Building Blocks 3 - finished

Here are the filled in blocks. I decided to switch the positions of the orange and purple ones from the mock-up which I think looks better and am rather pleased with it. The shading works reasonable well, especially from a distance:

Yellow wasn't too bad in the end though it is still noticeably lighter than the others. I tried to get around the difficulty by using slightly heavier patterns in that block than the others. On the close up bellow you can see that the darkest area is a tapestry stitch to get nearly complete coverage and the other two are ones I used in a previous experiment, from the post titled 'Experiment 2, which came out at the darker end of their respective levels.

The other two blocks that were particularly interesting were purple and orange:

The lightest area of orange shows the importance of direction. The pattern I was copying from had the waves positioned vertically, and initially I did the same but it it looked ridiculous so I tried horizontal and it is now one of my favourite light patterns. I should have taken a picture of the bad version but I had unpicked it before the thought occurred to me.

The dark purple section shows that too complex and small a pattern doesn't read properly. The dark orange shading above is very fiddly but it works because there is enough variation that you can immediately see how the pattern repeats. The purple one looks like a knit or darn, the pattern is virtually impossible to see. I suppose it might be useful at some point if I want to sew a figure waring a jumper but otherwise I think I'll chalk it up to the learning curve and forget about it.

Building Blocks 2 - outline

I decided to have black outlines to all of the blocks in order to help distinguish the different areas and used the recommended technique for transferring patterns from a page to fabric - sewing running stitch through both paper and fabric then tearing the paper away. However, there was a problem. Although I thought I had lined up the vertical lines on the paper pattern with the grain of the fabric I apparently wasn't accurate enough.

You can see how the verticals indicated by the tacking are very slightly diagonal and the boxes ended up rather uneven.

Eventually I just used the tacking as a vague guideline for the height and width of the blocks but worked with the grain of the fabric for verticals. This is what I ended up with:

 Since this is just an exercise it is bearable and I won't start again but it is definitely irregular so I need to find a more accurate way to transfer designs to fabric. I had hoped that by drawing the design as a geometric grid on paper first I would be able to make it uniform but I think for future reference it would be better to work out the angles and sew regular straight line shapes onto the fabric direct. I'll have another go at the tacking technique some time I'm using a more irregular or curved shape as it may just be that I need more practice..

Building Blocks 1

In order to have a go at coloured blackwork I am starting simple by using single threads to create flat blocks of different patterns. This seemed like a good time to try to expand my vocabulary of stitch patterns again and experiment with shading using different patterns. Therefore, I will be sewing a regular pile of coloured cubes, like children's building bocks. This is a simple mock-up of what I am aiming for:

Each cube will be in a single colour and will be shaded entirely by using different patterns. The rules are that I am not allowed to use the same pattern twice or simply add or remove a few stitches from a base pattern  to make it different and I can't cheat by changing thread thickness. This should be interesting, I am slightly worried about the yellow block in case it doesn't show up enough. I looked through my thread collection and these are the colours I have chosen:

The yellow is the darkest one I have and the others are chosen because they are all in the same shade range. I think they make a nice combination.

Sampler

All the experiments I have done looked quite pretty in combination and I live in a house with a ridiculous number of hooks in the walls so I decided to have it as a wall hanging.  Here are the pieces:

I used some felt as a backing and edged it in black ribbon using a piece of twisted wire inside the top seam to ensure it would hang evenly, all things I had in my scrap bag already. This is what it ended up looking like:

Much cheaper than a frame, I think I'll do that again.

Experiment 3, shading again

I have finished the irregular shading experiment.

It isn't as dramatic as the other exercises I have done simply because it is irregular, and I am not convinced that I have got the hang of breaking up the pattern yet. However, I am comfortable that I can create gradual, irregular shading even using a medium sized, open stitch pattern. That is my bit of fabric finished though so I am going to move on to a new piece and a new set of experiments. I would like to see how blackwork looks done in colour so that is the next task.

More shading

I've been carrying on with the shading practice by experimenting with different size patterns.

There are 8 levels in each of these strips. 3 strands, 2 strands, 1 strand, machine thread, shading between each of them and pattern break up at the end.The shading works for all of them though obviously the larger, more open patterns never get quite as dark. Also I found the larger patterns easier to break up, which I don't think was just because I had more practice, when there are more stitches there is more flexibility about which to remove.


Interesting though this experiment was I decided that I need more practice at the lighter end of the spectrum and with irregular shading rather than strips. Therefore, I sewed a random wiggly line in red to shade around.

Using three thicknesses of thread and the same stitch pattern throughout, the rules were that starting at the centre bottom the darkest shade should be on the right hand side of the red outline and follow it round, and the pattern should break up to nothing inside two separate blobs. We'll see how it goes.

Experiment 2

One of the things I wasn't very good at on my first try was keeping stem stitch edging smooth. To practice that and expand my vocabulary of stitch patterns I sewed some random wiggly lines and then filled in the gaps between them with patterns I had not used before.

Inadvertently this exercise flagged up the way to shade with blackwork which I have not tried yet, using patterns with different weights of stitches to make dark and light areas. Here you can see that the central and bottom right blocks are noticeably darker than the others. The large lace pattern and bottom left block are also very slightly darker in tone than the other three but that is much less noticeable. The exercise also shows that outlines seem to work much better when using this kind of flat bock shading than the more naturalistic kind. Definitely something I need to come back to at some point.

Shading practice

My next practice was to experiment with regular shading from dark to light and light to dark. Again I used a pattern I had tried before, this time from one of the flower petals.

I used three thicknesses of thread; two strands, one strand and sewing machine thread. The last of those is quite annoying as it is much less forgiving than the embroidery silks, it doesn't bend in the same way.The darker sections are shaded very gradually starting with the whole pattern done with two strands, then part of the central star in each of two and one strand then all of it one strand; then doing the same process with one strand and the sewing thread.

I really like how subtle the change is. The shift to the lighter section I think could have done with being more gradual, having the outline shape switch to the thinnest thread at the same time as stitches start to be removed was probably not a good idea, but I still really like the effect of the two blocks next to each other.

Experiments 1

I have got some 32 count evenweave fabric to experiment with, 2 over 2 that is the equivalent of 16 count aida. Just to start with I thought I would take a single stitch pattern and sew it in all possible directions in two thicknesses of thread to see what it would look like. I also tried using contrasting running stitch outlines instead of pencil to work within.

I used the same pattern as was under the stem of the first leaf I tried so that I was already familiar with it. My initial observation was that evenweave is much softer and more stretchy than aida so everything seemed to be wonky but actually it seems to even out over larger areas. The picture above shows three sides working the pattern vertically and horizontally with two threads. For the centre four blocks I adapted the pattern slightly so that it could be diagonal and used only one thread.

There is something curiously satisfying about the fact that it includes all possible directions, the regularity is pleasing in a similar way to patchwork. The only problem is that I think the horizontal and vertical blocks should have been sewn so that the end of the pattern was at the outer edge rather than where it joins the next block in the corners. It would make the edge neater. Also, using thread rather than pencil means having to remove the thread which was more difficult than I had expected because the needle had passed through it in places, I need to be more careful. On the whole though I am happy and it is useful to see both how dense the stitches are at this larger size and how different directions interact visually.

The change in size was actually a bit odd to start with, I haven't used stitches that large in a long time. If I put the leaf and this square next to each other you can see just how pronounced the difference is.

I will need to bare the change of scale in mind when I am coming up with designs since larger stitches will not allow such detailed shading or precise edges.

Leaf 2 done

I have finished the second leaf:

Having more stitches in the centre of the basic stitch pattern that can be removed gives much more flexibility to shape the light area, especially on the top half of the leaf. It also creates larger white spaces and therefore a lighter tone which I wasn't sure about at first because it seemed a bit stark. However, when I saw it from a distance with the other two designs the increased contrast grew on me.

That picture is quite dark, I should get a better one, but you can see that the higher level of contrast within the design of the second leaf makes it stand out more. I do think it could do with a softer transition between shades though, especially on the bottom half.

Over the course of the three designs I seem to have got better at creating a smooth curve at the edges. I naturally gravitate towards smaller stitch patterns which allow for more precise shading and need to be braver about having very light sections as well as dark ones. The next task is to have a go on evenweave fabric.