skill in putting stitches and threads together to create a pleasing and beautiful composition. This is only my second creative tapestry so I am very new to this pursuit. I could see how after having done a few of these kits and stitch guides, one could begin to branch out and plan or design your own guide for a set canvas. All for another day though. For now, I am happy working through this lovely canvas and all the new-to-me stitches and threads.

 

Previous posts

Tim's Christmas stocking - delays and pressing on (February 2012)

Christmas stocking (December 2011)

On the frame - Tim's stocking (April 2011)

Tim's Christmas stocking (April 2011)

Tim's Christmas Stocking - delays and pressing on

After a long break over summer, my tapestry group started back in February. I began this smaller project, Tim's Christmas stocking, so that I'd have something to take along to my class. I didn't really want to lug around that monster Baxtergraphix Ferry every month. In December 2011, I had come to a halt on this tapestry because I'd run out of one of the metallic threads. After some research, I'd decided to order from an Australian embroidery store, but on-line. I was a bit surprised that my order of thread hadn't arrived by early February, so I've had to stop working on the cuff and move onto the pretty picture. If I'd known it would take so long for the embroidery thread to arrive from Melbourne, I might have ordered from overseas. I'm sure I would have it by now if I'd ordered from overseas, I just wanted to try and support local business.

Because of the type of technique I use, the dangling threads from the unfinished section at the top has been quite distracting to try and stitch around. I'll be glad when my order finally arrives and I can finish off the top section.

It has been interesting though from a stiching point of view, to move onto the new threads and the new stitches. I've been using brick stitch (for the bricks!), continental for the mortar on the bricks, as well as the snow on the bricks and the garland, and for the shiny red bows. Then I've used interlocking gobelin for the green pine fronds of the garland. And finally, mosaic stitch on the frame of the window. It keeps it interesting as I stitch back and forth, to be constantly changing styles and threads.

But best of all has been the wonderful new threads I'm playing with. My favourite has been the variegated dyed threads used for the bricks and for the pine garland. The thread on the pine garland is Caron Impressions, no 83 Pine Forest. It is 50% silk, 50% wool and it stitches beautifully. The colours blend from greeny-blue, to a muted darker green.  I like the look of the Kreinik metallics but dont really like stitching with them. They are stiff to work with but this Caron Impressions is lovely and soft.

 

Previous posts

Christmas stocking (December 2011)

On the frame - Tim's stocking (April 2011)

Tim's Christmas stocking (April 2011)

Tapestry Christmas Stockings

As you know, I have three tapestries on frames in various states of progress: The ferry, Tim's christmas stocking, and my cat tapestry. As these projects are going to take me years to finish, I just wanted to grab this moment to show you some tapestries that I have completed. I don't have many visual clues around my house that I have completed any tapestry projects. I gave the flannel flowers to my mother-in-law and these two tapestry Christmas stockings spend most of their life in a box stored away, waiting for a few short weeks to be displayed.  So, I kind of feel it's OK to show you something completed years and years ago.

I gave quite an involved description of the history of these stockings in this old post so I wont bother repeating it here.

Christmas stocking

I have put a few hours into Tim's Christmas Stocking in the last week. Unfortunately, I came to a halt because I ran out of the Kreinik metallic thread. As I bought this as a kit with threads and stitching guide, I was a bit surprised to run out of thread. I think if I'd realised that I could run out of thread, I might have put more thought into how I was stitching. It's possible that the way I am stitching is using more thread than if I found a neater, more conservative way of stitching.

It hasn't been super easy to solve this thread supply issue. Canberra doesn't have a big enough population to warrant more than one or two shops that carry embroidery threads. I visited or rang all of the local stores and they did not have this speciality thread in stock.

I looked on-line but as I only needed one spool of thread it seemed excessive to pay high postage costs for the one small spool. So, I sat down with my other tapestry projects and tried to work through all my thread needs to see if I could summon up a large enough order to warrant the postage costs. I spent hours on this! The lengths one has to go to. Eventually I found that The Ferry tapestry probably needed a few more skeins of soft cotton and the cat tapestry needed some more paternayan wool.  Finally, I ordered from the Embroidery Den in Melbourne, which has an extensive range of threads for sale on-line.

After I'd been through all my bags and thread supplies I came across this post on a stitching blog....which told me about excel spreadsheets you can download to keep records of threads in your stash. Naturally enough I downloaded them! It certainly would have made my purchasing much easier if I had an accessible record system. Not sure though - it would probably take hours to record all these details and then keep them up-to-date. Hard to know on balance what is more effective.

 

Previous posts

On the frame - Tim's stocking (April 2011)

Tim's Christmas stocking (April 2011)

The Ferry tapestry - progress after Tapestry Guild weekend

In my previous post on the Ferry tapestry, I mentioned that I'd try and give an update after my weekend of stitching. I spent Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th of September stitching, talking, listening and eating. We worked from 9:00am to 4:30pm - they are serious stitchers these Tapestry Guild ladies. There is morning tea, afternoon tea and lunch provided and then we were all invited out to Bella Vista for dinner as well. Some of the ladies come down from Sydney to join us for the weekend and so are keen to catch up for dinner.  In the five years that I've been attending these events, I've never made it to the dinners. Being the introvert that I am, a full day of socialising is usually more than enough, and the concentration of sitting still and stitching for hours and hours also kind of wears me out. I do love these weekends though. I get so much done and I also catch up with people I haven't seen all year, and I feel connected to this group of women who share an interest in this fastidious and detailed craft.

 There were about 20 women who attended the weekend stitching, most for two days, some for one day. At 48 years old I am the second youngest in the group. There is one lady who self-identified as 43 years old (she's the youngest and her children are older than mine) and then there's me and then the next closest is a couple of woman in their early 50s, who, like us 'younger ones' are still working in paid employment but, unlike us, are not raising children any more. From there, you pretty much jump into the group of ladies who are retired and chatting about grandchildren. And then, at the upper end of the group are the 80-year-olds. Wow. I have thirty-plus more years of membership of this group. Though the take-up from the younger end is really not great. It might just be the two of us 40ish women stitching together in 30 years time.

Over the course of the weekend, it is interesting to see what everyone is working on and we get an opportunity to have a show and tell table where we bring in things we've finished, or other crafts we work on. I've brought in knitted items in the past. Some ladies paint, others knit, others bring in different types of embroidery. It is generally a time of awe and appreciation.

Last year I felt I made the ladies quite nervous about my adoption of the DSL technique - all the dangling threads. I was almost a bit trepidatious bringing it along again this year but our conversations this year seemed a tad more accepting of my difference. This style of creative tapestry, where you mix embroidery stitches with tapestry has been fostered in Australia by two women in Sydney who ran the Tapestry Studio for many years. I was fortunate enough to get on their last Canberra class in 2004 and then have maintained my lessons with a Guild accredited teacher here in Canberra. In the USA, this style of tapestry, or needlepoint as they call it, is huge. But then what isn't huge in America? There are more quilters in America than there are Australians.

So far though, I haven't come across anyone in the needlepoint blogs I read who has mixed up the two techniques in quite the same way I do. Dominique-Siegeler Lathrop is French, runs a studio,  teaches in Paris (maybe someday...wist-full dreaming look) and has an online shop. The American ladies I read all pretty much do as the Australian group, take one stitch, one thread and put in all those stitches at once (ie do all the petit point and then do all the canvas cross etc).  Anyway, I find this mixed method works for me and am happy to press on with it for now. Time will tell if there are traps for unwary players.

Previous posts

The Ferry tapestry - the 2011 September Tapestry weekend (Sept 2011)

The Ferry - E.Phillips Fox - Baxtergraphix Tapestry (April 2011)

The Ferry tapestry - the 2011 September Tapestry weekend

The tapestry that is to be my major work is 'The Ferry', which is based on the painting by E. Phillips Fox from 1910, and exhibited for the first time in 1913 in Australia. I gave a bit of background about it in my first post on this project and there's a link below if you're interested. The painting is a scene from Trouville in Normandy. I was curious to see what Trouville looked like and naturally Google images and Wikipedia were most helpful. This photo is from Wikipedia's Trouville page. In the painting, the ladies are standing on some steps, about to embark into a small boat for a journey. They are beautifully dressed and it seems they are going to a party.

In the photo below, I think you may even be able to see the steps that the ladies are standing on - or so it seems to my imagination.

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I also found a charming travel article that focuses on the literary and artistic scene that Trouville can claim as its heritage - Monet, Flaubert, Proust, Boudin, Duras and though not mentioned, of course our own E.Phillips Fox. The article is here> Impressions of Monet's Beach at Trouville - Guardian, Travel article written in 2008.

I find it hard to photograph this tapestry of mine. It is reasonably long and so I've made an attempt to show you the project in one go, but also in segments. On the right hand side of this tapestry, in the photo below, I've marked off evenly spaced parts of the tapestry. I divided it into 10 equal parts, and have thus set myself goals to finish each part over a year. In September each year, I gather with about twenty women to spend a weekend working on our tapestries. I started this tapestry last September at our weekend workshop and was hoping to have my first year's work stitched down to the mark - I'm not quite there. I do still have a week before I'll be catching up with them, and possibly if I give it a big push I can get fairly close to my goal.

I'm using a standard continental stitch in wool for the steps leading down to the boat. For the water, I'm using a reverse continental stitch in soft cotton, plus a fine oblique slav in DMC, and a horizontal half continental in perle 5. There are about nine colours in the water: grey, green, khaki, yellow, gold, orange, light blue, dark blue, and brown. It was one of the things that appealed to me, the painterly strokes of rippling water. To get the effect of movement the fine oblique slav and the reversing seem to create reflections and ripples.

The umbrella is being stitched in vertical half continental using DMC and in five different colours. I know my technique from Dominique Siegler-Lathrop's book makes it look messy while it is a work in progress, but I do find it reasonably effective for ensuring no stitches are missed.

 

The fine oblique slav needs to be worked from the bottom to the top and so doesn't mesh very well with the continuous backwards and forwards of the Siegler-Lathrop method. You can see in the photo below that I've laid in the oblique slav stitches first and then I'm filling in the blanks. I think for my weekend away with the tapestry group, I'll just concentrate in putting in as much fine oblique slav as possible.

I'll try and give an update after the weekend to show my progress.

Previous Posts

The Ferry - E.Phillips Fox - Baxtergraphix Tapestry