I found this pin pillow on the V&A website, and fell completely and madly in love with it:
I laid out the major outlines on some great tracing paper that bodice_goddess gave to me last time I was in CA (thank you!!!) I used a bit of creativity and artistic licence to stretch the portions of the design that curve down towards the seams - I also added an extra worm, butterly and acorn to fill in some extra blank space I had hanging out after it was all drawn in. Some areas are a bit more cramped than others, but all in all, I think it ended up fairly OK.
After much debate, I finally settled on lightboxing the design onto the fabric. I kind of wanted to try pricking, but for such a large and complex pattern, I finally decided that a lightbox would be a better option. After I got it all traced out in ink, I mounted the fabric to a scroll frame: (Only about 3/4 of the pattern shows at a time - I'll have to undo the lacing and move it all over to the right when I get to that point)
Yesterday, I showed you the strawbellies - the next thing I did was the borage (?), which I made more of a purple-y shade than the original. Because I like purple. And I can.
I'm really struggling to learn how to shade properly and use the angled nature of the tent stitch to my benefit - I'm not very happy how the stamens ended up on this dude.
Next up is the squillel - he's a lot darker than I had wanted him, and the shading is far, far too delicate to actually pick out - especially in a poor quality picture! Ah well, live and learn, I suppose. (The waste knot is still hanging out - that's what the sqiggle above his extra acorn is)
I'm all but finished with the gillyflowers next door - I just have the stem to do. Again, not terribly pleased with my level of skill in shading - half of it is my inexperience with the stitch, and half is poor choice of colors. *sigh*
All in all, I am actually really excited about this project - even though it looks so amateurish and hamfisted next to the original! Maybe that is part of it's charm........maybe.
I am absolutely terrible at tracking time for projects - I have NO idea how long it's taken me to get to this point. I do know that I can usually get about one 1"x1" area solidly filled in and shaded in about an hour and a half - and it takes about 4 days of embroidering on lunches and watching (listening!) to a couple of 1-hour shows in the evening while embroidering to finish one whole design element.
Just for the record - here's the back of my work: (This also kind of shows the method I've been using to do each piece - First I go through and do the outlines, then go back through with the shading and fill, as you can see in the lowermost gillyflower)
I laid out the major outlines on some great tracing paper that bodice_goddess gave to me last time I was in CA (thank you!!!) I used a bit of creativity and artistic licence to stretch the portions of the design that curve down towards the seams - I also added an extra worm, butterly and acorn to fill in some extra blank space I had hanging out after it was all drawn in. Some areas are a bit more cramped than others, but all in all, I think it ended up fairly OK.
After much debate, I finally settled on lightboxing the design onto the fabric. I kind of wanted to try pricking, but for such a large and complex pattern, I finally decided that a lightbox would be a better option. After I got it all traced out in ink, I mounted the fabric to a scroll frame: (Only about 3/4 of the pattern shows at a time - I'll have to undo the lacing and move it all over to the right when I get to that point)
Yesterday, I showed you the strawbellies - the next thing I did was the borage (?), which I made more of a purple-y shade than the original. Because I like purple. And I can.
I'm really struggling to learn how to shade properly and use the angled nature of the tent stitch to my benefit - I'm not very happy how the stamens ended up on this dude.
Next up is the squillel - he's a lot darker than I had wanted him, and the shading is far, far too delicate to actually pick out - especially in a poor quality picture! Ah well, live and learn, I suppose. (The waste knot is still hanging out - that's what the sqiggle above his extra acorn is)
I'm all but finished with the gillyflowers next door - I just have the stem to do. Again, not terribly pleased with my level of skill in shading - half of it is my inexperience with the stitch, and half is poor choice of colors. *sigh*
All in all, I am actually really excited about this project - even though it looks so amateurish and hamfisted next to the original! Maybe that is part of it's charm........maybe.
I am absolutely terrible at tracking time for projects - I have NO idea how long it's taken me to get to this point. I do know that I can usually get about one 1"x1" area solidly filled in and shaded in about an hour and a half - and it takes about 4 days of embroidering on lunches and watching (listening!) to a couple of 1-hour shows in the evening while embroidering to finish one whole design element.
Just for the record - here's the back of my work: (This also kind of shows the method I've been using to do each piece - First I go through and do the outlines, then go back through with the shading and fill, as you can see in the lowermost gillyflower)
No comments:
Post a Comment