Lemme introduce you, to my leetle friend…
In a close-up macro, it looks like a chunk of agate. Or maybe fossilized gum from the bottom of a chair.
Archive for year: 2007
The Quick and the Slow
Sharon B over at In a Minute Ago started a fantastic discussion about Slow Cloth.
I find this whole discussion fascinating. I’m currently working on learning silk embroidery – a process which began in 2001 with raising silkworms, learning about cocoons, learning to reel silk, learning to throw, degum, and dye it, figuring out what kind of floss I want for the effect I’m aiming for – I’m definitely slow. Read more
Kid & Ewe photos from my Tablet Weaving class behind the cut
More spools in more places…
I went and picked up more spools for the embroidery thread – and learned that they come in SIZES. These are shuttle quills, made by Louet, I believe. Before, I had only had the six-inchers. Now, I’ve got one that’s 3.5 inches, several that are 4.5 inches, and a bunch that are six inches.
I want to figure out which one I like the best, and get a bunch more to match. I’ll probably need 150 or more once it’s all said and done – I’m getting at least four distinct tones per color, although I’m aiming for five. Some of the dyes don’t seem to yield a wide dynamic range easily, but that may also just be my inexperience.
Embroidery silk spools
I’ve been working on getting ranges of color for my embroidery silks. These are wound on Louet cardboard pirns six inches long and about as big around as a pencil. The pink range is what I’ve been using to embroider the peony. These greens will form the leaves – the blues are just to have blues. Eventually, I want to have a rainbow box with all the shades I could possibly need.
The yellow-green range is the most recent. I’m getting better at getting a consistent leveling on the dye.
Bailey Claus
Bailey Claus wishes you Happy Whichever Holiday You Celebrate.
Bailey and Spot
Bailey’s very lean, and so he gets cold easily. He was shivery after going outside, so I wrapped him up in a blanket. Spooky (also now called Spot) came and cuddled up with him.
Peony still in progress
This is the peony embroidery, still in progress:
I’ve gotten a lot more done, but it’s still got about a third of the flower to go. I just finished dyeing the silk for the leaves/stem, so I can work on that once I finish the petals.
This is the cool part about working with silk – when you move it, it catches the light.
In progress: peony embroidery
I’ve had embroidery on the brain for a while now. I’ve been doing more thinking than stitching up to this point, and I’ve finally made some silk I’m happy with so I’ve started work on a project.
This is a sample for me to get my hand around working with the silk; by about the third petal, the silk was finally starting to talk to me and tell me how to work with it. I’ve looked at videos, read books – but I find with any tactile technique, having the actual stuff in my hands is the best teacher. This is about half the weight of the embroidery silk I had made previously; it’s four (instead of 8) of my forty-denier (or so) filaments, with a light twist that I can then work back out during the stitching. Dyes are Jacquard acids.
The peony underway. I started by drawing the peony freehand onto the silk, based on a piece embroidered by Young Yang Chung (photo taken from her book, below) and then stitching the outlines and starting to fill with long and short stitch. The main thing that took me a while, was figuring out that I could make LONG stitches… some of them an inch or more – to get the look I want. I’ve been looking at photos and actual pieces of Chinese and Korean embroidery, which is the look I’m after; they take some surprisingly long stitches, which brings a lot of sheen to the surface as the light reflects off the long silk.
More photos, and discussion about stitch patterning