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!

 

Canvas Practice Continued . . .

So, I had a lot of fun with the 1.5" squares of the stitch samples.  They went really fairly "fast", so I decided to challenge myself with a little composition.  I figured it would be good to test these stitches out in non-square shapes.  It was good that I thought to practice this, and Chloe, thank you for your suggestions on what to practice too!  

I decided to use my design from my RSN Certificate Goldwork as I liked the design and it had some good solid areas to work with.  I have done all the leaves in cottons (mixes of solid DMC's and variegated Valdani embroidery floss).  On 3 of the leaves I used the same stitch for the whole leaf and just focused on shading with the stranded cottons.  For the other 2 leaves, I attempted to transition from one stitch to another.  

Further plans:  Blossoms will be white and maybe a wee bit of pink or gray for shading in cottons.  I was planning on doing the background in wool but not certain what color yet.  I thought the shine of the cotton on the lily of the valley would be nice contrast with the wool background.  

Sampling Away . . .

More Samples to come as I am getting lots of suggestions of stitches to try out!  So far, I have tried Florentine, Hungarian, Diamond Satin, Parisan, Milanese, 2-layer Oblong Cross (one sample worked in 2 layers and one sample worked top to bottom overlapping previous row), Smyrna Cross, Rice, Encroaching Gobelin, Straight Gobelin, and Upright Gobelin. 

In addition to trying out the actual stitches, I am also experimenting with mixing different threads and practicing my shading.  I've tested different mixtures of Appleton's Wool, DMC cotton floss (solids), Valdani Cotton Floss (variegated), Valdani Silk Floss (variegated), EdMar Rayon Embroidery Thread (variegated), Gutermann machine thread, and Mettler machine thread.  It is really interesting to see the textures of the threads mixing.  For some of the samples, I think the color mixing takes away from the stitch pattern and for others I think it enhances it.  Lots more samples hopefully to come!  

Getting ready for Britain

This summer I'll be going back to Durham, UK to do my last module on my Royal School of Needlework Certificate of Technical Hand Embroidery.  I am so excited about it!  I'll be doing canvaswork, which is a type of embroidery that quite honestly I am not terribly familiar.  I have not done a lot of counted embroidery.  So, in order to prepare for my course, I've been reading a couple books that Tracy recommended to me, Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray and  Dictionary of Canvas Work Stitches by Mary Rhodes.  I also started sampling stitches yesterday and so far I really, really like this technique!  So far I have stitched 1 square experimenting with Straight Gobelin and Trammed Gobelin and 5.5 squares of Upright Gobelin in various color and material combinations.  I have tried just Appleton wools and mixing in some DMC and some silk too.  I'm working on a 18 tpi canvas in antique as this is what I will be working on this summer.  It is not a very subtle technique it seems.  It seems like you have to be a bit more aggressive in the shading for it to come through and make a difference, but I have a lot more sampling to do!

Any suggestions on stitches to try?  There are so many of them!  

Here's my "to-do" list so far:  Florentine, Hungarian, Diamond Satin, Parisan, Old Parisan, Chevron, Leaf Diaper, Milanese, 2-Layer Oblong Cross, Smyrna Cross, Windmill, Broad Cross, Rice, Oblong Rice, Plaited Stitch, Herringbone, Rococo, Paris, Tent, and Diamond Eyelet.  

Gregg Floral

The Gregg Museum at North Carolina State University has so many wonderful examples of textiles in their collection.  I recently had the opportunity to study a group of men’s waistcoats from the mid-late 18^th century.  This design (for a workshop proposal) blends elements from a linen waistcoat embroidered with chain stitch floral designs and an embroidered waistcoat pocket flap.   My goal was to interpret the designs seen in the historic examples with a blend of traditional and experimental goldwork techniques. 

 I loved how the buds were stitched on this pocket flap with spangles and smooth purl. 

 I loved all the chain stitching on this waistcoat.  All of the embroidery is just chainstitch plus a couple french knots.  The mix and placement of the different colors was really nice and created a lot of detail to the miniature floral designs. 

 

Below is my final design.  I interpreted the chainstitch from the waistcoat using colored metal purl.  It was a lot of fun doing such a large chain stitch and created a lot of height without padding!  I have done satin stitch behind the chainstitched metal using a Valdani thread.  The flower center is french knots of stretched purl and Valdani thread.  For the buds, I took the idea of the spangles and purls and I layered colored and stretched purls to create more height.  The leaves are a combination of chainstitch and chipping and the stems are s-ing.  

Just before Christmas, I ordered my first Valdani threads and I have to say... I quite like these threads!!! My colleague, Susan Brandeis, loves them!  The colors are absolutely beautiful.  They are so much richer than the DMC's I am used to using and the variegated colors are really nice.  Here I'm stitching with the Quilting and Sewing Cotton thread.  Susan kept telling me that she loves the way it sits on the fabric and she is totally right!  It is mercerized so it has a very soft sheen to it and it does sit on top of the fabric in a way that embroidery floss does not.  That being said, I'm still forming my opinion of it with certain stitches like long and short where the threads need to blend together a bit more.  More experimenting is on the way with the Valdani threads!