RSN Canvaswork: Drum roll, please!!!!!

Here it is, the very last thread tied back for my very last module of my RSN Certificate!  Can you tell I'm just a little bit excited about this!  Now just for awaiting the marks from assessment....

 Here is an image of my final piece.  It is from an illustration that was on the front of UK Vogue in May 1936 for Royal Ascot.  I have to admit I am really pleased with it.  It was a great challenge but I've really fallen in love with this technique.

For some technical information:

The threads are mainly DMC cotton stranded, however, I've mixed in Appleton wools for the greenery and silks and rayons for the butterfly, lips and flowers.  There is tent stitch and trammed tent in the flowers and lips.  Tied gobelin into some encroaching gobelin for the hat.  Parisian and diagonal parisian form the blouse.  All kinds of different cross stitches create the areas of greenery.  I constrained myself to just cross stitch patterns for the greenery as I thought it had a more "bushy" type appearance and I wanted to try lots of different stitch patterns.  The skin is in diagonal satin. The little blossoms are chain stitch within chain stitch.  Finally, the Lily-of-the-Valley are padded satin with a stem stitch stem.

 I had to sneak some Lily-of-the-Valley in somewhere!

Here's a detail of turning the corner of the blouse. 

 I have to admit, canvaswork was a module that I was not originally terribly excited about.  However, I have found that I absolutely LOVE it!  I love the color mixing aspect of it and the constraint of the counted stitch patterns.  I love the textures that the stitches create and the painterly quality of it.  I really cannot wait to start another piece of canvaswork and I already know what it's going to be :)! 

Some Updates: Study Abroad Stitching and RSN Canvaswork

I have lots and lots to tell you about here shortly!  I'm about 2 weeks into the UK: Stitching a Cultural Identity study abroad program that I am directing this summer.  I have a great group of students over here with me and I will be doing some posts about all the fun things we have been doing soon.  In the meantime, please follow the program blog UK: Stitching a Cultural Identity Summer 2016 and my Professor Katherine Diuguid Facebook.  

Also, my fingers are furiously stitching away in spare moments after the kids have gone to sleep on my RSN canvaswork piece.  Lots of greenery has been added!

Operation "Finish RSN Canvaswork" has commenced ...

I am hoping beyond hope to get this lovely lady stitched up by the time I go to Durham in a few weeks to see Tracy.  I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to get on the train to stitch with her and my other friends!  I've even started thinking about what I might have for lunch at Leonard's! 

Here's where I ended today, keeping in mind that the left shoulder may come out-- my tweezers and scissors are on standy-by.  The tricky bit is that I do not know of a good way to solve the muddled-up bit around her collar bone (photo below).  

I may try some playing around with the colors I'm plying up.  I thought maybe I could cleverly strand inside the needle to make the transitions more delicate but honestly, I think that may cause more problems because then the jumps will seem bigger.  I've also considered dropping from a 4-2 horizontal Parisian to a 3-1 horizontal Parisian around the collar bone to shoulder.  However, I'm afraid of creating more distracting noise from that change in pattern and I'm not certain if that will actually solve anything.  It is at this moment that I would tell my students to stop saying "but I'm afraid it will" and to sample it out and actually see what it does.  Then again, maybe after I sleep things will miraculously look better in the morning (don't laugh it could happen... usually does not but it could!).  

 

 Progress at end of today.

Problem area.

How I was keeping track with which stripe I was working on.  Seriously, the black and white starts to make you a bit dizzy after a while!  I'm really enjoying all the delicate shading of it and the challenge of the draping on the blouse.  I just have to adjust my eyes more regularly because of the high contrast.

 What happens when your 3 year old discovers the Post It Note arrows.  I can't really blame him as they are pretty fun to play with!

Prepping to Stitch and a Note on Kits

The past couple days, I have been prepping to finish up my RSN Canvaswork piece and the canvaswork gradient sampler for my FRPD grant.  I've been organizing baggies of the different thread mixtures so that I can sit down and just stitch and make progress a wee bit quicker.  It also allows me to continue making progress when I need something a bit mindless to do (unlike the stitching) and allows me to know what I need to order to make sure that I'm not missing any threads to finish the pieces up-- that really stinks when you run out of a thread and are super close to finishing!  I thought I would just share a couple photos of how I organize my threads.    

Baggies for my color samples.  These baggies are then put in a larger bag that is labeled with the primary purple color number.

Through my courses with Tracy and the RSN, I have not only learned a lot about embroidery and stitching technique.  I have also learned a lot about best practices for stitching efficiently.  When you are participating in an intensive course, you have 8 days of class over 2 weeks, which means you want to try to figure out as many ways as possible to make the most of that classroom time.   Last summer, I found that I could prep my threads at night, allowing me to focus on the actual stitch technique and execution during class hours.  Mixing your threads is usually way more time consuming than the actual stitching with canvaswork.  It is also a lot less time consuming to prep multiple sets of threads at one time than to do it one at a time while stitching.  I find the start/stop of mixing as I go breaks up the rhythm of stitching too.  Finally, it also helps you feel like you're making progress a bit quicker as you can say, "Ok, all my blouse threads are ready" and then "My blouse is stitched". 

I have kept extensive notes on each color recipe for my RSN Canvaswork piece because it helps me to see how complex the design and colors are and how much work it is.  I've learned that there are a lot of steps and details that shortly after completion, my brain edits out.  For example, that white and black blouse is not just "white" and "black" embroidery floss, especially since I wanted to maintain the painterly quality of the original Vogue cover.  In general, I try to maintain a very detailed approach to my process so that if I ever wanted to look back and reference something for either myself or a student, I could.  It also keeps me open to seeing everything as a learning opportunity instead of a frustration or failure as my notes allow me to reflect on what I am doing. 

Above is my baggie of threads for the blouse on my RSN Canvaswork piece.  An example of the thread color recipes:  the "white" stripes in the blouse is actually composed of 7 strands of DMC Blanc + 1 strand of DMC 648 + 3 strands of DMC 762.

Now I know all this organizing may seem a bit overkill.  I know it is not for everyone.   But honestly I promise it helps--or at least it helps me!

Finally, a note on kits:
I've received a number of wonderful emails asking me if I will be selling my kits so I thought I would put the answer here.  Yes, I will be selling some of them but not until mid-summer, early Fall (depending on the specific kit).  When I have everything up and running to sell them, I will definitely be posting a link on here to my online shop! 

RSN Canvaswork: Progress After 8 Days of Class

After my 8 days of class for my RSN Canvaswork module, I still have a lot of work to do to finish!  I have made a plan with Tracy and feel confident in being able to get it completed.  She went over each new area with me so I feel like I know what to do to finish.  It is now "just" a matter of time and stitching.

Below are photos of my progress at the end of my 8 days.  I finally got used to working with the black and white stripes.  When I first started them, the contrast really played with my eyes.  Once I got to the shoulder area where the directions were changing, the contrast did not seem to cause as much eye strain as it did when I was working on the torso.

The hat also does not show the rather large chunk that I took out.  I felt it was slightly too dark and I thought if I was not happy with it at that stage, it was better to just take it out and try again.  The same can be said for the other flower (the one that is currently a lilac color)--it's totally coming out!  I think the color is not right.  I added a shadow color to the base thread color and I think I should have gone the other way and added a highlight so the overall flower color was lighter.

I am really excited to start back on this next week.  I really enjoy the canvaswork.  It is a lot more time consuming that I ever thought, especially mixing all the thread colors.  I found that is was imperative to keep detailed "recipes" for each mixture so that I could go back and remix them correctly and achieve the slight tonal differences in the sky and blouse.  My notes for this project look like a funny code because of all the color recipes!  

RSN Canvaswork: Progress After the Weekend and Day 5

I thought when I was preparing for my canvaswork module that canvas stitches are bigger so that would mean that they would definitely go quicker.  HA!!!!!!!  They do not.  I am really enjoying this technique though and love mixing the colors-- which is a good thing because the color mixing I think takes as long as the stitching.  

This weekend I finished the neck and one side of the sky and put in a bit more greenery.  Yesterday "Take Out Tuesday" struck me with a vengeance.  I spent the morning (literally the whole morning) picking out.  In the afternoon, I started work on the sleeve.  If you will notice, the stripes follow the drape of the shoulder and sleeves and present an interesting problem/challenge for the canvas stitches.  The horizontal stripes are horizontal Parisian, vertical stripes are vertical Parisian and the diagonal fold is diagonal Parisian.  I'm presently working on finishing up the diagonal part before class so Tracy and I can figure out how all these directions are going to meet and follow the shoulder line.  

 Neck in diagonal ground. 

 "Take Out Tuesday" in action

Progress at end of Day 5

RSN Canvaswork: Progress Day 3

At the end of Day 3, I have been working on the stripes for the top and the butterfly.  

I quite like the color mixing and the texture of the canvaswork.  Mixing the threads takes a lot of the time but I think it worth it.  The stripes on the shirt are mixes of DMC stranded cottons and Valdani variegated stranded cotton.   The butterly is composed of mixes of DMC stranded cotton, DMC stranded rayon, DMC stranded metallic, and Valdani variegated stranded cotton.  Maybe I can put the butterfly's body in today so I can say I've finished something! 

For now, on to putting in some more stripes before class officially starts for the day.  The other night I gave myself the homework of pre-mixing all my thread combinations so that is saving a bit of time here in class.  

RSN: Canvaswork

My last RSN Certificate module has started!!!  I embarked on my canvaswork piece on Tuesday and will be hopefully making loads of progress between now and next Friday.  

The design I am using is an illustration that was on the cover of Vogue UK in May 1936.  It's been a bit tricky knowing who to credit for it as I have come across a couple different credits.  The Vogue UK website credits Alix Zeilinger for the cover, however it was also the illustration for the cover of Vogue US in May 1934 with the dress yellow and black striped.  It's a new thing for me to not use a design of my own as my other modules have all been designs I have created it.  Canvaswork is not a technique I am very used to though and all the ideas that I was coming up with did not seem to be the best for the module at hand.  I have made a couple changes in that I have added more garden at the bottom and have added a couple sprigs of Lily-of-the-Valley (I kind of felt it needed it!).

On Tuesday, I spent most of the day transferring my design and framing up.  I started on the sky towards the end of the afternoon.  I had terrible jet lag and so was not making lots of "fast" progress.  Yesterday, I started more of the stitching working on the greenery and starting the shirt.  Lots more photos to come as I make a bit more progress!