New Year's Resolutions

As I sit on this bitter cold dreary January day, I find myself pondering many things.  Unemployment has provided me the opportunity to catch up on things, not the least of which are my Embroidery projects.  One of those projects -- though not strictly Embroidery -- is this blog.  I have so many things I meant to share last year, and now I can!

The first thing to share is an announcement -- I have successfully completed the Embroiderer's Guild of America Master Craftsman Program in Crewel!!   I am an official Master Craftsman.   I'm often asked "what does that get you?" and other than sore fingers from five years of stitching six different projects, I can honestly say PRIDE.  Pride in accomplishing a long and difficult goal, pride in knowing that my embroidery is judged to be excellent by people who are trained to know, and pride in knowing that I learned well from my Mother. I only wish she could have loved long enough to know that I made it.

My final piece sits on the blocking board (for the third time -- ugh!!) 

Later this week I'll lace it onto Acid Free Foam Board in preparation for framing, and then go select a frame for it.   Steps 4 and 5 also await framing, but this piece is going to Woodlawn this year to see how it fares in that competition, so it needs something worthy.   Once framed, I'll post a final photo.

While waiting for my final notification on the Master Craftsman Program, I tried my hand at a slightly different technique -- Needle Painting.  This technique is done using a single strand of DMC floss on muslin fabric (VERY different than what I'm used to!) in mostly long and sort soft shading.   The result is intricate life-like detail of animals, birds, and flowers, such as my little bluebird below:

Luckily, this design is only about 3.5 inches across!  I needed stronger glasses to work this, but I really enjoyed doing it, and plan on doing another next month as part of an online class with the deisgner, Tanja Berlin (http://www.berlinembroidery.com/onlineclasses.htm)   It's a Red Fox and I think it will be fun, especially as I have at least one friend who is doing the class as well, so we can share our progress!

Anyone else want to join us???

My plans for posts coming soon are ...

Instructions for washing and blocking your crewel work (this for my EGA Chapter friends!)

Recaps of the first several steps of the Master Craftsman Program

An overview of the Jacobean Program I designed for my chapter

Progress reports on my new projects (Red Fox Needlepainting, Goldwork, and of course, more crewel!)

If there is something you would like me to write about, or a question you may have, please let me know!  And if you have any friends who would be interested in this blog, feel free to share and pass it along!

Happy New Year!!

And The Winner Is ...

One of the things I love the most about Crewel is that I can put any stitch anywhere I want on my piece.  Even when I am stitching a commercial design, I can pick my colors and my stitches.  Some people prefer to have a chart or a specific map of where everything goes, but not me....   except for that darned butterfly on my Master Craftsman Step #6 piece!   

As I said before, I have never had a single motif give me more trouble.  My original intent was to have a monarch butterfly, orange and black.   Early on, I decided that there was too much detail to fit into the small butterfly I had for all the intricacies of the monarch pattern, but I could use the colors.  So this is what I stitched:

I was a little concerned that it was too bright, and the judges agreed with that.  I tried looking for the same color family but just a bit softer hues, but I didn't have anything (and I have almost every color of Appleton Crewel wool made!)   I looked for totally different colors -- a blue, perhaps?  Nope.  Peacock?  Nope.  Scarlet?  Ick!!  After hours of pulling colors out of my cabinet and laying them on the piece in various light conditions, I finally reverted back to the same colors in the surrounding design, the yellows, pinks and purples.  

With that decision made, Next was a question of what stitch to use.  For some reason, I moved away from the bands of Satin Stitch and tried my old standby Long and Short (right side in the photo below.)   I liked it, but it just looked a little too much like a flower petal and not a butterfly wing!  So I tried the Satin Stitch bands (left side below) which I liked, but I couldn't get the edges as crisp as I wanted, and I was worried that there was not enough contrast between the yellow and the linen.  

That's when I tried adding the outline stitch, both in the Bright Mauve below, and then in the Bright Rose Pink further below.  Neither of those was quite the effect I wanted. 

Out it all came AGAIN.  By now, I was beginning to worry a bit about the linen fabric getting a bit frayed from so many attempts and having to rip them all out, and resorted to my Doodle Cloth!  (I'm not sure why it took me so long, especially since that's the name of my blog.)  I stitched a Satin outside band, with two lines of outline in the Bright Rose Pink, and the center is Satin in Bright Mauve.   It's hard to tell from the photos, but the wing below is on oyster linen (almost white) and the actual piece is on a darker background.  I really liked this combination, as long as it would have enough contrast! 

I can't tell you how many hours this one butterfly has cost me.  The original orange one not withstanding, this new version -- between thinking and pondering and planning and trying and ripping out and trying again -- probably took ten or twelve hours.  I like the results (close-up below, in context further down.)   

Do you?

.  

I have now made all of the requested changes to the piece, washed it, and it's now blocked and drying.  Sometime in mid-September, it will be on it's way for final judging, and hopefully a successful outcome. 

Now, on to the small piece I have designed as a program for my Local EGA Chapter (Bucks County).  I'm really excited about this project, and there are 10 people signed up for it already!  It's a small design (the linen is 9" x 9", the design about 4 1/2 - 5") that incorporates motifs from Jacobean Crewel, with a nice variety of stitches.  I'm going to put a complete kit together, and I'm writing a nice instruction booklet complete with photos of me working each stitch.  Stay tuned, and I'll write more about it in my next post!

Happy 4th of July!! 

The Final Phase of Master Crafstman

I apologize to my legions of followers (all 8 of you -- ha ha!) for not staying active in my blogging!  I don't know how good bloggers do it, and wish I could!   I had every intention of doing step by step updates of this final phase of my Master Craftsman journey, with photos as I went, but I really wanted to finished it in time for the April 1st judging deadline, and that meant head down concentration and no time for anything else in my life for several months.  

It is now finished.  I think.  The problem with original designs is you always want to tweak and add things!  I have added several things in the last week to help balance the colors and the density to white space ratio.  Unless someone points out something glaring, I declare it finished.  There are a few things I am not 100% pleased with (and I won't say what!) so it will be very interesting to see if the judges point any of those out.

Here it is, the whole piece, and some close-ups of each section.  

 

I am pretty happy with it. 

One thing it has taught me is that I enjoy desgning original pieces!  I have loved stitching designs I have obtained over the years, but there are so many other versions of the same design out there.  Doing an original raises it to more of an art, in my mind.  I sometimes wonder if there would be any market for original works of "needleart", like original paintings?  I might have to give it a try!

So now it's on to the washing and blocking phase, then all the paperwork (I need to create a stitch diagram, where I indicate on a copy of the design every stitch along with thread samples and every color used.  That takes forever!) for submission.  It must be in the judges hands by April 1st which is not a problem at this point -- I'm usually doing all of that in the last 3 days and then paying for priority shipping!  Hopefully, I'll be announcing a "Passed" decision soon!

I did take a small bit of time out a month or so ago, and shipped two completed pieces off to the Woodlawn Needlework Exhibit in Alexandria, Virginia.  This is one of the largest exhibits in the country, and is actually a competition.  I have no idea if I have won anything, despite the judging being complete, because the group that does it is apparently not very good about posting results or advertising!  Personally, I think that's deplorable in this day and age -- how hard could it be to scribe the results and post them online?  I plan on driving down to see the exhibit the weekend of March 16/17, and will report back any news. I'm not sure photography is allowed (the exhibit is in a Historical Home) but I'll see what I can do.  Stay tuned!

Here are the two pieces:

An old Elsa Williams Jacobean Design, one in a set of six. 

A Deerfield Early American Design

My next blogging goal is to go back and share the Master Craftsman Certification experience from the beginning!  I'm also designing a small project to be taught at my local EGA Chapter later this year that I'm really looking forward to.  I'll share that as well.

Enjoy!

Evolution of Design

Until recently, all of my projects have used designs someone else created. Part of the Master Craftsman Certification, however, is to create your own designs (3 of the 6 steps!) so this has been a new experience. I'm amazed at how long it can take to create something to incorporates all of the requirements (e.g., historical period accuracy, certain shapes, overall size) and presents a pleasing, balanced "whole".

This current project is a design from the Elizabethan period of English Crewel. I started by reading several texts to learn about the period of time, and the stitching that was being done then, both in professional workshops and in the home. These included Crewel Embroidery in England by Joan Edwards, The Royal School of Needlework Book of Needlework and Embroidery and Antique Needlework by Lanto Synge, and English Crewel Designs by Mary Eirwen Jones. I downloaded a 16th century "Herbal"(The Herball and Generall Historie of Plantes by John Gerard, 1597) -- a book containing woodcuts of plants and flowers common at the time, which provided inspiration to stitchers -- to see what was available at the time.

And then I used my favorite design tool -- Vellum! I traced the woodcuts of several flowers,

plants, and vines common in the period, cut them out, and started playing around with placement

until I had something I liked. No, this technique was probably not available to the embroiderer in the 16th century, but that wasn't part of the requirements of the project!

From this stage, I had to get a clean copy, so I got a clean piece of

Vellum and traced the entire design. It looks a bit more finished here, but still a long way from being ready to stitch!

The components of the design include honeysuckle flowers and vines (top), a Tudor Rose, tulip flowers, Foxglove flowers along the lower vine, and two opposing carnations at the bottom. My challenge will be to get the flower definition (all the little lines that bring shape and dimension to each flower) with the stitches that were commonly used at the time.

From this stage, I needed to get the design transferred to my linen. There are many ways to do this. The one I've used many times is simply to get a piece of graphite paper, place this on the linen, place the design sheet over that, and with a blunt pen (a ballpoint pen that has run out of ink is a good tool!) trace the design. I have never been really satisfied with this method, though, probably because I lack something. I always ended up with graphite smudges on the cloth, or lines slightly offset if the design shifted. This can be very frustrating and I tried many ways to keep it from happening, none of which worked all of the time.

I could use the historically accurate method of "prick and pounce" where a sharp object is used to prick holes in the design, and then loose chalk or "pounce" is dusted over the design on linen. The pounce goes through the holes and creates the design. The dots can then be connected using pencil or some other method (some people even paint the lines!) This method sounds far too complicated to me, and I would probably smudge things ever more!

I have opted recently to use my own version of a light box. I find a sunny window in my house, and tape the design to the window:

Then I tape the linen over the design (use fabric tape, or I am using painter's tape here -- sticky enough to hold, but not so sticky that it can't be removed.)

Then I simply trace the design using a hard pencil. For the record, this photo shows the second time I worked through this process with this design. The first time, I had not left the required fabric outside the design! So I have another whole version of this design. I hate when I make mistakes like this, especially using linen twill that costs upwards of $80 per yard! Will I stitch it twice? Probably!!

The finished product -- time to start stitching!

A Fiber Fiend's New Discovery

As a second generation crewel stitcher, I have always taken my mother's lead in all that I do. She was after all my instructor and mentor. So, I have always used Appleton Crewel for my thread. Always. I have boxes and boxes of almost every color, in small skeins and large hanks.

While doing my research into Elizabethan Crewel for my next piece, however, I found a new wool thread that I am very excited about (new to me, I'm sure others are well aware of it and would say "well, duh, you didn't know about THAT?") It is Renaissance Dyeing in France, specializing in 100% merino lambs-wool hand dyed using historically accurate recipes. They have a line called "Elizabethan Range: 16th Century Recipes" The instructions for my project state that color selection should be "historically appropriate to the period" (or something like that) so of course I had to order it!

My package arrived the other day. Here they are!

Now, I realize that a package containing 25 or so skeins of wool of various colors is probably not very exciting to most people, but I am thrilled. The colors are so warm and soft and perfectly complimenting each other. The fiber is soft and delicate. I have a feeling it will take me some time to get used to it as it's much more refined than Appleton, but I'm looking forward to that challenge. I feel like I'm striking off on a journey of independence.

Is anyone else fascinated with fiber? I love going to yarn shops just to see and feel all the different fibers available. Am I weird, or are there others out there who share my fascination with the ancient art of spinning something useful out of the natural coats of animals?

I sure hope I'm not just weird!

A Place in History?

Today, I am sitting with my foot elevated to relieve swelling and lessen the negative impacts of having a 1200 lb horse stomp on my foot. Given my confinement, I have pushed forward with reading historical accounts of embroiderers and the evolution of crewel design, in preparation for Step #5 of the Master Craftsman program (more about Step #4 later!) I have been studying Crewel Embroidery in England by Joan Edwards, (copyright 1975, William Morrow & Co. Inc. New York) and came to the Epilogue. The author's words closing her book were personally meaningful, as we look at my Mother's needlework and determine its dispersal to various family members, even while I continue to create more pieces myself. I wanted to quote the work here:

"From time to time there come to every embroiderer moments of the purest possible pleasure. The particular piece of work on which she has been engaged is finished. She removes it from the frame and spreads it out between her hands, examining every detail with minute attention. It is as though she is seeing it for the first time. Out of her own skill, initiative, and invention she has created something that pleases her. Briefly she allows herself to savour her sense of satisfaction and fulfilment.

Maybe, she concedes, it is not of quite such surpassing excellence as she had hoped to achieve when she made the design, chose the threads, and decided exactly where to place the first stitch, but on balance as good as or even a little better than her previous work.

Will anybody else, she wonders, realise how much thought and care has gone into it? Will it by some happy chance be miraculously preserved, forgotten but not destroyed, eventually to become a treasured family heirloom, and even perhaps to find its way into a great museum, where scholars will document it and embroiderers study it as an interesting example of 'historical' needlework? Surely, she reflects, it is not asking very much to be remembered as a woman who was clever with her needle.

Even as she plays fondly with her pipe dreams, she knows in her heart that its chances of survival are minimal; that although it is here today, pretty, fresh, and colourful, by tomorrow it will be faded and grubby, the threads worn and the colours faded; and that because the present sets very little store by its immediate past, the next generation is as likely to destroy as to cherish it. Perhaps she will comfort herself with the thought that, like a garden, much of embroidery's charm lies in the fact that it is completely ephemeral.

But to finish one piece of work is only an excuse to begin another, the idea for which she has been turning over in her mind for a long while. She cannot wait to get on with it for she is irresistably fascinated by the art of working intricate stitches and by the variety of decorative effects she can obtain with them; by watching a design develop along the lines and in the colours she has chosen for it; and by the knotty little problems she is constantly being called upon to resolve. Absorbed in bringing into focus all her technical expertise, taste, and ingenuity, and balancing them on the point of her needle, she has neither regret nor hesitation. The past and the future may take care of themselves. Time becomes meaningless. Only the embroidery she is engaged upon at the present moment is important."

I finished Step #4 of the Master Craftsman Crewel program a few weeks ago, and it's now washed, blocked, pinned to the acid-free board, accompanied by the stitch diagram and thread samples and all other submission requirements, and on it's way to the judges. Before I put it in the post, I took a few photos. Unfortunately, the really nice digital camera is not in the house at the moment (the nerve of Duncan to keep his own camera with him!) so I had to use my
Droid Phone, which I must say take
s pretty darned decent photos!

The purpose of this step was the exhibit expertise in techniques of soft shading, predominantly long and short stitch. A minimum of two other stitches also illustrating shading were to be included. We had three designs from which to choose, and I chose the smallest for a few reasons. I felt it would best showcase my technique, and I could absolutely get it finished on time! I did not want to miss the October first deadline and be another 6 months behind! So here is the finished piece!

I was inspired by peacocks, but the peacock has a royal blue breast and did not lend itself to my color scheme choice. Then I found some photos of a kingfishe

r, which had the red-orange breast and the turquise feathers. I decided to make a new bird out of the two, and my kingfisher-peacock was born!

The breast is long and short, done in 5 shades of Appleton Orange-Red. The feathers are Appleton Bright Peacock, and the peacock "eyes" have a bit of Royal Blue, and Kingfisher at the center (loved that the Appleton color names were right in line with my intent!) surrounded by the Orange Red. There are highlights in the feath

ers of the Orange Red (in the Bright Peacock) and Kingfisher (in the shoulder feathers). The face of the bird is done in semi-circules of buttonhole stitch in Peacock, with lighter shades worked in to enhance the shading. (additiona

l stitch #1) The branch is done in gradations of Elephant Gray outline stitch (additional stitch #2).

Here are some close-ups:

Breast shading in Orange Red

Feathers in Bright

Peacock, with highlights of Orange Red and Kingfisher

Head showing top-knot in all colors and showing cheeks of semi-circular buttonhole in Peacock. The beak is long and short in Elephant Gray. The eye is Charcoal with a flick of off white for the glint.

Tail feathers in Bright Peacock, with 'eyes' of Orange Red, Kingfisher, and Royal. The 'eyes' look a bit like an advertisement for natural gas, but I'm happy with them anyway!

So, now the waiting game begins. If I pass this step, they'll mail me #5 (of a total 6) and I can start working on that. I know it will be an adaptation of a Jacobean or Elizabethan period piece, showing research into the period, but I don't know what the design will be. The research shouldn't be a problem as I've done a lot already and have many books to help me.

Wish me luck on #4!!

My Mother, My Teacher

Crewel Embroidery is a form of surface embroidery using worsted wool yarns worked on linen. Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is an art form over 1,000 years old, and has been used by women across time to embellish the most mundane of household linens and clothing. From huge pieces of antiquity such as the Bayeux Tapestry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry and http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/) which chronicles the Battle of Hastings in 1066, to small and simple kits for children of modern time, embroidery has provided an important outlet for human creativity and historical record alike.

In the early 1970's, my mother sought an outlet, something to learn and keep her busy as her children were beginning to move out of the house. She answered an ad in the local newspaper, placed by a woman offering classes in crewel embroidery. From that simple beginning, my mother grew in her knowledge and skill over decades of study and practice, to become extremely accomplished needle-artist. She is shown here several years ago at a small display of her work, including Japanese Silk Embroidery. Over the years, I became interested, and with her help and instruction, have steadily improved. With an instructor of her calibre, who wouldn't! She inspired me with her dedication to crewel, and her focused attention to detail and patience to execute at the highest level. As a member of the Embroiderer's Guild of America (http://www.egausa.org/index.htm)l for over 45 years, she always enjoyed learning other skills and techniques, but she always returned to her beloved crewel. My mother died this past April, but her love crewel and her passion for excellence live on within me. I only hope that I can become as skilled as she was! (She claimed that I am already better than she was, but I'm not sure I believe her.)

Several years ago, I began to pursue the Master Craftsman Certification in Crewel offered by the Embroiderer's Guild of America, to demonstrate mastery of a technique in needlework. I am currently half way through the six-step program, working on step #4 to be submitted by October 1st for judging. I am committed to completing all six steps and obtaining the certification, not only to learn more about this wonderful art and improve my skills, but also to honor my mother's memory. I hope some day to teach others as she taught me, to continue the tradition of needle arts for future generations.

This blog is my way of sharing my experiences as I work toward my Master Craftsman Certification, and to pass along the knowledge I have. I will use The Doodle Cloth for what a doodle cloth is used for in stitching -- a place to practice, to think things out in tangible ways, to look something over and decide if it's good enough. I hope others will enjoy my doodling.

Susan Haire MacRae and Jean Haire, 2009, with Susan's latest blocked and finished Jacobean Crewel piece