Thursday, June 8, 2017

More extreme embroidery


I wrote several weeks ago about a workshop I took with Beth Schnellenberger on "extreme embroidery" -- her name for small, densely stitched pieces.  The one I started in her workshop got sold the first week it was on display at Pyro Gallery.


Desert Eye

I liked the eye motif and decided to start a new piece to continue the series.  Last week I took it to Pyro and it's now in the members' gallery.  It's mounted the same was as Desert Eye, on a 1 1/2-inch canvas that I painted black.

I learned some things between #1 and #2.  Most important, that I wanted a black background instead of a white-background-colored-black-with-a-marker.  I hadn't been happy with the edges of the original piece -- kind of wimpy purplish black -- and had to do remedial work with black paint, so I stitched onto black fabric this time instead of white.

I also realized while working on #1 that if you have high value contrast between background and thread, you have to do a whole lot more stitching to keep the fabric from peeking through!  So for #2 I used dark colors for my background stitching, and the occasional spaces between stitches didn't look bad at all.

Instead of overcasting the edges of the fabric as I did in the first piece, I left an unstitched border by turning the edges over the felt backing and basting them in place before I started stitching.  The basting stitches got covered by the heavy hand stitching

Hand-Eye

I've already sketched out two more pieces in this series and have started stitching on one of them.  They make a nice tiny bundle, small enough to take along on a trip.  I'll let you know how they progress.



4 comments:

  1. You can buy black canvases at Michael's and I'm sure other places, too. I like your new piece!

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    1. Norma -- I did start with a black canvas, but it had some imperfect places, scuffs and abrasions. Would have been fine for people to paint over, but not nice enough to stand there naked. I just put one coat of black on to give a uniform surface.

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  2. Beautiful that you are embroidering.
    You astound me - the variety in your media.
    x

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  3. Oh, this makes me long for a portable embroidery project! Very nice, Kathy.

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