Constellation, inspiration and a flutter of butterflies

The plain stitching, the hemming of the towels, is done, and they are deployed and in use. No pictures, because in laundry or in use, not scenic.

So now I can return to fancy stuff, waiting here.

 I thought you might like to see some of my sources of encouragement. 

Reading clockwise from the top, The Royal School of Needleworks, Respect the Spindle, Butterflies, English paper piecing, Black work, Goldwork, The Unicorn Tapestries. In the middle, Weaving without a loom.

And a flutter of butterflies, stumpwork I created and exhibited a couple of years ago.

The biggest is about 5" wingspan.

 These were part of a big wallhanging, named Sanctuary, made long before issues of  sanctuary cities came about.

 I removed the butterflies from the piece for safety when there were workmen carrying apppliances up and downstairs past them. 

Then I thought I might frame them separately, so I kept them off.  I still need to frame them..and I long ago used the base hanging, a complicated affair of knitting, crocheting and dyeing, for other artworks. I'm not exactly a conservator.

The Joy of Art, the Agony of Framing

Or, as wise friend Stefi has been known to say, if you want the pleasure of framing, first you have to go through the boredom and misery of making art...

Anyway, today after framing three pieces, I ran out of strength and patience and all that framing entails, and have not quite finished framing up the rest of my work.  One more wilderness piece and a couple of goldwork pieces to go.

Working in 3D i.e. stumpwork and other similar techniques, creates a particularly shall we say challenging situation for framing, since you can't put the work face down in order to mount the fabric on to the backing, the usual procedure.  

You have to preserve the surface and work sight unseen at the back pulling and adjusting the tapes and getting the artwork properly centered and taut without crushing the fragile embroidery or shoving it out of place.  My nerves were not centered, but definitely taut.  Remembering how many hours go into making this work in the first place, you really don't want things to go all pear shaped in the framing.

And I can only keep up this level of tension, meaning the physical kind, for so long before my hands start to whine and complain.  So I made the pix, for once remembering, I'm very proud to say, to leave the glass off for the pix, insert it after them, so that only had to be done once.  Then I decided that the night wilderness scene and a couple of goldwork pieces had to wait till tomorrow.  And now I'm having a cup of tea and gloating over my progress to date.

 Here's that wheat design I did, rayon thread, gah, with beads and other things on white linen, 8 x 8 inches -- it's a dark and stormy day, so the white doesn't show well here.

And here's the daytime wilderness pieces, with the glasswing insect now in place, along with the or nue sun and the blue and purple stumpwork butterfly.  The second picture is to indicate the frame a bit for you to see the boundaries of the piece.  It's 12 x 12.

The reason I want this framing done is that Sunday is the annual holiday bash of the Embroiderers' Guild, with a show and tell of this year's work, so I wanted to put my best stitch forward.

You may remember that I had planned to add all kinds of stuff into the wilderness pieces, but having made the small one, which was quite busy, decided I'd rather be spare with the other two, plenty of air around the insects is better than a crowd.  I still promise myself a goldwork bee in stumpwork, though, but he'll have another context.

The silver (it's silver, take my word for it) frame with the schwalm whitework in it amused me hugely because the design on the frame reflects in an updated sort of way the general design of the whitework. Just a little sight gag there.  I starched the whitework, too, figuring why not, the original stitchers probably did, too.

Stitching update, goldwork and wilderness adventures

After all my big talk about workshop work, and wilderness work, I thought I should at least show you a little something.  

As you may know, if you've done these forms of goldwork, the or nue aka shaded goldwork, seen here just started, see the dragonfly motif recurring (!)

and the stitching over string seen here, a fleur de lis motif, string mostly in place, goldwork couching just started,

are very slow methodical processes. 

The wilderness is a bit more sudden. And after two days of workshop and one day at home on the goldwork, I urgently needed to switch to the wilderness.

I stitched down the lizard into his new home, and after a bit more stitching of grasses and plants, some of which is already done, after I made the pic, the dragonfly will take up residence, too.  And after that another bunch of ideas I have in mind but not on needle yet. I must say I'm glad he's in place, really tired of whipping him in and out of his little baggie.

On the subject of design, you'll see that the lizard touches on three plants.  The dragonfly will probably do likewise, and may touch on the last plant the lizard touches, so as to lock the design together. 

But I will be very particular about the angle at which the dfly goes in, to activate the space between her and the lizard.  You note that the lizard draws your eye left to right and up a bit, because that's how he's looking, ready to notice the dfly, which will, in a way, cut that off, so you don't slide right off the side.  Your eye needs places where it will be stopped.  These diagonals provided by the stumpwork animals, will provide the relief from all the verticals of the grasses and flowers.

Later this afternoon, I'm off to see an art exhibit, someone else's work, yay, change from doing it myself,  and will duly report.

Wilderness project update

I'm done for the moment with butterfly wings, and they are safely stowed till the rest of the piece is ready for them.  So now I'm working on a little lizard, or salamander.  

I drew and cut it out in yellow felt, stitched the shape down, forgot to take a pic of it, sorry, and now you see my original drawing next to the current state of play:  the lizard is being given a coat of the same sparkly ribbon I used on the luna moth's wings.  

I'll stitch this down all around then proceed to make it nice looking.  The left hind foot will be stitched entirely. This is a different form of stumpwork, where padding is used, and the outer edge will be stitched closely same as the butterfly wings, so as to cut it off its background ready to install on the final work.

This afternoon is all about rain, so this will be a good stitching time.

Stumpwork butterflies in progress

Here's the blue and turquoise iridescent butterfly progressing. As you see, I'm stitching all four pieces on the same piece of fabric, in the interest of not losing any of them before I'm ready to attach them.  The little tear you see in the fabric doesn't matter -- it will be outside the cut area once I remove the parts.

 Here in the hoop is the back of the current wing parts, to the right, out of the hoop, the front side of the completed parts.

Here you see the front of the current stitched pieces, with the back of the first two pieces outside the hoop.  And it shows the ends of the wires which will be slid through the permanent support and stitched down at the back to secure the butterfly.


And you see a couple of adjustments:  making sure I'm doing a left and a right wing, like when you cut out pieces of a dress -- not two left bodice parts!  and I reversed the way I stitched it in the hoop, so as to protect the stitching in progress. I'm so much in the habit of stretching canvas then painting on the top of it, that I keep forgetting to reverse the procedure with stitching, so as to protect the work in progress.

This is why each picture shows the back of two parts, the front of the other two parts.  It's more organized than it looks.

Wire is stitched in with close stitches, not buttonhole this time, since the knots in buttonhole pushed the threads apart a little, and I didn't get as much coverage of the wire as I'd planned, on the other moth.  Then the wing parts are filled in with long and short stitches, alternating floss and metallic thread

It's surprisingly athletic to stitch this closely around this apparently small area.  I need to rest my back as well as my eyes after getting round one wing part.

Butterflies and bees emerge from the ether

More stumpwork and here you see one butterfly wing bits all done, on the lines of a luna moth in shape, not in color, and the start of a different sort of butterfly, long and short stitch, blending one ply of floss then one ply of metallic blue.  This is another authentic butterfly shape but I was dying to use this color combo.  

You know how, when you're in the middle of creating something, poem, artwork, cooking something, anything like that, you suddenly realize, oh, this is what I've been meaning to  do for years. It must have been flitting about all that time and now it's landed on my work? that's how I suddenly felt with the luna moth, and now with the blending of colors on the iridescent blue one.  Just, everything feels right, right now.

And the third item is a piece of mulberry paper, one I'd molded over a bee form, and here you see it stitched onto muslin, carefully preserving the molded very fragile shape, not easy, that, and then trapunto work on the body.  I used wisps of cotton roving, beautiful silky stuff I've had for a while.  This one is an experiment, I'll see how it works once I do a few similar ones.

Stitched Wilderness continues

Two parts going on at once: in the kitchen, mulberry paper over tiles, molded with water, drying and ready to be installed somewhere on the crocheted foliage.

And in the living room, while I listen to an audiobook, the beginnings of a luna moth, with help from Jane Nicholas' wonderful new embroidery book about stumpwork butterflies and moths.

It arrived yesterday and I whipped through it in search of a luna moth.


 What you see here are the forewings, wired and to be stitched much more, around the edges, and the "eyes" to be stitched.  This is a wired ribbon, wire removed, which I used to cut out the forewings, and will use for the hind wings, too, needed to do the forewings in order to see if it worked.  

I secured them in place on the muslin with gold silk thread, then applied the wire, taken from the edge of the ribbon, just right for the purpose, stitched down again.  This is the engineering part of it.  

The decorative stitching will hide all these underpinnings.  Then once the hind wings are done, too, all will be cut out and transferred to a different backing, to be part of the artwork.  Along with other butterflies and moths, I think.   I plan on a lot of goldwork for these insects, rather than the natural colors.

And, for a little example of how life imitates art, go here