Sunday 3 December 2017

lazy or smart?

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When was the last time I posted something unrelated to tatting? Hmmm, probably a year back for the Pinterest Challenge in December – that cute little bird. It still sits on my bedside cabinet with pins stuck in it!

This time I'm sharing a very quick mixed media project involving painting and embroidery, done sometime around mid-2000.
These pics were taken quite a while back, hence not as sharp, bright, rich and clear as I’d like them to be. Apologies for the poor quality.
The background is a light yellow but not as washed out as it looks here.

I’d wanted to embroider a bedsheet for ages, but was fearful of it becoming an UFO. Once during our summer vacation we forced our Mom to give us separate bedsheets to embroider and she succumbed despite her valid fears of us not completing them. The sheets did get finished but only after she sat alongside and embroidered the remaining motifs over the months following the vacation ;-P

Going by that experience, I decided to do something quick but covering a large area. After scouring through my pattern collection, I zeroed in on my favorite book – Creative Stitchcraft. It has a beautiful Bouquet of Roses Quilt – red stem-stitch embroidery on white background.

I went for colours, but a mere stem-stitch outline would look too barren. So after I had enlarged the template – drawing manually, since I was excited to start immediately – and transferred it to the cloth I looked in my fabric paints box – I use Fevicryl acrylics.
I had a few left over from painting a free-hand saree border for my MIL earlier.

Diluted them and did a quick wash. A thicker coat of paint could've caused some stiffening of the fabric making it difficult to embroider, and taken longer to dry obviously.
There’s a bit of yellow paint in the rose petals, too.

I deliberately didn’t ‘stay within the lines’, keeping it a bit random with some unwashed areas or some overlapping of colours, to give it a natural shading.

Then simple stem-stitch along all the outlines.
I kept the stitches very short, using 2 strands of Anchor embroidery threads throughout.
Manoeuvering becomes easier when stitches are short. Abrupt curves, sharp ends, pointed ends, etc. can b e neatly managed. 
Mary Corbet has some excellent tips & tutorials which I had already figured out on my own. 

There is also a lovely Morning Glory border in the original pattern which I did not use here. This seemed fine on its own. 
Yay, it was all over within a week – from enlarging to the very last knot! 
Is this multimedia project smart or sheer lazy? You decide :-D

Bouquet of Roses pattern from the book "Creative Stitchcraft". (Better Homes and Gardens) Murdoch Books. 1991.



12 comments:

  1. Oh very smart in my book! There's still a lot of embroidery there, so a week is not long to get it all done. And it's very effective.

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    1. Thanks Jane :-) Actually I spent some of that time sketching on the enlarged grid and then taping the A4 sheets together to transfer. But I was motivated and enjoyed the entire process!

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  2. I love this mixing of mediums and outlining the paint. I think this is fun and years ago I bought a book and transfered pictures over to many "sweat shirts" they call them here, this brings back memories but I never stitched around them. I love this thank for sharing 😄💟😄

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  3. Beautiful combination of painting and embroidery! Mixed media is definitely smart!

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    1. Thanks, Marilee :-) I do miss both embroidery & painting now.

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  4. I think it is smart and mixed arts are always interesting. I really like that you didn't stay clean within the lines, it looks more natural that way. Did you intentionally leave the hands and butterfly without colour? It is an interesting effect against the flowers.

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    1. Yes, Lavi, it was a conscious decision to not colour in hands and butterfly - 'highlighting' them in relief, if that makes sense? I'm so glad you like it :-)

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  5. Uwielbiam róże a tu piękny bukiet. Pięknie wyszło. Połączenie różnych technik daje ciekawy efekt. Pozdrawiam Kazia

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    1. Dziękuję Ci, Kazia :-) It was a truly a fun project!

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  6. Mixed arts are always interesting, I know the feeling of projects that are never ending,
    Looks very pretty and will look even better on a bed.

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    1. Yes, Margaret, it has served it's time well :-)))

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