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.