Sorted

I have come up with a design that allows the stem of the second blackwork leaf to go downwards without it having to be so steep that the shading doesn't work:

The leaf has become virtually horizontal with just a very slight downward curve at the end which is enough to keep it looking realistic. I am using a vertical pattern under the stem and a horizontal one above it again to keep the two leaves balanced without symmetry, but this time the shapes in the pattern are larger so there are more stitches in the centre of them that can be taken out for the lighter section.

Design flaw

Oops. I have been having difficulty coming up with a design for the second blackwork leaf because I don't want them to be symmetrical. Leaves need to point downwards or they look strange and trying to have the main stem direction downwards to distinguish it from the other design leads to the problem that the central line of the leaf has to go up and over which takes up more space. That probably wasn't very clear but if we look at these designs you should see what I mean:

It just doesn't look realistic. Eventually I came up with what I thought was a viable option:

As you can see there were various problems with exactly where the join of the stem should go but it all fits in the space and is in the right proportions so I was happy. Then I started to sew and a problem emerged:

Where the stem is almost vertical the shading doesn't work properly. Instead of lots of short lines you get a few very long ones which don't move with the curves of the stem. Obviously I have to go back to the drawing board. For the shading to work the stem can't be at more than about a 45 degree angle at any point and the pre-existing join point combined with the need to shape the leaf in a certain way makes that very difficult. One possible solution would be to rotate the fabric relative to the design but I haven't quite worked out what the other implications of that would be and I am running out of scraps of fabric so I will go away and think about it.

In the meantime

Unfortunately the other bit of scrap fabric I need to do the second leaf is currently at the other end of the country. In the meantime I have been working on the cross stitch pattern I got as a Christmas present.

Obviously I didn't do all that in the last couple of days, it has been an ongoing project since New Year. The design is by Sheila Hudson who has a whole collection of flowers that are all really nice to sew, but bare in mind that they end up much brighter than they look like they are going to from the picture. As usual it is done on 22 count fabric and will end up roughly 6 inches square. I did the pansy last year and will frame the two to match..

2nd try at blackwork

In spite of the issues with doing blackwork on adia that I discovered when doing the flower I have decided to continue to experiment on the scraps of fabric I already have for a bit rather than buying a big bit of evenweave. Therefore, I am going to sew a leaf to go on each side of the flower leading on from the stem. For the first one I drew another rough sketch on scrap paper:

You can see where I tried to indicate areas of shading. The shading on the top half didn't work so for the real thing I changed it to a teardrop shape like on the lower half. Mindful of the fact I didn't like how dark the flower looked I decided that the areas inside the shading teardrop should be lighter, have some stitches removed, rather than just shading by using more stitches and thicker thread. This is how it turned out:

The stem is again done with two thicknesses of chain stitch and some straight shading stitches, as is the vein down the centre of the leaf. This time the two stitch patterns I used were not multi-directional, the one on the lower half is vertical and the upper half is horizontal, both are copied from the Stitch Guide without needing to be adapted for the fabric type. Again the shading is from two to one threads but this time the darker areas are around the edge and the lightest areas have a stitch removed from the centre of each repetition of the pattern to create white spaces. This kind of shading is much more effective, the difference between the three shades is clearer than on the flower where the two darker shades were difficult to distinguish, especially on the lower half of the leaf where the repeating pattern was smaller. However, I can take it further and loose more stitches to create even lighter areas for a more dramatic image. I also prefer the lack of a hard stem stitch edge so I will do that again on the other leaf.

The two pieces together look like this:

The idea is that with the second leaf they will form a triptych seen through circular gaps in a single mounting board. Each design is approximately 4 inches across so the group should fit into a standard three photo frame to form a sampler of blackwork stitches. Then the real experimentation will begin.

Early days

I got two books for Christmas that were produced by the RSN and show technique so that is where I am stating from. They also have pictures of the sort of thing really clever capable people can come up with which is very exciting, it is always nice to know how much more there is to learn. They are  Embroidery Techniques by Sally Saunders and Essential Stitch Guides: Blackwork buy Becky Hogg.

I have decided to start with blackwork since that is covered in both books. Now being me I can't just follow one of the projects suggested but have adapted things slightly. The first project to try in Embroidery Techniques involves a number of different stitch patterns and shading so I am doing that but using different shapes. I decided on a simple flower with four petals and sketched the design on a spare bit of paper, judging the size by drawing it inside a circle traced from by smallest embroidery hoop:

Each petal and the centre will be a different stitch with the petals getting darker as they get closer to the centre. Blackwork is supposed to be done on evenweave fabric but I have never sewn on that before and as I am trying a new technique I wanted to minimise the number of new things to deal with at once. Therefore, I decided to use an offcut of 22 count aida that I already had. This is how it turned out:

I used tapestry stitch with 3 strands for the centre so it would be as dark as possible. The petals are 4 stitch patterns in 3 sizes to see how the size of the pattern affected things. All four patterns are also chosen so that they are square or circular rather than linear, ie they are the same in all directions rather than having a horizontal or vertical emphasis. The shading graduates from 1 strand at the edge to 2 strands in the centre with some extra stitches added in 1 strand to some areas to make the shadow even deeper. Unsurprisingly shading works most cleanly on the smaller patterns. I also added a stem using two thicknesses of chain stitch to create shading.

On the whole I am happy with it. If I tried again I would probably make the edges of the petals lighter by removing some stitches from the pattern and I'm not sure I like having such a harsh outline to the petals, it makes them feel even darker. I need to work on smoothing out the curves of the stem stitch edging if I am going to use it again anyway. Also, I hadn't realised how much more flexibility stitching 2 over 2 on evenweave would give. A huge number of the patterns suggested in the book used 2 over 2 stitches but with only 1 space between them. I ended up adapting and inventing pattens I could use on on aida.

My sewing history

I have been sewing for basically my entire life, since I was about 4 anyway. The first time I made anything usable wasn't until I was 16 though when I made this bag:

 I guess it counts as applique but I didn't really know what it was at the time. Anyway, the bag lasted a couple of years and the sewing bug caught even stronger than before. It has been replaced several times since then, mostly by variations on the same basic idea. For example this one which I was particularly fond of:

There have also been excursions into dressmaking, with various degrees of success, and most other techniques I come into contact with get tried out. Sewing little mirrors was a particular fascination at one point and resulted in the following bellydance hip scarf (I made the skirt too):

However, it is decorative embroidery that I come back to again and again. Cross stitch obviously has been a big theme, starting from a kit I got as a birthday present at 14 I now do larger designs such as the Lavender and Lace alphabet bellow. I did it on 22 count aida fabric, it was lovely to sew but I left out some of the even more twee elements and it is still a bit much for my taste. I am very fond of the letter shapes though.

My other freestyle embroidery has tended to be quite simple like the stems and small leaves on the hipscarf above, though simple can still be quite effective as on the flap of this bag:

Like with my first bag, I always tend to just make stuff up as I go along; I have no training or more experienced sewers to advise me and tend to make adjustments to any pattern I try to follow. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I have got quite good at working stuff out for myself but I feel that in order to improve I need to start pushing myself a bit more. The RSN teaches in Durham where I live but there is absolutely no way I can afford the course fees no mater how much I would like, so more self teaching it is. The idea of this blog is to provide an impetus and a record for my attempts to develop skills in more complex techniques and designs.