4 new pdf patterns in the pipeline…

 Hi friends!

What a Summer….

Ok, so further to my last post where I mentioned working on some stitch mechanics etc, I have managed to take those discoveries into design mode and have had a really great time bringing things together into a file of untidy, but logical conclusions.  

So as a taster, here is one of the patterns I have designed.

And here is the WIP…

Ok, so it’s a needle book with an purpose-built space for your thimble.  

However, while working on this pattern I was reminded of a design element that had intrigued me about four years ago…you can guess the rest….I went off on a trajectory for a few months….this always happens when I trace my thought processes back and realise something needs to be clarified, especially if there are confusing instructions ‘out there’.  Then the other thing that happens is that once the scale of the work is set, then other ideas that were ‘free radicals’ before, suddenly become very useable and concrete.  Namely miniature 3-d roses.  

I have to go now because I have to complete a course that will enable me to gain promotion in the day job.  I don’t completely detest my day job, but I am a bit grumpy at the present time with sloppy co-workers and their destructive social lives.  Of course I am the one that has to pick up the proverbial slack and work even longer hours to keep the ship on an even keel.  Enough about reality, which is not something I tend to discuss much on here because art, creativity, inventions and intellectual progress are far grander ideas….

Wish me luck ppl, I need it!

To be or not to be…

Dear stitchers and artists,

I managed to spend three hours, on and off in single-minded pursuit of stitch mechanics on about 5 stitches I had been working on for the last two summers.  I had my notes to hand and, my by now, very cramped doodle cloth, and away I went.

Because reality was close on my heels, I had to really go into ‘the zone’ with regard to working out, noting down, photographing and testing hypotheses.  I was so desperate to get to the bottom of certain areas of ambiguity I was almost in a parallel universe of concentration and one-ness.  It felt really good!

It worked!  I mean it paid off, I got my answers.  Feeling encouraged to battle on, I tackled all 5 and wrote up my notes.  

The notes are not tidy, yet, but at least they are all there and have been improved, tested and ticked.  

Ok, so Danish Stitch is actually the basis of a stitch that I think I’ve invented? That sounds weird but it’s true.

I was desperately looking for a knot stitch that would end with 4 spokes, I thought I found it with Danish stitch, but I now see in the second ‘flipped’ stage of the stitch, I had actually introduced something quite different that changes the symmetry and weight of the stitch.  The end result is a stitch that has a circular centre with 4 anchor points.  These anchors offer up huge range of possibilities for spokes into which you can weave, or stitch extra design elements to mimic natural forms more convincingly.

How I got there is another story altogether and one that involves a video on YouTube that I cannot for the life of me find, that was produced in another language.   I often watch videos that are not in English because I don’t actually need to hear them but to watch them.  In fact for most of my technical learning, I will turn off the sound and play music instead, as I find the speech in videos os often very distracting and even frustrating..

Result is, I found a stitch that provides a basis for many, many possibilities with regard to miniature flowers, especially.  Oh what fun lies ahead ppl…..

Here is a photo of Barbados that is my favourite.  Just look at that jade water just calling you to dive in and float without any effort with a Daiquiri in your hand resting on your tummy…..hahah!

New pdf patterns in the pipeline!

Hey ppl, it is good to be back!

Ok, so I had been digging and digging and planting and generally transforming that patch of land, then to my complete amazement the grass started growing back!  So that has reduced my workload by about 40%.

For the rest I’m planting shrubs, perennials and wildflowers.

So while I was resting from my labours, it occurred to me that I needed to locate some notes and diagrams I had set aside about a year ago…..oh no, you can guess the rest…..yes, in my tired state I basically turned everything upside down trying to find this pattern….

After 3 days of mayhem, I found it!  You can imagine the relief….it’s like euphoria really?

I had been working on this pattern for about 6 years, on and off.  It brings together tips and tricks from a wide variety of old and often international sources.  But most of all, it’s about me making connections with stuff that could provide longed-for solutions to embroidery creations.

Remember, for most of my childhood I lived like a nomad out of a tiny suitcase that contained all my often miniature precious items.  So ‘miniature’ and ‘cute’ have been two hugely important concepts for me.

So this pattern is of a rose, with a bud and some leaves.  The thing is tiny and most of it is completed with one thread, but the 3-d parts are in two threads.

Then, while I was looking for all these notes, which were placed so safely away I could not find them for three days, as explained above, I found notes for two other patterns that I plan to sort out and offer for sale as instant downloads on my Etsy shop.

Now one of these sets of notes is about Danish Knotted Stitch.  I came across this stitch in a very old book at my local reference library.  You see the knot in a lot of places but you don’t see it done……um, correctly.

Sorry folks, but facts are facts.  The Danish Knotted Stitch is square shaped, yet in most places, you see it as a triangle.

In my view, that is because the central ‘flip’ in that knot, it often not understood,  and dare I say then fudged and hence it remains a triangle.  The knot is square in its proper form and in so doing provides a huge potential as the centre of a flower.

I am actually fascinated with how to produce a Corolla in embroidery, as there are many ways to do it, and so many stitches can be adopted.  However, because I adore botanical drawing and water colours, I have always wanted in embroidery to get as close to the truth about plant anatomy as I could, so I invented a new way of doing a Corolla, well two actually but I’m happy to stick with one.  

So future pdf pattterns I hope will be:

Mini rose & bud

Corolla 1

Tendrils 1

More about that later…

So where am  I with the table…..well the scrolls are just that and I have to practice how to do them, first coiling to the left then to the right.  I thought I could simply italicise the two circular sections, but just lately I’ve decided the whole lower section of those shells have to be reminders of the sea, rather than reminders of plants.  I could try black brown and gold, or light brown and gold or very pale pastel shades with gold highlights.  Not sure yet because I need to be more relaxed to cope with all the choices.

Have a great weekend xx

Close up of the solution

See what I mean?   This is a lot of detail to convey eleven times in a 2 x 1.5 inch space…will have to do some thinking….ouch!

 As you can see the ‘knobs’ are not symmetrical.

Luckily I’ve found a painted mould and the exact same unpainted version.

In the painted one they have used gold to highlight….

Houston we have a problem

Hola Friends!

Long time etc… Been mighty busy, have taken on something not huge but not tiny.

In so doing, I’ve had to reassess certain technical problems that were kind of bugging me.

Basically, the Mermaid’s eye has to come out.  It’s too heavy and simply wrong.

Then I realised that the Rococo shells were not to my liking.  I painted them individually from a drawing, whereas I should have worked from a photo of the the 3-d object.

I like more than I dislike overall, but what I dislike is so in my face, it has to go.

I need to completely understand what those holes at the base of the shells are doing, as they are not convincing in my opinion.  So I washed all of them off and it’s literally back to the drawing board.

But the good thing is, they were easy to paint, in that you keep turning the table top to paint the next and you get into a therapeutic rhythm and before you know it, you’ve completed the circuit.

OK, so because I believe we throw away too many clothes and the planet is choking under the weight of all this waste fibre, I decided to alter and up cycle my clothes.  I find this a very satisfying thing to do, because it saves so much money.  So I’ve sorted out four pairs of trousers, a pair of shorts and a blouse.  

On top of that, I’ve taken on a project that is not going to last forever but it’s going to be intense for a while.  Basically I took over a derelict piece of land.  I walk past this strip of land many times and about 6 weeks ago I was appalled at the state of it.  So having successfully created a wild flower meadow at the front of my parent’s house, by simply throwing mixed wild bird seed at it every Saturday, I realised that if you want to stuff lots of flowers in, you really need a bit of wheat in there too, as you need it to fix the nitrogen.  In organic gardening you always stick in your nitrogen fixers in what they call companion planting.

I did that in my own garden and hence I now have a jungle that I have to hack back now and again.  

Can I say, I know that as I work on this derelict patch of land people are looking at me thinking I will regret what I’ve started, because the soil is so poor and it’s not even flat.  But what they don’t realise is that with organic gardening, you can turn barren soil into a good growing medium in next to no time.  Forget lugging home sack after sack of compost….all you need is a good compost heap from which to make compost tonic and add volcanic ash and wood shavings and you can grow what you like in next to no time.

Oh well I have to go because ‘Always Hungry’ has announced his tummy is rumbling…

Rococo table 7

 Well, things have changed with the table.  After painstakingly cutting and painting all those shells, I realised they just didn’t work and it struck me I had missed a trick….

Basically, the background colour presented an opportunity in its own right….in that the paint contains plaster, so painting directly onto plaster is either a wonderful way to revisit the past e.g. Frescos, or it’s a null and void sell out to darling acrylics.

Well of course I went for the more difficult option of Frescoes and can I say, what wonderful medium….ghostly and very forgiving!

Rococo table 7

 I tidied up the legs over the weekend, they are almost finished, just one more coat of gold furniture paint needed.  It is much easier to paint them having dismantled the table and if I had done that to start with I would have saved about 4 days.  However I needed to see the table assembled to make final colour choices, so I’m not going to beat myself up about that.

I found a really nice gold foil for the background on Marie A, but it does include the name of the chocolate and some cute embossed tiny horses.  I’m OK with that, because the gold is perfect for my purposes, so that is a ‘fill’ as per the script of Margin Call with Kevin Spacey, which is a film I’ve seen now about 38 times.  

Then I painted the shells about 4 times with 2 golds.  I’m a little concerned they are quite flat looking now and am toying with the idea of making them more 3-d?  I’ll do an experiment and see what happens.  

Apart from all of that, I covered yet more of my boxes lying around the place.  I found it much easier to use a sponge roller to apply the school PVA on both the paper and the surface.  I also watered the PVA down a bit because it was drying super fast.  I think the beaded box looks quite Chinese now, which is Ok but unintentional.  This was because I didn’t quite have enough floral paper and so had to include as protective gold border.  The beads are very clever, they are not beads at all and so there is no snagging threat.  

I need to finish the table this week, because I need to make a start on the chest of drawers.  For that I bought legs from China, which are very well made and fit for purpose.  I worry a lot about these projects before I start them and constantly work on them in my head.  I think the sides of the chest will be aged bronze patina, which is very exciting but if it’s not really enough, sort of thing, I might apply the gold so that it looks like faded gilding, now that’s going to be hard, but not impossible, especially if I use a sponge. 

To quote from Margin Call again “Well you’ve gotta come out of the gates storming, no swaps…”

Rococo table 6

 Hi everyone,

I must admit I have been a little distracted by the gorgeous weather and just how many coats of paint you can apply when working outside.

The other thing that happened was I had a massive, really massive tidy up.  It did me good to find old favourites and become enthused by materials that I stashed with good intentions but neglected ever since.  Then something happened to me, where suddenly a lot of ‘stuff’ that was languishing appeared to me like shimmering oases in the desert, whereby I could see the finished item, at long last.

So after that I took on more and more stuff, boxes, paints, tools everywhere... I’m pleased to say quite a few things have been sorted out.

Ok, so the table is basically finished design-wise.  See photos below.   I painstakingly cut out 11 shells in thin card to paint....you guessed it: gold.  I used my Fiskars knife, which is a wicked little tool and makes me want to make more of these things.  The area between the two circular designs worries me a little, but if I think it needs a bit more work, I’ll just cut out more decoupage characters and stick them on... I have a lot of them!  Painting the finished table with a coat of satin varnish will be interesting, but I’ll use hairspray as a fixative first on the images and hopefully there won’t be any colour runs...

I took the table apart to tidy up the legs and made a third arm to rest them on while drying.

Then I covered a heart shaped box, it’s actually quite large but so lovely to glimpse in a stuffed cupboard.  It’s a gift.  Completing the lid gave me a whole stack of ideas for seascapes and golden sunsets etc.  

The great thing about crepe papering the top was it makes the paper much more durable.  I covered it horizontally because the pink paper which is divine had to be used the same way because I only had one sheet.  The paper looks like embroidered fabric, which is so adorable p.  It cost £2.50 a sheet about 10 years ago from Athena.

Then I painted another box with Rustoleum Pearlescent spray paint, over eggshell. I don’t have a picture of that, but in amongst it all I did an automatic colour drawing of a person that popped into my head.

Then I painted another box with a rose stencil or stamper, again by Rustoleum and decorated yet another box that was housing paints.

Rococo table 5

 Busy busy busy....

Ok so here is the colour of dreams.  It’s Rustoleum’s Belgrave, chalk furniture paint and it is absolutely perfecto.  When wet it is darker than you want, then when it dries it is soooo beautiful.

But, there is always a but.... it is such a vibrant blue, the shells I made looked very wrong for it.  So I decided as I’m trying to suggest mouldings, I would just use thin card.

Then I had to sort out the green stripes I mentioned.  Luckily my Fiskars knife thingy proved to be a very good investment.  So here are the pictures and hope you like them....

Rococo table 4

Well, that’s the last time I say I expect something to be easy.  The stencil at the bottom is the one I’ll use.  It’s not as precise all over as it needs to be, because all I was after was a time-saving device for the relationship between all seven sections radiating from the centre.  I will be hand painting the rest.  Considering I have to paint 16 shells, TG for stencils.  I also made the stencil less symmetrical because Rococo does not use symmetry.  

Ok so the table has changed colour from the green you can see above.  I faithfully copied Italian paint, where they used layers of scrumblimg and then some ochre.  I ended up with this, which was nice but just not peaceful enough for tea in the garden.  So I stripped it and painted it white again with undercoat and will top coat it later today, hopefully.  The final colour is going to be heavenly, durable and a unanimous decision between me and Alwayshungry. 

The shell motif was going well, then it was not.  I couldn’t find my modelling knife and virtually turned the house upside down and inside out trying to find it.  Anyway, it’s all sorted out now. So the shell will be half hand painted and half stencil.  If it doesn’t look as I hope it will, I will re-think that detail.  The main problem I have now is this new colour that the table will be.

Then there is the background green stripes around Marie problem, that has to go.  It occurs to me that I could paint a gold background, which would be so nice, but I’m keeping my mind open on that, as she may need some sky instead?

I coated the stencil in nail varnish to make it waterproof, as I don’t want it to become soggy and limp.

It’s very hot in little England now and that makes we want to tidy up, big time.  I seem to have a lot of miscellaneous items in the wrong places and I’m a person that if I can’t find something in under 05 minutes I start to get very grouchy.  Thank Goodness for plastic crates!

Rococo table - stage 3

Hello eager revampers, 

Not content with the way the design was going I thought the problem was due to the legs but then I realised all roads lead to, and from, the central image of Marie Antoinette.  

While trying to figure out how the top will relate to the legs, I painted the whole thing brown, as a base layer for Wax Resist technique.  Because the table has to look old after it’s painted, I decided to achieve the patina I really will need to bash out about a bit with various implements, not least of all my wire brush.

So after it was painted brown, I then had to about making Marie look more like she was hand painted.  The great thing about inkjet prints is you can move the colour around with water colour paint, applied in thin washes.  Being careful not to get the paper too wet. First I sorted out some colours by using my best pigments, then I toned down the highlights, then I neutralised some colours, then I used a gold pen, then made all the darks darker.  You basically go on like this to try and make it all more 3-d.

Feeling Marie had been sorted out by being made to look less flat and more 3-d, it gave me the idea that the shell design for the outer circle of the top design needs to be painted 3-d too.  I don’t have a problem with 3-d per se, because it incorporates lots of tricks, or illusions.  So I found an image of a period shell but it was too abstract for this piece, but I liked the dimensions.  So I traced around it with a ball end thingy, went over the shape with graphite, and then within this framework I superimposed another image of a shell from my phone.  The thing about Rococo is they abandoned lots of symmetry, so motifs like this are actually easy to repeat because they are forgiving.  The problem of how to fit the shells, that lie on a horizontal axis, within in the circle is not going to be a problem, I hope, because I shall make a template of the whole thing first with baking paper. 

I’m very excited to use massive dollops of gold paint.  To date I have about 4 different gold shades, which will come in handy because I don’t want very much flat gold.  I cannot yet see the fully finished piece in my head because I always wait to see how much I can exploit the materials.  I also want drama and that is always a bit uncertain but very very exciting.  I also must keep within budget....so no more decoupage images!

As I give the table more thought, the more serious this endeavour becomes, which is great because I have a lot of stuff going on at the present time and wrestling with design ideas really takes my mind off the things that are going on in reality.  As Hitchcock once said “No one really wants reality”.  

Rococo table - stage 1

 Ok so work has begun on this little table.  I bought some decoupage images from Etsy and have started to place them and think about what I can do with this piece.  

I decided the colour palette will be from a famous painting of the period.  I also looked at crockery and clocks to give me ideas.  Invariably when you image search you end up with images from the Rococo revival and I don’t want those, nice as they are.

So then, quite by chance I stumbled upon a picture of a Rococo side table photograph by an antique dealer in Amsterdam and then I realised that was the missing piece, in my thinking, as it were, because now I have a patina template to work with.  So now I’m pretty clear as to my layers, under-painting colours and where and how to distress it.  I’m going for wax resist method on the edges and wire brush and sand paper for other bits.   

So I primed the table with Zinsser BIN, which as you know is my go-to paint for revamps and refurbs. The stuff is amazing, but you have to clean your brushes in Methylated Spirits, because of the shellac.

I did two coats of that and painted the underside of each level too.  This was after I washed the table all over with Soda and white vinegar with a dash of washing up liquid.  Then rinse it.  The soda kills any mould or fungus.  Its an old table that I bought at a boot sale for £2.  It’s a mass produced reproduction that was made in China.  I bought it to use in the garden to serve tea and so I’m going with Marie Antoinette ‘Let them eat cake’ loosely speaking, sort of thing.  

So the first couple of images I bought in Ye Olde Etsy were um....duds.  That was a shame because I am on a budget.  However as my ideas progressed I realised how much work was involved and so thought it warranted two more digital downloads.  I thought the images were priced fairly but the taxes seemed steep?

Let’s get back to work....remember people, Adam accepted his fate when he knew he could work....work IS our salvation!

Rococo time

 After doing so much distressed and dark art, I decided to revamp this little table.  

The shape and overall design is really dainty and if I close my eyes I can see it in a Roccoco style with decoupage top, lots of gold paint and adorable pastel colours.  I think I’ll varnish the whole thing and basically ham up tea in the garden.

I decided to do this after I spruced up my wheelbarrow frame, which had become very rusty.  So here is the table and the wheelbarrow.  

The thing I learned about rust is, it’s actually greasy, so once you go at it with a wire brush, then you need to wash it down with brush cleaner, then you paint it with Jenolite Rust Converter.  I really enjoyed working with this product because it’s fast and once it turns the rust black, there is no need to either wash it off or sand it.

The table could take longer than I would like, so I will have to find ways to speed up the process, like making stencils and using lots of masking tape.  

The table is actually jumping the queue around here, which increases the pressure on me, as I need to finish my IKEA revamped chest of drawers, pronto.

Well I must dash - keep working, keep achieving, keep making progress ppl!

Tissue box - urban decay patina 2

 I went back to the box and shook it up a bit.  It’s finished when it leaves me in peace, it hadn’t done that yet.  Also, I wanted it to communicate more.  I used wax, nail hardener and Vaseline, as well as cling film and acetate.  All I’m interested in is conveying a sense of the passage of time, decay, being lost, abandonment, neglect etc etc.

After that I decided to record the ‘paint printing’ method in my sketchbook.  As I did this a strange thing happened...

The motorway

 I was driving really late last night and I had to stop along the route.  Less than half an hour later there was a collision in the road ahead of me.  If I had taken possibly two minutes less time in the break I took, I would undoubtedly have been directly affected by this accident.  To cut a long story shot, I watched the rubber-neckers gawp at the mangled vehicles and take macabre photos, but remained in my car.  When they managed to let the people through I could see what had happened, it was an extremely bad accident where clearly as a car was attempting to change lanes, the car in the next lane just drove into him and spun him round and crushed the car to smithereens.  The drivers were unhurt, but shaken up, I think they were young dope-heads, you know the sort..

Anyway as I drove along and looked forward to my nice warm bed, I encountered a truly magical sight.  A large group of deer were at the side of the road and just in the road, gently nibbling fresh green over- hanging shoots, without a care in the world.  I glimpsed the stag in amongst his harem of very sweet does.  

Then when I got up the next day, I decided to use the way I felt in my artworks...

I had made a weird stage prop grunge, inside-out tissue box to experiment with aged patina.  I wanted to make fake aged wood, you know the kind of things you see in derelict buildings.  (I adore urban decay images!)

(I’ll post all the pictures at the end because this thing bounces around a lot once I upload images.)

Then I was experimenting with mark-making and texture.  It was really hard to a achieve a particular mark I was after, but I’ll work out a quicker or better way to do that.  There a masses of YouTube videos about distressing for faux patina and cracked, flaked and peeling paint.  Personally peeling paint is the one I’m after, as it’s such an evocative communication shorthand for the passage of time...

I work fast, always have and the painting I did for my bedroom, incidentally, took under an hour to paint.  Thinking about it took a lot longer, but once I got down to it, my hands are basically catching up with my brain and my eyes are just the referee.  

Here goes, first off, a landscape using paint transfer from waxed paper...

Long time no see ppl all over the world!

 I finished the chair!  

Then I needed to do the painting for my Moroccan bedroom...but of course one thing led to another, and the painting turned out to be very different from anything I had planned up to that point and opened the door on a whole new chapter in my life.  Which is basically to pour all my brain activity into making paintings.  So here are all the photos, sorry but there is simply no more time to wax lyrical and navel gaze.  I need to get on...remember, all of life is a test and we need ask ourselves this? Do we think for a moment that we can either opt out or worse still, fail?  No way!