Embroidered lotus

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I learned quite a bit with my first adventure in silk embroidery. Because somebody asked – I’ve done a couple of small stitching projects before, but I’ve never stitched with silk.

For scale, the lotus is just over 2 1/8″ top to bottom, 2 3/4″ side to side. It’s all stitched with flat silk which I reeled, threw, degummed, and dyed. The petals are satin and long and short stitches, the red center also has seed stitches. For seeds, natch! Or, actually, probably anthers, if we’re being picky. I stitched this from a very stylized logo; one lesson that I learned from this project, is to either (a) stitch from natural images, adapting them to embroidery, or (b) stitch from stitchery designs. There were a couple of things that are great for logo design, but make the stitching part tricky. The ground fabric is champagne-colored smooth doupionni silk.

Om, the jewel is in the lotus, hum

Nothing impressive yet

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I decided, with all the embroidery silk I’ve been making, I ought to try my hand at embroidery.

So this is definitely still a learning experience; I am figuring out a lot of things!


For scale, it’s just over an inch and a half tall. Red and white flat silk on smooth dupionni silk.
My favorite thing so far, is the sheen of the silk as it goes around the curvature. Un-favorite thing so far is accidentally pulling up tiny bits of the “tails” and having to chase them down and trim closer.

Don't touch my Willie…

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For those of you who haven’t bumped into that part of my life… I’m a country-western dancer.

You know that Willie Nelson gay cowboys song that has been hitting the press lately (at least around here) – you can hear it here:http://www.secretcowboys.com/

The cool part? I’m going to be dancing in the music video. We’re in choreography rehearsal, scheduled to shoot early next week, national release is planned for mid-March.

These are the guys who started out at the first rehearsal; it’s shifted a little, so I’m not sure which ones will be in the final shoot, and there are some new ones not pictured.


I’m in the dark green shirt, upper left side by the Coors sign.

Silk Reeling at the Crow Collection

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For any local (North Texas) folks who will be around on Saturday, the 25th – I’m going to be part of an exhibit at the Crow Collection of Asian Art, showcasing art from the Silk Road. The title of the traveling exhibit is “Ancient Threads, Newly Woven: Recent Art from China’s Silk Road“. There is a whole day of activities and special displays – you can see more details here: LINK

They’ve got live music, Elizabeth Barber giving a talk about the Mummies of Urumchi, and, of course, a silk reeling demo! I’ll be there from 10 AM to 4 PM.

Treenway's gallery!

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I got my work listed in Treenway’s “Silkster’s Gallery”! It’s not a competition, but it is juried, and it’s neat to be in there. And I’m getting a skein of silk for making it in, which is always wonderful.

Treenway is my source for commercial cocoons, and they also have a lot of different forms of silk yarns and fibers.

More silk work: degumming

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I finally got photos taken, and a page worked up for the degumming process!

It takes the silk from this:

to this:

http://www.wormspit.com/degumming.htm