Nejiribana-spiralling flower designs

A good start to the new year

2012-01-02T11:15:00.002Z

Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2012 brings you many wonderful things.

I've spent a very nice few days catching up on my stitching. I started a new design but have to wait for some more 801 to arrive before I can finish it off. This design has been in planning for a long time. The original idea was to do a large cherry tree full of blossoms and treasures, however I decided that this was too large a project for a novice designer so it got much simplified to a branch of blossoms and just a few treasures.

I had planned to start it a few weeks ago, but perhaps this may be an auspicious start to the new year. Perhaps this bottomless purse will help me support my JE habit!

The scrolls represent my love of books and knowledge and my wish to continue to learn into the new year and beyond.

This gold weight represents the 'wealth' that I have gained along the road of Nuido. The wealth of the friends I have made along the path, friends across the world who are joined together in our love and passion for Japanese embroidery.

For those of you who may not know, we have a little group of embroiderers who specialise in Japanese embroidery over on Stitchin Fingers where we support each other and share thoughts and ideas, if you aren't already a member please join us in 2012.

This piece isn't very large at all, and is quite simple to stitch so it is growing very quickly, once the new white silk arrives I expect to have it finished in a week or two.

A HAPPY AND JOYFUL NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

Black Heart

2011-11-28T22:30:00.001Z

I've been working on some smaller designs over the last few weeks. I really enjoy the larger pieces but when working on them from scratch they take a long time to complete. Autumn Shell Box is up to 150 hours so far! I've made more progress on it since I took this picture.

I want to get some more pieces done so I can add pieces into the Gallery on a regular basis. So started this piece off in July of this year, well I'd done the transfer and spent some time deciding on colours. I took it to our class a few weeks ago framed it up and made a start. The idea was a very simple colour scheme, the petals of the chrysanthemum would just be two colours. The first colours were a bronze metallic and silk. They looked lovely on the black and red.

However ... I put a few stitches in and hated it. So back to the drawing board, various discussions were had with my stitching friends and I decided on black and red to match the fabric. The weft of the fabric is red the warp is black, depending on the angle the fabric looks either red or black.

I decided to do the turnovers of the petals in red and the rest of the petals in black. The petals were padded with either two or one layer of padding, a couple were self padded and the rest had none.

Most petals were stitched with flat silk, 2 strands, have I mentioned how much I love the effect of flat silk!

One or two of the black petals in the centre were stitched with a twisted black metallic thread.

The twisted black metallic was also used for the stamens, knots were formed with a black twist with a touch of gold.

#8 real gold was used for the leaf, 1 pair couched with black silk. It has been impossible to capture the colour and beauty of this piece, the way silk glows against the dark background and the richness and variation in colour, it has turned out so much more beautiful than I had hoped and I am very proud of it. I only wish my photos did it justice.

Quick update

2011-11-08T10:24:00.002Z

Another busy few weeks here. I've made progress on getting the house back into order. My bookcases were collected and put into place, which meant all the books hanging round on the floor could go into place and my frame stand could go back up. This is the view from my sofa as I look across the room at my new stitching place.

Things aren't completely straight yet, but it's close enough and does mean I can stitch again after a few weeks of not being able to (hooray).

We had one of our twice weekly classes in Garstang. Along with existing students, who are all getting along very nicely we had two new students who did very well and three students who finished their phase one and moved onto their next pieces.

This is a lovely group of students and I thoroughly enjoy teaching them. We have a great week, they all work had but we do manage to have a few laughs.

I made two sales in the Gallery no originals sold yet, but the prints are starting to go. Autumn Shell Box is coming along, but as I'm up to 150 or so hours yet and still have a while to go I thought I'd start a smaller piece or two which I can get through quickly to top up the pieces in the gallery for Christmas.

The first one I'm calling Black Heart! The November light here is very dull so I'm having problems getting good pictures of this, but here are a couple of 'tasters'.

The fabric is a lovely obi silk, it's two tone like a taffeta, in black and red. I'd chosen the colours for this piece ages ago but as soon as I put the first silk petal in I knew it wasn't going to work. Change of plan and discussions with colleagues, and I went for red (108) and black, with the odd piece of twisted black metallic thrown in. I'm pleased with it so far, it's not going to be to every ones taste but they won't be able to say it's not eye catching!

Before I go here are some new links for you to enjoy.

A new site for JE frames in the UK.

A new blog about Japanese Embroidery - in French and English, Isabell is just starting out on her JE journey.

Website of one of our new students, Jill, who runs trips to Japan, courses on Japanese crafts and various other things - Festival of Japan

Have fun and happy stitching.

Progress on all fronts

2011-10-09T15:26:00.001+01:00

It has been a mad few weeks at home, home improvements put a stop to any stitching while I went from this ...

... to this.

Pictures still left to be hung, but it's getting there.

Have managed to get the frame back out and have done a little more work on Autumn Shell Box. Last time I posted I had done this work on the large shell. I decided I didn't like all the different colours of the small maple leaves.

So out they came and I've re-stitched them all in the same purple as the foundation, but at different angles to the foundation to get a variation in colour.

I left one black maple in and I've really like how this has worked. Next job lots of short stitch holding to keep the foundation in place.

Still here ...

2011-08-14T18:29:00.000+01:00

... but progress has been slow. It's been a busy few weeks, I've been doing some home improvements so everything is a bit chaotic, who knew I has so much stuff to move to put down new floors!. Still, it has prompted my to do some sorting out so a load of stuff has gone to the British Heart Foundation (don't even ask how many bags of books I sent!). None of my embroidery ones of course, but it was quite amazing how many I have gathered over the years.

I've been to meet the lovely people from the Art and Craft Guild of Lancashire, and am very pleased and proud to announce that I'm now a part of this group of very talented artists and craftspeople.

A couple of weeks ago one of my stitching friends came for a visit and we and a couple of other friends spent a week stitching and planning new designs. I made some progress on Autumn Shell Box and have worked out how all the sections are going to work, so it shouldn't be long now before it's finished.

I marked out the chrysanthemum motifs on the small shells and stitched it with #1 silver in line of staggered diagonals. This technique will also be used for the small chrysanths.

I finished off the tie-dye section (I don't seem to have taken a picture of it completed, but it is done). I put in the top of the shell and the black foundation with a silver sayagata design. It wasn't until I took out the tissue paper from the sayagata that I realised it was wonky. But it's staying in for now, it hasn't been couched down so it'll be fairly easy to take out and re-do.

I decided I liked the effect from the top of the shell box (in this post) so much that I'd try the same thing with the maples. I photo-copied the maples onto thin card, cut them out and then placed them where I thought they ought to go on the purple foundation.

Then tacked them all in place.

In this attempt I've used various colours which were used in the large maples. I really like it and it looks lovely but they will be coming out - well, all except the purple ones. I've decided there are too many colours and I like the more subtle effect of the purple on purple.

Things will be quiet again for a couple of weeks until the new floors are sorted, everything is being packed away out of harms way.

Own your own Yoyo San

2011-07-16T09:16:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I took some of my embroideries to be professionally photographed. My plan was to be able to produce prints of my work to make them more affordable for people.

I made my way to the photographers and spent a very interesting morning watching him work. The resulting photographs were great. They captured the sheen of the silk and the texture of the stitches and fabric really well. Sample prints were sent for and, I have to say, they looked beautiful.

So, with thanks to Matthew who did a great job with the photography, the prints are now available from my Etsy shop and you too can own your own Yoyo San, or Blue Iris, or Peonies, or ... well you get the idea.

Teeny tiny toadstools

2011-06-29T16:37:00.001+01:00

As regular visitors will know I've been having a break from teeny tiny chrysanthemums, but not to stitch teeny tiny toadstools. This teeny tiny toadstool is a gift to myself from myself and comes from the very talented hands of Gretel Parker who, on her blog, describes it as the home of the creator of ‘Puddletown Tales’, childrens illustrator, needle felter and toymaker living in a tiny cottage in the Cotswolds countryside, England. With cats.

Gretel makes the most wonderful needle felted sculptures, and I have long been in need of one (or maybe more!). One of these days the fates will collide and I will be able to commission a piece. The sculptures are in great demand as as soon as they appear in her Etsy shop they disappear.

At the weekend when I was having a little surf round the net and doing my usual visits to various blogs and websites and, oh joy, a wonderful teeny tiny toadstool had appeared in the shop.

So I bought him, and yesterday he arrived to live with me.

He is wonderful, from the teeny tiny seed beads to his teeny tiny cap. I love how the green moss is creeping up his trunk.

And here he is posing in front of two Puddle Town Tales books (French versions for my niece and nephew, but English is available, click on the picture for the link to Amazon) which feature more needle felt creations and illustrations from Gretel.

PS - Gretel will be having a book signing for Puddletown tales in Oxford soon - check out her website for details - do go along and say hello if you can.

Autumn shell box

2011-06-26T20:33:00.001+01:00

I've been living with this little shippo style since my last post. I decided I didn't like it as the scale just seemed wrong. I took it out and went back to the original.

This is a very small scale, the example here is only 3cm across, which means each little shippo is only 5mm wide - 1/2 the size of mine.

So, out it came and I re-did it on a much smaller scale (no pictures I'm afraid). I still wasn't happy with it, the scale works but I wasn't happy with the embroidery or the colour. The shapes show up much better on the white background. I didn't want to introduce any more colours into the piece so I think I'm going to have to practice this on some kind of sample piece.

So out it came again and I've decided to do the outside of the shell box in a much simpler way, I've used the same size lattice as I've used for the tie dye on the large shell.

With simple knots in the centre.

I'm happy with how this has worked out, and it mirrors the tie dye on the large shell very well.
The colours of the tie dye on the large shell are a matched to each other. The lattice over the white foundation is actually the same colour as the other foundation.

We almost always work tie dye over a white foundation, but I have to say I do like the coloured background on this shell. I think I may use this style of tie dye again.

This piece is coming on quite quickly now. I've got all but one of the various sections sorted with techniques and colours. Just the outlines on the small chrysanthemums and shells to figure out now, but I've had an idea about this today so that will be the next thing to try out.

So here is where I'm up to now.

Shell box and chrysanthemums

2011-06-06T01:34:00.000+01:00

After our recent trip to Edinburgh, I felt inspired and was looking forward to getting back to my own embroidery. I'd made some progress on the large chrysanthemums but was still not sure how the lower layers of petals would work.

I enjoy the challenge of taking a colour picture and turning it into an embroidery, but this chrysanthemum has been through about five or six different versions to get to this point. In fact, even though I thought I'd got this right on a previous attempt I still wasn't sure about it and had been very near to giving up on this piece, but then came our trip to see Kusano san's work. Her kind encouragement to develop our own designs struck a chord in me and I came back with new energy and excitement. I had one or two false starts for the background petals, but then it all clicked into place and suddenly, as if by magic ...

I have a few more petals to do, but my fingers know what they are doing now with this so I was able to leave it and go onto another section - the lid for the shell box.

It looks a bit wonky in the photo but it isn't really. I thought I'd put a lattice design over the lid top, but then decided I didn't like it so it came out.

The guide lines on the sides of the lid is for the shippo design. Rather than our usual way of doing this I'm working it like the example below.

First the main lines with a 2-1 twist.

Then the holding lines to shape the main lines, black couching thread.

Then the stitches to fill in the centre. I think I'll change the colour of these, there isn't enough contrast between the centre and the edge. But for the moment it will stay in and I'll live with it a while.

I was going to do the flower on the top of the lid with a stitched transfer but then I thought I'd like to create some kind of embossed feel so I cut out the petal shapes in a light card and, after taking out the lattice, I tacked them onto the foundation.

I'll need to put some short stitch holding on here to keep the foundation in place, but I had enough for today so will get back to that. I really like how this has worked out, I think it works really well.

Mary, Mary quite contrary

2011-06-03T10:30:00.000+01:00

... how does your garden grow?

With silver bells

Silver obi with hand embroidered cords and tassel

and cocckle shells,

silver obi with woven chrysanthemum

and pretty 'mades' all in a row.

orange obi with sagara nui (knots)

Well, I know it doesn't really match the nursery rhyme, but that tassel reminded me of a bell and I couldn't resist. These three obi are recent purchases from Ichiroya, I bought them intending to use the undecorated portions of the silk for my own embroidery, when they arrived the embroidery and weaving was so lovely I had to share.

Autumn shell box, progress on maples, chrysanthemums, and cord

2011-05-07T21:53:00.025+01:00

Despite spending four days last week teaching at one of our twice yearly classes I have managed to make quite a lot of progress on the shell box piece. I only get chance to stitch in the evenings during class and never get much done then either. Too many people to talk to, questions to answer, or lovely things to look at. So, here we go, lots of pictures with updates my progress. Last time I posted I'd got as far as putting in these veins. I wasn't particularly happy with them so I left these and went to have a go on the other leaves.

This time I used shell powder rather than tracing paper to put on the transfer. I was surprised by how well it worked on the light blue silk.

These veins are a # 2 silver, I've couched them with a 1-2 silk in the same light blue as the silk. These have worked better this time, not sure if it was because of the shell powder transfer or because I used # 2 silver rather than a number #4.

I've re-stitched the small chrysanthemums but am still trying to figure out how to stitch the petal lines so I'll go back to these later.

I've also done some work on a section of the cord and tassel. This is 3mm wide, I wanted to make it very simple as there is so much colour in the rest of the piece. So I started with simple flat silk over a couched padding.

Two layers of padding for the tassel, one padding cotton and one silk.

A layer of horizontal silk to finish.

I decided this was too plain, but still didn't want to add much colour and I didn't want to make the cord with a distinct stripe so I made up a 1-1 twist and added that over the cord. It has added a touch of colour but not too much.

2-1 twists form the lines on the tassel. The lines were stitched and then couched into place.

Sagara nui (knots) added to the tassel.

I may have mentioned before how much I love flat silk thread. I'd pulled this thread off the reel and while I was selecting my needle it caught the light showing all the different colour variations as the thread curved.

The thread was for some more maples. There is a group of three which lie between the top and bottom sections of the design. Rather than using colour variation as in the other maples I decided to do these using the same colours but in solid colours.

Chrysanthemums, shells, and foundations

2011-04-17T20:28:00.012+01:00

We've been having some nice weather over the last couple of weeks, so this morning I took advantage of the sunshine to take some photographs of my shell box piece. Then I spent most of the day putting in some foundations, working and then re-working a chrysanthemum. I started off the day by working one of the pink and white chrysanthemums, you can just see it in the back right of this photo. I realised that I was almost out of 102 and when I raided my stash of threads found I didn't have anymore but I'd done enough of the petals so I could work the leaf and then go onto the foundation of the large shell. I'd had some discussion with my tutor while in Bournemouth for class a few weeks ago about the best way to work this section. Given the weight of the fabric we discussed whether this foundation should be worked with a twisted or flat silk, it's quite a big area. To keep the weight down and because I love flat silk (may have mentioned this before) I went for flat silk.

The sunshine showed off the flat silk to it's best advantage.

This is the other ball chrysanthemum worked with twisted silk.

Foundations and chrysanthemums. After looking at the chrysanthemum like this I decided it was a bit flat on one side, so when it got re-worked I added in some more petals on the left hand side.

Maples and shell box, more flat silk shining in the sunshine!!

This is where I was upto before I carried on with the foundations and chrysanthemums.

This was taken later in the day after I'd reworked the chrysanthemum and finished the foundation, still shiny even inside, have I mentioned how I love the effect of flat silk!!! I decided the chrysanthemum needed more orange so I had a bit of a colour change while putting in the extra petals. I'm thinking it's still a bit wonky on the left hand side so might to back and tweak this a bit.

One last photo fo the leaf veins I did before I decided I'd done enough for the day.

Video from JEC

2011-03-30T22:51:00.002+01:00

The Japanese Embroidery Center, Atlanta have just uploaded this video to Youtube

Progress in class

2011-03-26T22:42:00.016Z

Last time I went to class I was a bit distracted by life and work, things were all a bit stressful so I didn't really make much progress, but it was lovely to see everyone. Since then things have improved and on my last visit to class two weeks ago I made much more progress. The first few days I worked on Autumn Shell Box - this piece is making progress and is proving to be much more involved than I thought it would be. One of my aims for class was to finally decide how to translate the chrysanthemum below into an embroidered version. Before class I'd made a number of attempts to solve this, but wasn't happy with any of them. My first thought was to use random realistic technique, but it is my least favorite technique so I wanted to avoid it. I asked my tutor for suggestions and she suggested doing short stitch holding, but with a different colour to create the shading in the petals. While I quite like how this turned out, I'll certainly use this idea in future, it just didn't seem to fit for this piece. So, back I went to the idea of random realistic, but my first attempt was horrid. So, next plan was not to try and reproduce the original style but to do something a bit different. But I didn't like this either! And so to class - once I got there I asked around and the consensus was that for random realistic technique. And I have to say I agreed, so there was nothing for it but to bite the bullet and go back to the original idea and work hard to get it right. I added in a bit of self padding to give a bit more lift to the top of the petals and went to work. I think that part of the problem with the first attempt at this was that I didn't get any curve in the petal. When I went back to this version I used couching thread and put in a line of stitches down the middle of the petal to give me the curve of the petal. This worked quite well and I am pleased now with how this is turning out. While working these petals I used three needles so I didn't have to keep re-threading the needle every few stitches. At one point I looked up from my work to this image of my needles is in my needle felt. Had to take a picture, I think I'll call it - work in progress. Once I had settled on this I did a bit of work on the other ball chrysanthemum. This is embroidered the same was as the first one but using twisted thread. The next task was to figure out how to embroider the small ball chrysanthemums. I knew I wanted to work the foundations first and superimpose the petal shapes over the top. When I finally settled on a colour for the lines I did the usual job of tracing the lines and couching the silver thread over the top. This worked great until it came to taking out the tracing paper. Normally when superimposing metallic threads we take out the paper before the couching is completed. However this only works with simple lines and patterns. In order to get the petal shapes I had to couch the threads as I went and this made it very difficult to remove the tracing paper. In taking it out it I damaged the foundation threads. So, trial number two, put in guide lines then couch the silver over the top. One of my colleagues, Wendy, suggested that I just couch the top and bottom of the petal shapes, then take out the tracing paper and then couch the threads to make the shapes. This didn't work either as I couldn't get the petal shapes nice and round and I also damaged the foundation. Wendy explained that I'd got the original stitches too tight so there wasn't enough give in them to create the shapes. So back to the drawing board with this one. I do enjoy this process of figuring out how to interpret a pattern, but it is quite time consuming so there will be lots more updates to come. Including how I use this variation of shippo on the shell box.

I also made some progress on White Blossoms. I'm not at all happy with the small chrysanthemums but wasn't sure how I could improve them. So I spent some time in class speaking to Sue and Wendy, both advanced embroiderers, asking their advice. Sue had some good tips for this piece as she'd attended a class on this piece which was taught by the Tamuras.

From a overview they don't look so bad, but when you look at them more closely you can see that the petals aren't even and the one point open space is all over the place.

My first attempts to get straight lines and one point open space had been to use temporary guidelines.

What I learned from Sue and Wendy was that while these guide lines were useful the angle of my stitches needed to be much steeper and I needed to use a smaller needle. Also work from the centre of the petal all the time.

My first attempts were embroidered using a number 7 needle. I went down one needle size but still has some problems so went down to a number 5.

This worked much better, and while this little flower isn't quite as perfect as I'd like it to be it's much better and I know I'm on the right track. My next task it to take out all the ones I've done so far and to work them again.

So thank you Sue, Wendy, Margaret, Denise, and everyone else in class I had a great time and learned lots of new things.

Japan Tsumani

2011-03-15T11:42:00.003Z

As with many natural disasters sometimes it is difficult to express in words how these things affect us and our friends and family. I am happy to say that my friends and families of friends in Japan seem to have escaped with their lives which makes them (and me) very lucky indeed. If you would like to help in a small way the British Red Cross have set up an appeal - of course you can donate to other causes instead if you would like. Sadly all to many to choose from.

Blue Iris in the morning

2011-03-03T07:59:00.008Z

I have decided to take a leaf out of my friend, and fellow Japanese embroiderer, Carol-Anne's book. For a while now she has been taking a bit of time each morning to work on a piece before going to work. I'm not at all a morning person but we are giving it a try and we'll see how long it lasts!! So, here my first early morning post. Blue iris is complete and once our JE class (next week) is over I shall be delivering it to my Aunt. But as she doesn't have the internet, and anyway has already seen this in progress, I thought I'd share it with you now as it won't spoil the surprise. So at 7.30 this morning I was outside, where we've got a very frosty morning, taking pictures. I like how this design has worked very much, and it was lovely just to use the simplest of techniques and concentrate on placing each stitch just so. In fact, I've enjoyed it so much I plan to do a whole series of them, all with different coloured flowers on different coloured silk (watch this space). In the meantime I'll be going back to White Blossoms and Autumn shell box.

In, as they say, other news, I'm guessing that most people out there will know of the Saatchi Gallery, well you may not know that for a while now they have had an on-line gallery where artists can show and sell work on-line. The site has recently undergone a much needed re-vamp and is much, much improved. They have also introduced a method of buying prints of pieces. You can find my profile at www.saatchionline.com/nejiribana and once I have finished updating my section, which includes taking new photos of everything at much higher resolution, you'll be able to buy both originals and prints of my embroideries.

I'm hoping the the prints section will prove to be popular as I think this will be a really great way to own a piece without the huge price tag of an original. See you there?

It's 8.30 am, what to do now? Oh yes, some embroidery, what a lovely way to start the day. Good plan Carol-Anne.

Blue Iris

2011-02-20T22:39:00.012Z

Iris's are seen a lot in Japanese art and there are quite a number of pieces JEC and others which contain them. This piece is for my Godmother who is a keen embroiderer herself. This a birthday gift, but she doesn't have the internet so I'm safe showing the pictures here. Originally I thought I'd have a white iris on black, then I decided that cream with a touch of gold would be better, so I started to stitch that but decided I didn't like it, so out it came and I went back to the idea of white. Didn't like that either, too harsh on the black background. Off I went to search my threads and decided to go back to the classic blue. I've worked this piece in very simple techniques, flat silk with a bit of self padding and a little bit of twisted silk for the iris bud. I've said before that one of the things I love about Japanese embroidery is how the flat silk shines and creates different shades of colours. Although this piece started off slowly because I couldn't decide on the colours, once I did decide it's grown quite quickly. All that is left to do are the veins on the leaves. With a bit of luck I should get this finished next weekend then it can be delivered (a bit late but never mind).

Fine Cell Work

2011-01-09T21:07:00.004Z

I visited Susan's blog, Plays With Needles, the other day to find this video from Fine Cell Work which I would like to share.

finecellwork video from Fine Cell Work on Vimeo.

Mid-winter greetings

2010-12-21T09:54:00.004Z

In the UK we really are having a 'bleak midwinter' with snow disrupting all kinds of things, traffic, work, holiday plans, schools. I seem to remember snow every year as a child but don't remember this disruption (maybe it was just because I was too small to notice).

Anyway on this, the shortest day of the year, I'd like to wish you all Happy Mid Winter Celebrations however you are choosing to party/stay warm/stitch/bead/quilt/celebrate.

And for the new year, I hope it brings you sharp needles and shiny threads.

Teeny tiny chrysanthemums

2010-12-04T23:30:00.007Z

Progress is continuing on the shell box piece. The large chrysanthemum has been challenging me but I think I've solved it now, but that journey is going to be the subject of another post. In the meantime I've gone back to White Blossoms where I have also been challenged by some teeny tiny chrysanthemums. This is a lovely JEC design, mainly worked in white silk with the odd bit of black and gold for contrast. It's a deceptively simple design, the scale of the various motifs proves the challenge. The colour combination is challenging as well, the slightest gap in the stitches means the colour of the fabric shows through. Depending on the colour of the fabric this isn't always such a problem but on this piece the colour combination makes the gaps very obvious and, for me anyway, not acceptable. The two chrysanthemums below are my first attempts and even taking into consideration of the magnifying properties of digital close ups (in reality the motifs are about 1.5-2 cm across), I've decided that after applying the "can you live with it rule" I can't and they'll be coming out.

Apart from the gaps the other things that bothers me is the shape of the petals, they aren't regular. So how to solve this? I ended up doing three things, I went down a needle size, went up from 1.25F to 1.5 F, and put some guide lines in between the petals. I've used yellow couching thread for the guide lines so I can see them while embroidering and can then take them out once the petals are completed.

This process worked very well on the smallest of the flowers so I went onto the larger of the two, well when I say larger this one is about 2.5 cm across.

They also seem to work better working from the centre outwards rather than the other direction, not sure why but it works so I'll continue with this method.

I'm happy now with these chrysanthemums so I'll continue to put in all the basic shapes then will go back and put in all the knots which go over the top. I've only done about a third so far, so quite a bit more to do.

Preparation and maples

2010-11-17T23:27:00.000Z

One of things that people always ask about traditional Japanese embroidery is how long it takes. Well it's all relative of course, and some people work faster than others, but one of the things that it is important to spend time on is preparation. Without good preparation it is impossible to get a good finish, and of course this all adds time.

So I worked on this little section on Sunday evening, all together it took about 3 hours. I put in the foundation of the shells and the top of the shell box, all in flat silk. Then I put in temporary holding threads, these are held down at regular intervals with small stitches. The long threads seen in the photo will come out but the small holding stitches won't so I had to twist up 2-1 couching threads in the same colour as the foundations. These holding threads will stop the foundation moving while I work the layer over the top.

The shells are designed to pick up on the chrysanthemum theme. The design of the petals has been traced and tacked over the foundation. I think I'm going to work these little petal shapes with a metallic thread, but I'm still thinking about it. The tracing on the right doesn't match the stitched section, I'll have to trace that one again and do it once I've completed the other two shells. Once I completed the section above I had some more fun with maple leaves.

Difficult to get a good colour image when the light is shining on the flat silk, but this gives the idea and I'm loving all these colours.

Classes, students, finishing, starting, and continuing

2010-10-29T09:00:00.015+01:00

Well, that was a bit of a busy couple of months, so much has been going on. Some things on the work front went a bit pear shaped, but have now been resolved (thank goodness). I've been both student and teacher, there have been some progress on pieces, pieces started, and pieces finished.

At the end of September I was lucky enough to attend a gold leafing class with Midori Matsushima, I've blogged about it over here, this was a brilliant day and has given me a whole load of new ideas which are buzzing around in the back of my head.

I'm going to let them buzz for a while so watch this space for progress.

Following on from the gold leafing I was in Bournemouth attending a five day JE class as a student. This was great, it was lovely to be a student again, the last class I went to as a student was my phase 10 and teacher class last August so it's been a while. It was great to catch up with all the other students, to see what they have been doing while I've been MIA.

I didn't get lots of pictures, too busy catching up and stitching! However, Carol (above) and Pat (below) kindly let me take some pics of Sake Box and Double Cypress Fans. Both pieces are still in progress and are both are beautifully embroidered.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures of the whole class, but I did get this really nice one of our two tutors, Margaret and Denise, choosing colours for a new piece of Denise's. The piece is going to be based on an old obi design sheet and I think it is going to be stunning when complete. Denise has found some fabulous fabric which is just perfect. I'll share photos when I have them.

I had a great week and following on from a very difficult few weeks at work it was lovely to be in class, just what I needed. Thank you to everyone for making it such a great week.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to Japan Day 2010, organized by Japan Society North West. It was a very good day, loads of visitors. It was so busy in fact, that I couldn't get out from behind our little space to take photos from the front.

Above we have Sue demonstrating Japanese Beading, and the back of Jennifer's head who was demonstrating Japanese embroidery. Below a photo of Michiko, one of our JE students, in a lovely shibori kimono. This time she was demonstrating how to make kanzashi flowers from silk.

A few days after Japan Day we had our JE classes in Garstang. This time I was 'Miss' (which started as a joke from my stitching friends after I'd graduated to being a tutor but seems to have stuck ;-)). This class marked our 2nd anniversary of running classes in Garstang. It is quite amazing how this class has developed over this time, students are moving on up the phases and are producing lovely work.

This time we were joined by three more advanced students which is great for the newer students as they are able to see more advanced pieces and chat to the other students about their experiences.

I am so pleased and proud to be part of this growing group of Japanese embroiderers. It is wonderful to see the students develop and grow in confidence in their stitching. It makes me proud to think that I can help them on their own journey.

We had three pieces finished during class, Michiko and Jennifer both finished Bouquet and started on Hiogi.

Colleen finished Hiogi and started on a practice piece.

I didn't get much stitching done during the class, but it didn't matter, I had a fabulous time and feel inspired and re-invigorated to continue with my stitching and designing.

White blossoms is coming on slowly, I've actually done quite a bit, but don't have any up to date photographs.

A while ago when visiting my tutor I discovered a lovely obi design sheet amongst her collection. As luck would have it I'd taken a tan of kimono silk with me to show her and to discuss what I might embroider onto it, and what do you know it was perfect for the obi design. Since then I've tweaked the design a bit to give it my own twist, figured out a colour list for threads, transferred the design onto the silk, and generally progressed. I took the completed framed up design with me to Bournemouth to have another discussion with Margaret about colours and techniques.

I had made plans for techniques but just wanted to run my ideas past her to get her opinion. I hadn't planned to start work on this one, but once I got home I couldn't resist ... my fingers were itching to put some stitches in. So here is my first maple.

I've done very little since, but I'm loving it and will share progress at it goes along.

At the class last week Denise brought along some obi and kimono silks and I got the section of fabric below. It is a section from the inside of an obi. There was only a short section dyed like this, so Carol-Anne and I shared it. They dye fades slightly differently on each section, and it'll be interesting to see what we both come up with to put onto this.

The colour fades from a soft creamy white to a dark charcoal grey. I have a plan already for this piece of fabric. Oh to win the lottery so I can give up work and get cracking on all these pieces!

Well that ended up being a much longer post than I had planned, but now I'm all caught up and will spend the weekend working on ..... oh dear, decisions decisions!

Beauty beyond words

2010-10-05T11:42:00.006+01:00

Mums and wisteria, embroidered by Tanya whose skill with a needle surpasses understanding.

Good news, bad news

2010-09-22T12:29:00.009+01:00

Very busy first couple of days this week, I've been doing some overtime at work, good news; sadly no overtime available today, bad news; instead been working on some new designs, very good news.

Regular readers may remember I did a number of posts about this piece a while ago.

I love peonies, they come in such lovely colours and seeing them always cheers me up. I have two peony plants in pots in my yard, they flower every year, just one bloom on each, but for the short time they last they are glorious.

So, thought I, why not do a pattern of a perfect peony, so I have. :-)

Available as a PDF from my Etsy shop.

New designs

2010-09-18T17:23:00.007+01:00

It's been pretty quiet here since we exhibited at the show a couple of weeks ago. As usual it was very busy, so much so I didn't get chance take any photos.

As usual we met lots of lovely people, all of whom were very kind about our work. Yoyo san got here own very special visitor. Rachel from VirtuoSew Adventures made the journey especially to meet her. It was wonderful to meet Rachel in 'real life' to put a face to the blog and to chat about lots of different things. Thank you Rachel for coming to visit Yoyo san (and the rest of us!).

For a while now I've been thinking about drawing up some smaller designs I've got and making them available in the etsy shop. After much prevaricating I've finally got round to drawing up a couple and loading them into the shop. At the moment the designs are very traditional Japanese designs, as I develop my own style this may change, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy them.

First is a design of an Uchiwa fan decorated with chrysanthemums. I've got a couple of designs of cypress and suehiro fans but they are still on the drawing board. If you'd like to know more about fans I did a short post on them over here on the JE blog.

Next is a section of the design of small plum blossoms which I embroidered.

Last a lovely butterfly with flowers. The butterfly is a very simple design, but lots of possibilities for different colours in this one.

Exhibition, Manchester UK

2010-08-30T10:36:00.006+01:00

Yoyo san will be on display at The Stitch and Creative Craft Show at Manchester Central (GMEX) from 3rd - 5th Sept. She would be honoured if anyone would like to come along and be introduced. :-)

I'll be there as well, as will other members of Japanese Embroidery UK. We'll have lots of different pieces on display and will be demonstrating traditional Japanese embroidery on our stand throughout the 3 days.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

White blossoms

2010-08-29T19:47:00.010+01:00

I've not done much stitching over the last few weeks, but I have got some time in. I've been working on some of my own new designs but they are still at the drawing stage so until they get to the point of being transfered onto silk and starting the embroidery I'm working on White Blossoms from JEC.

This is embroidered on black shusu and uses only black, white, and a bit of gold. I've had this piece for a while and it includes some variations on techniques which I've been looking forward to learning. The large chrysanthemum above looks a bit 'gappy', I'm hoping this is just because the fabric is black and it's showing through more than normal. The spacing was fine before I put the knots on the top. I've done another chrysanthemum on another section of the piece and have put the foundation a touch closer together. We'll see what it looks like once the knots have gone in. If it looks better I'll take this first one out and re-do it. One of the techniques I've been enjoying is this two tone katayori. I love the stripey effect it makes. A slightly thicker black and white katayori is used to outline the large chrysanthemum petals. I wound both of the katayori onto koma to help to keep the tension on the thread. This has made it much easier to work with, particularly in working the turn at the top of the petal.

I've done a bit more on this since these photos were taken and it's starting to come together very nicely. I was looking at my photos from my Japan trip this weekend and came across this photo of a decoration on a huge door at the Meiji shrine in Tokyo. Look familiar?

MC Escher and other thoughts

2010-08-07T10:47:00.021+01:00

I've been thinking recently about what influences our taste in art, design, and craft. Why do we consider someone who paints an 'artist' and someone who embroiders a 'craftsman'? Why is one considered better than the other?

I'm not going to get into this discussion, it is being held in lots of other places, except to say why can't we be both?

Visiting my brother, a very talented architect (another field in which you need to be both artist and craftsman), last week he was showing me a book on Lucienne and Robin Day who are influential designers and artists of the 20th century. Lucienne is famous for her textiles and Robin for his minimalist chairs (though this isn't all they did). Looking at some of the textiles Lucienne designed and learning from my brother about how the technology of the day influenced the finished product has brought me back round to this artist v craftsman question.

Fabrics by Lucienne Day

I don't have an answer to this question and don't suppose we ever will, but I think I'd like to consider myself both - at the moment I'm a better craftsman than artist. Actually I should more accurately say I'm a better at embroidery then drawing - but I'm working on the drawing part.

All this has brought me back to an artist/craftsman whose work I have always enjoyed. MC Escher. A little while ago I had a thought about embroidering a mobius strip and this thought has been percolating away in the back of my little head ever since then. I've seen lots of mobius strips over the years but the first one I remember being fascinated with was this one by Esher.

Mobius II

This morning I went on-line and did some searching. I have a book on Escher but it doesn't go into his history and for some reason doesn't say how he created his pictures. On the MC Escher website I found that information - lots of his work was created by wood block prints or lithographs - another artist/craftsman. Don't you love it when things just seem to link up without any rhyme or reason.

Mobius I

I think I prefer this version of his mobius strip to the one with the ants. I like how the two colours work. This one, the Escher website tells me, was printed from 4 blocks. What artistry to design it in the first place and then the craftsmanship to carve the 4 separate blocks so they match up.

The more I looked at the gallery of images the more they seemed to remind me of Japanese embroidery. I can't quite put my finger on why, maybe it's the use of shading which we get with our flat silk and Escher creates with his printing.

Spiral

And the more I looked the more I thought some of these would look wonderful worked in various JE techniques. How about either of these sprial designs worked as cords?

Sphere sprials

They remind me of the JEC phase piece - Resonance cords. This fabulous example was embroidered by Iris who lives in Australia. So I will continue to ponder on how to interpret a mobius strip in JE techniques. I'd love to do as suggested by Michelle Griffiths, a shibori artist based in Wales, and embroider a giant one 6 feet or so across but not really sure how I could do this. So I'll start on a smaller version and work up to the giant one (maybe!). In the meantime I am working on the JEC piece white blossoms - I have to have something to stitch. I am finding this piece very restful. No pictures to share yet - watch this space.

This last photo, also an Escher, is just because it's lovely. It has just the right level of 'catness' don't you think?

PS - have been getting some spam comments recently so have had to switch the comment moderation back on - sorry

Off topic

2010-07-17T10:01:00.004+01:00

Those of you who know me in real life will know that I spent a number of years working as a stage manager. A fabulous part of this time was spent at the Cannon Hill Puppet Theatre in Birmingham. I didn't realise it at the time, but the Artistic Director there, John Blundell, had and still has the the same passion and interest in creating and designing figures as I now have for my Japanese embroidery. He studied with a number of Japanese masters in the fields of Bunraku and Noh, and I remember him carving with care faces and mechanisms of various figures, as well as Noh masks. Watching John and Craig (the other craftsman in the workshop) turn a square piece of limewood into a face with character and life was a remarkable thing. At the time I wondered why he made such a point of using the Japanese made carving tools. Now, of course, I understand, we use our Japanese hand made needles for the same reason. Without such quality tools made specifically for the task it would be impossible to create our work with the required level of technical skill and artistry. Looking back, I can now see many similarities between Johns insistence on quality of tools, materiels, design, workmanship and our own insistence on quality fabrics and silk threads for our Japanese embroidery. It is the difference between art and craft. John has a huge collection of figures, masks, books, and many many other things related to, but not restricted by puppetry and the whole point of this post was to give you the link to the site. So here it is The world through wooden eyes - check it out, and if you are in the area visit if you can. Sorry no photos, I've got dozens of them somewhere from all the shows, but they were before digital cameras and can I find the prints! Anyway, plenty on the other site, have fun.

Yoyo san - finished

2010-07-11T23:47:00.004+01:00

Well I think so. Those of you who read this blog will know that I always live with finished designs for a week or so and quite often at the end of this process I tweak the design a bit. We'll see what happens with this one. Though I have to say I'm quite pleased with how Yoyo san has turned out. Now ... what next I wonder ............

Some changes

2010-07-10T20:12:00.011+01:00

Well it's been a couple of weeks, I made some progress on Yoyo san but I decided the some of the stitching wasn't as good as it should have been. The tight twists highlighting the folds in her kimono were not even, I'd had to make a second lot and the twist was different to the first one. This is a pretty basic stuff and really I should not have made this error. I also decided that the lines didn't define the folds in the fabric enough. I used the same colour as on the kimono and it just didn't stand out enough. I hit the bookshelves looking for some examples from JEC pieces. As you can see in the example below the lines have been made using a completely different colour. I didn't want the lines to be dark as this but I did want to make them more obvious. So, I took all the couched tight twist out, twisted up some more in one shade darker and couched it all back in. I'm much happier with this. The twist is much better and the colour is just dark enough to make a difference. I also took out the tight twist on the obi, the colour on this was ok, but I didn't like the twist. Made some more and put it back in. Today I made progress on Yoyo san's face, hair, comb and hair pins. I put in her features using a 1/2 twist of black thread.

After putting short stitch holding on her face and hair I couched some 2-1 twist onto the hair to give a bit of shape. It doesn't show up very much on the photo but it works well in real life. The two hair pins here were worked in flat silk, the third pin was worked in a light gold metallic.

Not much left to do now on this little piece, just some more couching on the obi, then the background which won't take long to do as it is just lines of held thread. The horizontal marks are where the temporary holding was, they will disappear with the steaming in the finishing process.

Flowers, Yoyo san, and 100 posts.

2010-06-14T10:13:00.007+01:00

My first post here was on 3rd November 2007, this is my 100th. I feel I should mark it in some way with some kind of witty remark, but I can't think of any so I'm just going to give you a progress report on Yoyo san.

The flowers that were bugging me in the last post continued to bug me so this Sunday out they came. I really liked the colour but the scale was just wrong.

For the original flowers I'd tried blister stitches, this time I had a play with knots and long legged knots, but I still wasn't happy with them. So then I tried just a very small flower made with 2-1 flat silk and with only 3 stitches to form each petal.

This turned out well, so this is how they are being done. It's difficult to get all the petals an exact match with no pattern or transfer underneath to match them to, but actually I don't mind this as petals on real flowers aren't always an exact match. The little buds were done with just two or three stitches of the same thread, I put a stitch underneath each of these going in the opposite direction so the top stitch didn't sink into the foundation. I also put in a higaki pattern on two sections of the kimono.

So here she is so far, a few more flowers need to go in, but I'm liking how they look and am happy with this now. Was talking to a couple of friends and fellow stitchers about this piece last night and they were asking about scale, so for anyone else who would like to know, she measures about 8" from the top of her head to edge of kimono.

Yoyo san changes

2010-06-06T20:42:00.006+01:00

It occurred to me last week that perhaps yoyo meant something rude in Japanese, so before I went to our stitching day on Friday I emailed my friend and fellow Japanese embroiderer (who also happens to be Japanese), Michiko, to ask if yoyo meant anything in Japanese and what yoyos were called in Japanese.

Turns out that the Japanese for yoyo is yoyo!

Michiko looked up some history for me, yoyos started off being called teguruma, which translates literally as hand wheel. Over time the name changed to ote gruma which is a softer, more feminine wording.

There are wood block prints dated 1720 which are titled ote gruma uri (yoyo seller).

Through a trader named Chocho no teguruma whose trade with the Dutch included yoyos the name changed from ote gruma to yoyo.

On our stitching day I put back in all the temporary holding, it's a very tedious job but it has to be done. After putting the temporary holding in I stitched the yoyo.

The front of the yoyo has two layers of self padding. I used the same colour as I used for the obi but made the top layer horizontal instead of vertical. This will change the shade of the colour as the light will catch it differently than the obi.

Then I made a 1-1 tight twist and couched that in for the string.

So, Yoyo san has her yoyo.

Onto the pines - this is where I started to change things. I went back to the line drawing and traced the pines so I could superimpose them onto the flat silk. I still hadn't figured out how I was going to stitch the pines. Then while looking at the design it occurred to me that the little circles on the design are how plum buds are usually represented, so maybe the tree wasn't a pine but a plum, or maybe some other kind of tree with flowers?

So, perhaps I could do the buds as knots and the little flower shapes could be done as blister stitches. So I dug out some plum colour thread, made up a twist and started putting in the knots.

I'm not entirely happy with these flowers, I think they are too big. Not sure what to do with them, they'll probably end up coming out. Going to live with them for a few days to see how I feel.

Not much going on here

2010-06-02T13:33:00.009+01:00

It's been a bit quiet here for the last couple of weeks. Having some building work done, so everything is staying covered up and away from the dust. I did manage to get some work done over the bank holiday weekend though. As I said in my last post, I love flat silk. But over the years I've only bought silk as and when I've needed it, so the stock I have is either what was left over or what I've bought and not used. Now I'm starting to work on my own designs I want to stock up on all the different colours so when it comes to choosing colours I have a reasonable number colours to choose from. So, I treated myself to some new storage draws from Staples. They work really well, just the right size to take about 8 or 10 reels of JEC silk. I'm gradually ordering a few reels at a time to get them filled up. Over the weekend I did some more work on Yoyo san. Going round some of the curves has been an interesting exercise. Making sure the curves are worked in a clockwise direction so I can get a nice sharp start and finish point. It made me stop and think and consider the best way to work each section. One of the advantages/disadvantages (depending on how you look at it) of working a design for the first time - there isn't anyone to tell you how to do it. It's a great learning exercise though. The top section on this bit was worked top to bottom, clockwise, the bottom section worked bottom to top, also clockwise, and they joined in the middle. I realised that I'd put in the wrong colour (from my original colour scheme) for one of the under kimono. I used white instead of #201. I did consider leaving the white, but once I'd realised I'd use the wrong colour it started to bug me. Nothing for it but to take it out and re-do it in the correct colour. I'm glad I did I prefer the contrast of the soft cream rather than the white. So here she is so far. I've taken out the temporary hold threads temporarily! It was difficult to get a sense of how she looked with all the lines in. I'd put them in at 5mm intervals rather than 1cm because of the length of the stitches. Next job, putting the temporary holding back in, superimposing the pine trees, then every ones favorite - short stitch holding ;-).

I love flat silk ...

2010-05-15T13:43:00.007+01:00

... it is just so shiny. Having said that I'm going to start this post with some twisted thread. Yoyo san's hands are stitched with a fine 3-1 twist in a #7. They still needs some lines to give them more shape, but I'll do this later at the same time I do her features. Once I'd stitched her hands, I put in the cuffs of her kimono. Using the same 3-1 twist I put in the foundation for her face and using a 3-1 twist in #809 I put in her hair. Yoyo san has a hair comb and some hair pins, I knew I wanted these in gold and was planning to use #905 with gold thread twisted in, but it just didn't look right. I wanted more texture so decided to use twisted gold thread. I think this looks really nice, just what I was looking for. I put in some temporary holding on the face, this is closer together than normal, but her face is small, only 4cm across at the widest part, so I put in extra lines to make sure everything is held securely until the short stitch holding and features go in. Did I say I love flat silk? It's just glorious - nothing else has the sheen and richness of colour of flat silk. I love how it changes shade depending on how the light hits it or depending on the angle of the viewer. The look of flat silk is one of the first things which attracted me to JE and as I've travelled along my journey I've grown to love it even more. In planning the embroidery on Yoyo san, I knew I wanted to use flat silk for the kimono, but what I didn't want was to break it up with lots of short stitch holding. The rule for JE is that every stitch over 1cm in length is held with lines of short stitch holding. The reason is that originally JE would be used to decorate kimono and if long stitches were left loose they will sag when the silk is made up into a garment. But putting in lines of short stitch holding breaks up the flat silk and I don't want this. Now this is my design so I can break the rules a bit if I want, and this isn't going to be on a kimono it's going to be stretched onto foam core to be made up into a picture, so the silk is never going to be left with no tension on it and this will stop the long stitches from sagging. But even so I find it quite difficult to break the rules so I have to find a happy medium. As with the sleeve above, I'm making up lots of 1-1 tight twist and am couching them down to form all the lines and folds in the kimono. Once they have all gone in I will have to judge where to put the short stitch holding.

New design

2010-04-30T12:28:00.016+01:00

I have this vintage wood block print book, it is from the Meiji period (1868-1912), and seems to be a book on historical costume. The description was that it contained examples of women dressed in kimono from the Edo period (1603-1867). There is writing on the prints but, not reading Japanese, I'm not sure what it says.

I thought it might be fun to take some of these drawings and adapt them into embroideries. It will give me some design practice, and also will give me some practice of developing my own colour sense.

I was rather taken by the lady in the first pair of pictures who is playing with the yo yo. So I spent some time tracing the picture and simplifying the folds and lines on the kimono until I thought that I had a pattern simple enough to stitch. The resulting pattern was sent off to my tutor for comments and a request to create a transfer onto some suitable silk. After some exchange of emails a package arrived in the post and with my design on some lovely cream silk with a shimmer of silver in it.

The design of pines you can see in the photo above will be superimposed over the top of the foundation, but I decided that the waterfall would go in first.

I'd spent some time looking at all my silks and planning out a colour scheme and how to stitch this piece. My original plan was to do the top kimono in orange (#207) and to help to create the folds in the kimono I would embroider the kimono in sections.

I actually got more of the orange silk in than is shown in the photo above, but then I decided that it was just too much, it overshadowed everything else, so out it came!

To come up with another scheme I got out all my boxes of silks and spread them over the floor.

Then sat and stared at them until some of the colours started to attract my attention. I also decided that stitching the kimono in sections would be far too complicated so have simplified how I am going to work this.

Out came all the orange silk, but I left in the waterfall. This time I've started from the neckline and am working from the back forwards rather than foreground first. The under kimono is purple (#616).

The second kimono is white, and the han-eri collar is a light violet (#632). These are also worked with flat silk in diagonal layer.

The main kimono is a lovely soft blue green (#544). I worked the collar in diagonal layer.

And the main section of the kimono in vertical layer. Where the sections of the kimono join or where the different colours meet I am working them right up against each other. No one point open space on these sections.

The obi remains in the original colour I chose (#726) which is working well with the new colour for the obi. Filling in the foundation isn't taking very long, but there will be a lot of superimposed work on top of the foundation which will take some doing. So back soon when I have more photos to show.

Check out this website - Michelle left a nice comment on my picture of himotaba on flicker so I checked out her site. Very lovely shibori inspired pieces, worth a visit.

Japanese embroidery to the rescue ...

2010-04-27T06:58:00.008+01:00

... well maybe not Japanese embroidery, but our merry band of embroiderers. Just back from our last class in Garstang, where we had a lovely time with all the students old and new, did lots of happy dancing and rescued a lady in distress. This was my first class since completing Kusudama (happy dance) - you can just see it here at the front of the classroom. Denise was very kind and did not bring her Kusudama this time round but let me take all the glory. Thank you Denise. Colleen had completed her Bouquet from the heart of Japan (happy dance) and started on the large Hiogi. Well done Colleen. Class, as usual, ran from Thursday to Sunday and on Saturday the ladies below joined us for the two day taster course. Actually there were six ladies on the course, but I couldn't get them all in the photo at once.

One of our students, Michiko, also makes the most beautiful Japanese thimbles, yubinuki. You can see some examples on her stitchin fingers page here. On Friday evening after class she did a little workshop on how to make them.

It was fascinating and much more complex than I had thought. These little thimbles are quite time consuming to make so none of us completed them that night. Michiko went through the whole process with us, the level of precision needed is quite remarkable. If ever you have chance to take a workshop on making these I would recommend it.

Below is my first attempt. As you can see I didn't get much done, but I'll definitely go back and finish it. Watch this space for an update.

At each class we always have a display table with some kind of theme. This time Denise had decided on cherry blossom. Although cherry blossom season is over in Japan, here in the NW they are still flowering. The uchikake on display that you can see in one of the earlier photos also had cherry blossoms on it.

Remember the uchikake, fan, obi, obiage, and hair pins - all these will feature in our story later.

Does anyone out there believe in fate, gods of fortune or good luck, or sheer serendipity? Well whether these things exist or not, something was looking out for a visitor from Japan on Saturday evening.

Nicola the very nice manager from the Crofters Hotel where we hold the class had told us she had a visitor from Japan there on the Saturday, and after being told that we would be there at the same time this visitor has expressed an interest in popping into see us and what we were doing. Now we're always happy to talk to anybody about our passion so of course we said that would be fine. During the day on Saturday I asked Nicola if her visitor had arrived and was told she was at the airport where they were trying to find her luggage!

It turns out that the hotel had an event that evening to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Garstang becoming the worlds first Fairtrade town, Asami san (our visitor) was coming for the celebrations and was going to give a short demonstration of Japanese dancing. We had just sat down to dinner on Saturday evening when Denise was asked if she could go to speak to Asami san. So off she went and few minutes later came back to ask if Michiko could help her out.

One by one we gradually filtered back to the stitching room to find out what was going on. Asami san eventually had to give up on the airport finding her luggage in time for the event and had come to the hotel and then to us to see if there was any way we could help out.

Remarkably Asami san was going to do a dance about cherry blossoms - remember the display from earlier? The uchikake came off the stand, obi, hair pins, fan and obiage from our display were pressed into service. Denise found an obijimie from somewhere, make up was collected from rooms and lent, umbrellas were found and a suitable one chosen, Michiko did a great job helping with obi tying, kimono dressing and some interpreting and a little while later Asami san was dressed and ready to go and give her demonstration.

Given that the uchikake is not supposed to be worn like this, the obi doesn't really go and everything else is kind of cobbled together I think she still looks lovely. These photos were taken after the dance so the obi doesn't look as nice as when first tied but as we had none of the usual supporting sections for it I think it has survived pretty well.

We got to watch the dance which was very interesting and even got a round of applause from the guests for saving the day. Eventually everyone also got to finish their dinner so all was well.

So that was our excitement for the weekend - we still don't know what happened to Asami san's luggage. I do hope it eventually turned up.

The journey continues ...

2010-04-09T09:34:00.012+01:00

I have received so many messages and congratulations on completing Kusudama that I am quite overwhelmed by the kindness of everyone, I am still not able to articulate all my thoughts and feelings in writing. However, I would like to take a few minutes to say a few thanks and if I miss anyone out I do apologise. To Pat and Jenny, the tutors who started me on my journey in phase one. To Margaret who has been a constant presence and support and friend, and who never stints of her knowledge, time, understanding, or enthusiasm (and who lets us raid her library of wonderful things!). To Sue who started on her own journey with me at phase one, and who has become a wonderful friend. To Carol-Anne who has helped me to come to see how I can be an positive influence on other students on their journey. To Denise who asked me to join her on her journey to bring JE to students in the North West of England. Learning from Denise in a supporting role in class has been a great way to start learning about teaching. To Maggie and Cathy, my lovely friends who were with me in our phase 10 class. And to all the other students I met in this class. To all the other students who have made my time in my classes in Bournemouth so much fun, Carol, Tanya, Jennifer, Betty, Pat, Pat, Janet, Lena, and everyone else too many to list. I will be back sometime soon. To Iris who is on the other side of the world in Australia. To Susan, who is developing her own path away from JE, but her work and her blog is an inspiration to me and to many others. To my non-stitching friends and family. To Dolly Fehed and Mary-Dick Digges who I met many years ago and whose work first inspired me to take up Japanese embroidery. To Kazumi Tamura who taught our phase 10 class and who was a wonderful teacher and who never tired of our many, many questions. To Master Tamura and Mrs Tamura who brought JE out of Japan to the JEC and so to all of us in the west, to the rest of their family and all the staff of JEC. To Kureni-kai in Japan, to the Saito family and all the professionals and staff there. To the late Master Saito, his Master and all the masters and professionals before him who developed and kept this art form alive, and to all the other Masters of Japanese embroidery who are working to keep it alive today. I feel truly privileged to be part of this embroidery family which stretches so far back into history and into the future and which crosses so many borders.

To all the people who read this blog and who leave their great comments.

And last but by no means least, to the new students of Japanese embroidery here in the NW who are only just starting on their journey, and to all the other students of JE all over the world.

Hanayama - phase one - started February 2004

Kusudama - phase 10 - completed April 2010 "The Hands are the Exit of the Spirit"

Let the journey continue ...

The End

2010-04-02T08:22:00.009+01:00

Kusudama is finished.

This post marks the end of a most interesting journey and also the beginning of a new one. I was going to use this post to say thank you to everyone who has travelled with me on my journey and to the tutors. students and wonderful friends who I have met along the way.

However it all got complicated and a bit emotional so I've decided just to post a picture of the completed piece and let it speak for itself. I must say one thank you to Massa san who designed the colour scheme which is wonderful. I'll try and get a better photo which will show it off in its full glory.

Kusudama, almost finished.

2010-03-28T21:27:00.007+01:00

My plan to have Kusudama completed for our next class (end of April) seems to be going well. The extra silks have arrived so I should have enough now to complete everything. Finished the 3D effect and the silver bamboo leaves. Put stamens and pollen into the silver plum and have cracked the small gold bamboo leaves. They won't take long to complete. Stamens and pollen on the gold plum are complete. Have to put some outlines on the silver bell flower but I can't decide what colour to use, so I'm leaving it for a while. A start has been made on most all of the cords and strings.

The background ball is almost finished, just the small gold bamboo and the outline on the silver bell flower.

The foreground ball is completely finished.

So, we're getting there, slowly and surely.

Cords and colour changes

2010-03-17T22:21:00.005Z

Double central with twisted thread. Single central with flat silk

Cream wicker effect and foundation for purple imitation wicker effect.

Start of rain effect cord.

Double central, colour change green to gold.

Mid week catch up

2010-03-10T20:54:00.014Z

I have been enjoying my break from work this week, and have been progressing well on Kusudama. So here is a bit of an update. Made a start on a couple of the cords at the top of the design, putting a colour change into this one.

Then a nice orange cord. The thin line below is a string, or ribbon as I prefer to think of them. I've always struggled with these for some reason, not being able to get a smooth enough line to be entirely happy with the result. During my phase 10 class in August of last year Kazumi demonstrated these and suddenly I realised what I had been doing wrong. So this was the time to put it into practice.

Think it turned out ok.

Next some long legged knots in a bell flower shape. These are very fiddly to do, the knot part is easy, but keeping the knot at the correct end of the 'leg' rather than in the middle or at the wrong end is hard.

It gets harder when working the left hand side of the motif. The knot is formed by, and controlled by the right hand. Normally I could turn the frame round so I could work at the correct angle but this motif is too far to one side of the design, if I'd turned the frame round I wouldn't have been able to reach the motif.

After a few tries I figured it out.

Bamboo leaves with #4 silver using separated single layer and to and fro technique. There are two lots of bamboo leaves using this technique. This is the larger of the two.

How to work this technique.

1. First work one side of the leaf, work the second side, get it wrong, take it out.

2. Do it again, get it wrong, take it out.

3. Do it again, get it wrong, take it out, get the idea?

4. Call your tutor to find out what you are doing wrong and discover that these bamboo leaves are what is known in the trade as, 'a right pig to do'.

5. Give up on the small leaves and go onto other motifs.

6. A number of weeks later tackle the large leaves and do a better job.

7. Go back and finish the small bamboo leaves. Well, maybe in a few days!

Now you know the one of the secrets of why traditional Japanese embroidery takes so long. So here, dear reader, is a little challenge so you can join me on my journey and experience for yourself the joys of traditional Japanese embroidery. 3D effect - pairs of stitches put together to form squares.

1. Choose four colours from a dark to very pale shade.

2. Choose your shape - whatever you like it doesn't matter. On Kusudama this is worked in a maple leaf shape.

3. Create an 8mm grid. I marked this with couching thread but you can mark it with pencil if you like.

4. Using the darkest of your colours put in 2 stitches at one edge of the squares, first in one direction then the other. Remember that 8 mm divided by 4 colours means that each of these colours have to cover 2mm. If you are not using Japanese flat silk you may have to do more stitches to cover 2mm.

5. Using the next lightest colour, put in two more stitches (or however many you need). The number of stitches should always be the same, so if your thread takes 4 stitches to cover 2mm you always have to do 4 stitches.

6. You can miss this step out if you like! Measure your stitches, realise the maths doesn't add up, take it all out and start again. If your maths does add up, put in the next lightest colour.

7. The last colour should be white, or the lightest colour you have chosen. Or, if the squares have become rectangles rather than squares - go back to step one and try again. I've not completed this section as I have run out of white silk so have to wait till my order arrives to finish it off. To finish the 3D effect put in a stitch between the darkest and lightest colour using a thin gold thread. Using a couching thread or any thin thread put a tiny holding stitch over all the intersections of the gold thread. Congratulate yourself on a job well done, have a bit of whatever rocks your boat, tea, coffee, chocolate, gin, vodka, cake, saki etc to celebrate, and begin to understand why all Japanese embroiderers are just a tiny bit bonkers. Not me of course, but everyone else is completely off their rocker.

I'm kidding about the challenge, but if anyone does have a go I'd love to see pictures, send them over and we'll post them here. Or post them on your own blog and I'll put in a link. You can find the email address under my profile details.

Update

2010-02-28T13:44:00.004Z

Have listed some more fabrics in the Etsy shop. Feeling the need for a bit of a change so am now moving furniture round and am having an early spring clean. Back to stitching soon.

Have been doing some adapting of antique obi and kimono designs into embroidery patterns, more soon.

Antique obi design sheet

New shop items

2010-02-14T20:47:00.000Z

I had occasion recently to root through my stash of kimono and obi silk - I'd forgotten just how much I'd got! I love kimono silk, it is always such wonderful quality and so beautifully decorated. Because I buy the silk in tans (bolts) I have more of each than I will ever use for my embroidery. So last weekend I spent some time updating my Etsy shop and posting a few of the silks I've got. I still have quite a few to photograph and post so watch this space ... A few photos of what I've listed so far are below. They are linked to their page in the shop, why not have a look and see if there is something you like ;-)

A little more progress

2010-01-26T22:22:00.011Z

It's been one thing after another this week, and it's all too frustrating to go into, I'm just hoping that the week will start to improve. I'm sure it will as myself and some friends will be at Manchester Central exhibiting at the Stitching and Creative Crafts show. So a quick post with the latest updates. I have made quite a bit of progress with the background ball and also made a start on the cords. No pics of the cords yet, will save them for their own post. I've worked quite a few of the outlined motifs, but the main work recently has been the superimposed plum and maple shapes below. These are worked with a twisted foundation and then have little motifs embroidered on top. The black lines are temporary, they just hold the foundation in place while embroidering on the top.

The patterns of cherries and bamboo leaves are stitched using a tissue paper transfer. The foreground motif on each is stitched in silver or gold. I thought I would add a little bit of sparkle and use shell silver and shell gold. This is a fine gold or silver thread which contains random shades of other colours. The shading on the silver is very subtle, but I was a bit concerned that the colours on the gold would stand out too much, but decided to give it a go.

When embroidering traditional Japanese embroidery we work very close to the embroidery so it is sometimes difficult to get a good perspective on our work. We get so used to looking and judging the work from 6 inches or so away that we forget this isn't how it is ultimately going to be viewed, so it's important to remember to stand back occasionally and look at what we have done.

So I stood back and had a look and decided I quite liked the shell gold, so it will be staying in.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

2010-01-10T23:03:00.005Z

Well one advantage of the snow is that my second job has been closed in the evenings all this week so I have had an extended break and lots of extra stitching time. Good for me, not so good for all the other people who had to struggle into work I guess.

So, here we are, snowing again, and time for an update. I've made lots of progress on the foreground flower ball which is almost complete, just some stamens and one or two finishing off bits to do. A photo later (no sneaking down to the bottom of the post to check it out ;-)) but first ...

... woven effect. Woven effect can be worked with either a twisted or flat foundation, this flat variation in a cherry blossom shape is on the background ball, the twisted version is on the foreground ball. The last time I did this technique in flat silk was on phase 3 and I remembered it being very difficult. Of course I've learned a lot since then and from doing this piece I think that one of the tricks to getting this right the control you have over the silk. Not so good on phase 3, better now! The first three layers of silk and gold are laid down.

The final task is to hold down the 3rd layer giving the woven effect.

This silver bamboo leaf worked with a to and fro technique is giving me some trouble. I've managed one half of the main leaf but can not get the other half right. It has been in and out about 3 times, so am leaving it along for a while.

The gold plum blossom from my last post has come along and now it is complete I am very happy with it.

I've made a start on a number of the bell flowers from the background ball. First ... this one is outlined in silver.

The inside of the petals is filled in with a maize pattern. The small rear petals will also be filled with a maize pattern.

Second ... worked in long legged knots. This has been taken out since I took the photo. The second layer of knots makes it too bulky so I am going to make the twists from a finer thread and that should solve the problem.

Third ... this one is simply outlined in knots.

And now ... ta da daaaaa ...

I know I have said this before, but I love this colour scheme. I can not take the credit for putting this together, it was designed by Masa Tamura. I have never met Masa san, I hope to do so in the future, but I feel privileged to be able to share her skill and knowledge in some small way by working on this colour scheme she put together for me.

Domo arigato gozaimasu Masa san

Kusudama, progress continues

2010-01-04T23:18:00.012Z

Happy new year. I hope everyone out there in blog land enjoyed the holidays and had lots of fun. I spent a very nice christmas with family and also did lots of work on Kusudama. The snow has been quite helpful in this, can't go out, so just have to sit and stitch - shame! The foreground flower ball is almost complete and I have done more work on the background ball as well, no photos of that one yet. One of the plum blossoms is worked in a pair of gold threads couched round and round. Although this is only a small motif I am working one petal at a time and in between will do another motif. This is to break up the couching which is my least favorite technique.

This is the first petal of the plum, I've done another one since this photo was taken. It looks huge here, the scale shows better on the last photo in the post.

The small chrysanthemums which I wasn't happy with have been taken out and re-stitched. I am much happier with them, the angle is much better and the twists are much more even.

So here we are progress so far. This is really taking shape now and I love the colour scheme. I've made more progress since I took the photographs so will post that next weekend.

JE challenge - finished

2009-12-14T22:20:00.012Z

Well, it has been a busy couple of stitching days. I met up with some stitching friends from our new class here in the NW on Saturday, it's really nice to see them taking their first steps and they are doing great work. I worked on Kusudama on Saturday and then on Sunday I completed my little Japanese embroidery challenge piece. Well, I thought I completed it. I posted a photo of it on my page over on stitching fingers, but I wasn't completely happy with it as it didn't seem finished. This is the piece as it was on Sunday before I went to work. After I got back from work on Sunday evening I went back to my original sources of inspiration for turning this ... ... into an embroidered version of this ... This is one of the inro in the Victoria & Albert Museum collection that I had checked out when doing research into this piece (click on the image to visit the collection pages at the museum). As soon as I went back to the originals I realised what was missing, the bead and netsuke. Today while doing other things some ideas were ticking over in the back of my mind and this evening I completed the piece. I decided to embroider the netsuke as a large plum blossom. I padded it with two layers of padding cotton and then covered it with flat silk. I didn't want to introduce another colour into the piece so I used the same colour as for the inside of the inro. This red is darker than we would normally use under gold thread. However it gave the gold a really nice rich effect. And after the red silk was complete I covered it with twisted gold. I've used twisted gold before on small motifs, but on this larger one it looked just fabulous. I'll have to use this again! The full impact of the gold is lost in the photograph, it's such a shame I can't find some way of making photographs of Japanese embroidery look as good on photos as in the flesh (as it were). Anyone who has seen originals of traditional Japanese embroidery will know what I mean.

Shiny! The plum is a triple blossom and after I'd held down the twisted gold foundation (the light yellow lines - you can't see these on the original), I twisted up some karayori threads which were couched to form the pattern of petals.

The next trick was to figure out how to get the cord joined to the netsuke. I couldn't sink it or somehow put it under the stitching because it is a real cord and is quite thick.

In the end I bound a bit of twisted gold round the cut end of the braid and couched it down right next to the embroidery, which seemed to work.

I also added an embroidered bead in black silk and used the twisted gold again for the accent. This is how we depict plum buds in Japanese embroidery so I thought it would add a nice touch.

So here we are, it's really finished this time and I am very pleased with how it has turned out.

Edited - 20th December - thank you all for your comments. I have listed this piece in my Etsy shop and on the On-line Saachi gallery.

A weekend of embroidery

2009-12-06T22:22:00.010Z

I spent most of this weekend doing more work on Kusudama which is progressing very nicely. It doesn't seem like a lot of work looking at the photos, but all these techniques have a number of layers so each one takes quite a time to complete. This plum blossom shape is worked in a pattern which represents the famous shibori dyeing technique. This pattern is almost always worked with a white foundation in flat silk which fills in the shape, then a twisted thread is used to form a square grid and, in this variation, the incomplete squares round the outside are filled in. The shibori effect is completed with smaller stitches in the middle of the squares and at the cross over of the lattice.

Another flat foundation in a cherry blossom shape, with the start of a flax leaf pattern.

For a touch of extra colour I used shell gold to form this flax leaf pattern and outlined the shape with #4 silver.

All these motifs are from the background flower ball and none of them are worked in a realistic colour scheme, so why not have a nice purple maple leaf I thought.

This bell flower is outlined with a katayori thread and filled in with sagara nui (knots).

Ultimately all five of the larger sections will be filled in with knots.

I also worked half of another bell flower shape with #4 silver.

I am enjoying this piece very much. It is nice to go back and review a lot of techniques that I haven't used in a while.

And then there was more ...

2009-12-04T00:36:00.009Z

Well it's been a while and progress has been slow, but it continues slowly and surely. On the challenge piece I've completed the plums, just have to give them all an outline. I had various ideas on how to decorate the other portion of the fan, but couldn't decide which one to use. In the end I went with a curly version which I think works quite well. Above is the paper pattern which has been embroidered over the top, and below with the tissue paper in the process of being removed.

As regular visitors will know I've been avoiding working on Kusudama until I got my head on straight as life has been a bit fraught over the last couple of months.

A few days after I did the work above I went to spend a few days with my tutor, Margaret, at her house near the sea. Now the south coast in the UK should have better weather than the north west even in November, sadly this wasn't the case, but I didn't care I was in seventh heaven. A friend to talk JE to all day, a library of fabulous books to raid, a house filled to the rafters with treasures to explore, and a new friend - gorgeous George.

And although George did develop quite an interest in my toes, my own fault for forgetting to pack my slippers(!), I had a wonderful time. Lovely to be by the sea, even in rotten weather, to spend time with Margaret who never stints to share her love of Japanese embroidery, her skill and knowledge, and the aforementioned library of books and treasures, with all of her students and friends. I returned home in yet more rain (where does it all come from) inspired and energised and ready to stitch. I put aside the challenge piece and went back to Kusudama, and I have to say it is all going very well. I'm very pleased with what I've done so far and am looking forward to this weekend with no work and lots of stitching hours. First I worked a chrysanthemum. Then a pine with a sayagata pattern over the top.

This is the completed pine, it's a lovely shade of green and the flat foundation looks lovely. The sayagata pattern is worked with one strand of twisted gold.

I also worked a pale pink plum blossom in flat silk, which had some of the dreaded short stitch holding over the top. Only takes a few stitches on each petal though, so it wasn't so bad. Also worked a plum in twisted silk, and another pine with a twisted foundation. The plum buds are embroidered in the same colour as the plum with some self padding underneath. Since taking these photos I've put in the diagonal holding on the pine and have completed the third camellia and its leaves. More pictures and progress to come after the weekend, happy stitching. And before I forget for any doggie fans out there, George is a sussex spaniel.

The story continues ...

2009-11-07T21:18:00.014Z

... so I've got a bit further on the JE challenge piece. I completed the foundation and am pleased with how it has turned out. To make the top a bit different I embroidered it at a different angle to the side.Using flat silk I embroidered the inside of the inro. This red works really well, and is a great contrast to the black outside. In went the temporary holding.

And then over the top I used a stitch transfer to outline the plum blossoms and fan.

Embroidering the plum blossoms has proved a bit more of a challenge, but this is a challenge piece after all. Originally I wanted to work the plum blossoms in white silk, then I changed my mind and decided I would use gold.

As these plums are only very small, less than 1cm across, I decided I would embroider them using a simple style, like this one on a haori jacket from Ichiroya (click on the picture to see the whole jacket).

After some exprimentation I finally settled on using twisted gold for the plums.

I am outlining them in #3 gold to give them a little more definition. It's hard work embroidering motifs which are this small, so decided to have a break until tomorrow. No work this weekend, so might be able to get the plums completed tomorrow, we'll see.

While I was looking for a nice picture of an embroidered plum on Ichiroya not only did I find the lovely jacket above, but I found the one below which is decorated with some very nice hand embroidery. Both are silk haori jackets and both a bargain at only $18. Follow the links to Ichiroya for more information.

Kimono and haori often have very beautiful linings, this one has a lovely shell box design on the lining.

Chapter 2

2009-10-30T09:42:00.008Z

Another post in quick succession - what is the world coming to? I blame Jane from Chilly Hollow Needlepoint, she did ask me to stitch faster. By the way Jane, very impressed with how your Rabbit Geisha came out, so glad you overcame the damage problems. No embroidery pics in this post, but I have made some more progress. I mentioned in the last post that I was going to embroider the inside of the inro in red as though it had been lacquered. Last week in discussions about colour schemes I couldn't decide which of the reds would be best to use for the lacquer. So this morning very early I took some pictures of this lovely box I own (from Ichiroya of course, are you surprised?) And of the inside ...

Then I got out some of the red silks to try them out to see which matched best. The photos don't get an exact colour reproduction, but they give you the idea.

#119 seemed to be a bit too orange.

#106 was a bit too red.

But, #228 was almost right.

#228 is a tad dark, but given that on the design the inside of the inro would be in a shadow created by the top of the box I think this colour will work. It will be worked in flat silk with short stitch holding over the top as I don't want it to be too shiny.

So all I have to do now is get on with the embroidery, watch this space ...

Cracked it ...

2009-10-29T23:36:00.007Z

... or should that be twisted it! Remember the story of Goldilocks and the three bowl of porridge. Well this is nothing like that, ha ha. Well a bit, it's the story of the brunette and the three foundations. After my last post I went back to the box chart for fan papers and checked out the instructions for the orange foundation. Turns out it is a 1F + #1G, so a ratio of one silk thread to one gold thread for any non JE readers out there, so I thought I would give that a try to see what it looked like (sorry, no pic). Decided it wasn't robust enough and was still too stripey. So foundation number three was created - 3-1T + #1G - three threads twisted into one, including a gold thread. I made this twist really, really soft, and the gold thread I used has a red fleck to it which adds a little touch of extra colour. This worked very well and I decided to use this version of the foundation.

So, this is it so far, a bit more foundation to do, then the lid and the inside of the inro which I'm going to do as a lacquered red colour.

The challenge continues

2009-10-26T22:01:00.006Z

Spent four days last week in the company of some stitching friends old and new and had a great time. Didn't get much time to stitch myself but I did make some progress on the JE challenge.

I completed the stitch transfer outlining the inro, then put in some padding.

I couched some holding threads down over the padding. There are three layers of padding and I wanted to make sure that it doesn't buckle under the silk once it comes off the frame.

I had a long conversation with my friend Denise about the colour scheme for this piece. We looked at a number of pictures of inro and decided it needed a very simple colour scheme so I ended up scrapping the original version and decided to make it just back and gold. Good job I kept the gold really as I'd already made the cord for this!

My original plan had been to embroider the foundation in flat silk, and when I decided to change the foundation to black I thought I would include a gold thread to add a bit more texture. I've used this technique before in one of my early phases (see photo below) and it gives a lovely finish.

I tried this with the black thread but I think the lines of gold are two regular and it doesn't work the same. Might be something to do with the colour combination of course, the gold doesn't stand out quite as much on the orange. I'm still in two minds about this, I really want the sheen of the flat silk but I don't want the gold to stand out quite so much. I might increase the ratio of silk to gold to see if that makes a difference, otherwise I'll have to go with a twisted foundation.

I also couched down the braid I've made along the edges of the inro, this will be covered with the embroidered foundation and then I'll add some couched threads to add to the shape of the whole piece. Back soon(ish) with an update.

Kusudama and JE challenge

2009-10-11T12:44:00.025+01:00

Well, the plan for the last post went out the window, so here is a catch up. JE CHALLENGE - I decided to use the plum fan for the challenge design. I feel a bit sorry for the Japanese plum, for years it was the practically the national flower of Japan then along came the cherry with its flashy ways and the plum was relegated to second place. :-( ;-) I drew up the inro, shrank the fan to size and put them together to come up with the first draft of the design. I was pretty happy with this but even with the cord I felt there was not enough movement. I did some reading on inro and discovered that they are made in sections so I thought if I showed the piece as open or partly open, that would add more movement.

I traced the outline and cut off the top section of the inro. I then played around with the two pieces of paper until I had decided on positions and pasted them into place, then traced over the top of both sections to get the next version of the design.

If you followed the link to the V & A website on my previous post you will have seen that inro come in all different types and styles. This is going to be worked on a deep green silk and embroidered in gold and white, I am intending to use a fair bit of padding to give the inro shape. This piece is not large and its scale means that the cord is very narrow so I decided to use a real braid and couch it to the fabric instead of embroidering one.

It's a while since I did any Japanese braiding (kumihimo), so I got out my books and bobbins and decided which braid I would do.

The first plan was to make a 16 bobbin braid, so I wound the silk onto the bobbins and made a start.

I really like this braid, particularly the contrasts in the twist, but after I'd worked a section I decided it was too big for the scale of the design. I went back to some pictures of inro and the cords on them were all quite simple and were sometimes knotted into decorative shapes. I went back to a 8 bobbin braid and worked it with a random colour scheme.

This is a hollow braid so will be very easy to couch and to twist or knot into decorative shapes. I have made enough of the braid that it can run down the edge of the inro, as it would on a real one, this means it'll double as the padding and I can embroider over the top.

So that is it so far, meanwhile on KUSUDAMA ...

The gold chrysanthemum is completed.

I've embroidered some camellia leaves.

The stripy camellia is half done.

The two tone camellia (also known as the 'aghhhhhh this technique is really difficult' camellia), is done, well I just have the centre to complete. I'm not entirely happy with this one, but it's better than it was, so it's staying in.

The solid camellia, came out and then went back in again. The picture above shows the shell powder lines which were used to guide the couching of the edging thread.

Short stitch holding is used all over this flower, so I left the temporary holding threads in to use as a guide for the stitches, and once the short stitch holding was done I them out and completed the centre of the flower. So that is it for Kusudama at the moment, I've done some work on the small chrysanthemums but no pictures to show yet.

When I was printing some of my pictures I took a close up of the centre of the camellia so I could have a reference for the knots which were worked with a thread of gold included. I thought this made an interesting picture as you can also see the gold running through the fabric, so thought I'd share.

Japanese Embroidery Challenge

2009-09-25T10:51:00.012+01:00

Over on Stitchin fingers we have a group dedicated to traditional Japanese embroidery, this small but growing group of stitchers contains people at all levels of their studies of Japanese embroidery, some who haven't started yet, and some who are just interested. We compare notes, support each other in our work, and generally just chat about lots of things related to Japanese embroidery. A while ago one of our members brought up the topic of designing our own pieces, after lots of discussion and emails flitting around the world we came up with the idea of creating a Japanese embroidery challenge, we would provide the basic design and then anyone wanting to take part could interpret the design in their own way. In this way we hoped to give participants an insight into the design process, and have fun on the way. All this is a preamble to start blogging my process on the challenge. The challenge came up with very simple designs, three fan papers decorated with traditional motifs. It's been a long process to come up with some ideas of how to interpret these designs for me. I thought I would just work one of the papers, rather than a combination of all three, but I didn't want just to embroider it 'flat' as it were. Fans and fan papers are a used a lot in Japanese design and they are often shown with just the paper or fan and not as part of a larger piece of art, but I wanted to add a bit of a twist to the design to make it mine. I have been concentrating so hard on preparing for teacher class and then working on Kusudama that I haven't really had much RAM to spare for this piece and every time I thought about it I wasn't getting any inspiration. Then I visited Japan Crafts for no particular reason, and saw this lovely fabric depicting Japanese inro and that was it, I got my inspiration. I would stitch an inro decorated with one of the fan papers. I sent for a fat quarter of the fabric to use as a basic template, so now to refine ideas - watch this space.

The V&A site has more information on inro, and if anyone would like to join us over on Stitchin fingers we'd be very happy to welcome you, still plenty of time to join in with the challenge!

Kusudama is still on the go, look out for a post on camellias after the weekend, happy stitching.

Japanese Embroidery, slow cloth - the hands are the exit of the spirit

2009-09-17T11:03:00.010+01:00

A couple of months ago, well three!, I was asked to do an interview for the Feeling Stitchy group, what with one thing and another I've only just got round to sending the information off (sorry Carina).

One of the questions they posed was on how I perceived my work. I wondered how to answer this question but then remembered a post by Elaine over on Red Thread Studio where I first came across the term slow cloth.

There have been many posts and discussions on a number of blogs on the term 'slow cloth' since then, and possibly before, but re-visiting the post reminded me of how it echos both my thoughts and feelings on Japanese embroidery and the phrase 'The hands are the exit of the spirit' coined by the late Master Saito, so I thought it worth sharing. Check out the full post at the above link.

'Slow Cloth has the possibility of joy in the process. In other words, the journey matters as much as the destination.'

'Slow Cloth offers the quality of meditation or contemplation in the process.'

'Slow Cloth involves skill and has the possibility of mastery.'

'Slow Cloth honors its teachers and lineage even in its most contemporary expressions.'

'It's in the eye of the beholder, yes, but it's in our nature to reach for beauty and create it where we can.'

'Slow Cloth is expressive of individuals and/or cultures. The human creative force is reflected and evident in the work.'

Kusudama, the journey struggles on

2009-09-14T23:34:00.006+01:00

Well a busy couple of weeks have gone by, work and an exhibition at the GMEX have taken up what would have otherwise been stitching time. I have completed one of the main camellias, but don't have a picture to share - I am not happy with the twist of the thread, it isn't consistent enough to be right, this is probably something to do with the fact that I started it during my phase 10 class, but then there was a gap before I could go back to complete it. I just couldn't get the twist to match the one I'd done in class. In hindsight it might have been better to take it all out and start again, but I wanted to keep the twist that I'd made under the guidance of Kazumi for reference. Anyway it has been in and out too many times so now to do it again, so I am going to have to live with it. I think once the short stitch holding is in it won't be as obvious, but for the moment I don't want to share!! On the other hand, the golden chrysanthemum is completed and looks fabulous if I do say so myself. It has been difficult to take a good photo with the gold thread on gold fabric, so much bounce from the various light sources, I'll post another one of the whole thing when I get a good pic. The flower was first padded with cotton thread, then a layer of orange silk, and completed with #1 gold. Last weekend Sue, Carol-Anne, Denise and I had an exhibition of Japanese embroidery at the Stitch and creative crafts show at the GMEX. It was very successful and we had lots of visitors. This time we were also joined by Rachel and Jennifer, two of our newer local students, who came along to help demonstrate and talk to our visitors. Thank you to them all and to our visitors who were, as always, lovely. We had lots of interest in our courses and are hoping to have a full class in October. If you'd like details, let me know and I can email information over.

Carol-Anne demonstrating for some of our visitors

PS - quick update early Thursday morning - the camellia came out! More soon.

The best thing about bank holidays ...

2009-08-29T14:15:00.016+01:00

... (when they coincide with my weekend off from my evening job) is that I get three full days to stitch. Hooooray!!! I'm just taking a quick break to post this then back to work. In my last post about Kusudama, you may remember I spoke about the couched silver circle and that I wasn't happy about the couching. Last night I went back and looked at it again and decided that I wasn't happy with it, so out it came. Below is a picture of what it looked like after it came out, you can see how the fabric has been marked, and this was only couching thread with a very fine needle. This circle is worked in an outward spiral so no outward edge is marked, a little cross in the middle marks the starting point, then we work outwards until the required size is reached. The beginning of this is a bit tricky, the circle is started with only one of the pair and it's difficult to get the first few round in without loosing the start, but once the second thread of the pair has been joined in it does get easier. I'm much happier with the couching on this version, although it's very difficult to get the stitches exactly spaced as we would with the a larger or more regular shape, still I still managed to get them spaced much more evenly than the first time. I have one of those plastic shapes that have different sizes of circles on them, so I put one over the completed shape and it turned out round again, yay. Actually this gives a good idea of the perspective, this circle has an 11mm radius.

As it's been a couple of weeks since I worked on Kusudama I thought I would do another small motif before going onto one of the bigger ones. The maple leaf next to the silver circle is outlined in blister stitch so I decided to that one next. Blister stitches are formed from a knot with a flat stitch over the top giving a nice 3 dimensional look.

To make sure I kept the definition of the shape I put in all the knots at the points first, then filled in the spaces in between. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do this, but it did mean that the knots were evenly spaced and not all squeezed up together.

Next job was to put in the flat stitch over the top of the knots. This was a bit fiddly and it took me a couple of attempts to get it right.

I really like the effect of this stitch but I've hardly ever used it as it just hasn't been in many of the pieces I've done. I'd really like to get better at both the knots and the blister stitch, but for the moment I'm happy with how this has turned out.

Before I go back to working on the large chrysanthemum just a quick word about the colour scheme on this piece. As I stitch more I'm sure you'll notice that it's not being worked in one of my usual over the top colour schemes! As I decided to go with a special fabric for this piece I decided to do something special with the colours as well. I know what colours I like and am learning more about colour all the time, but I'm aware I have a lot to learn in that field. So I asked Margaret, my tutor, to ask Masa san (Master Tamura's wife and Master Saito's daughter) to put together a spring colour scheme for me. In this way I can take advantage of her many, many years of experience and learn more about colours as well. I have to say the scheme she sent is beautiful, enough bright or deeper colours that I like along with some pale ones which I would never normally work with. I think I will enjoy working with these colours a lot.

Kusudama, flower circle, the beginning

2009-08-21T20:50:00.011+01:00

I learned something new about flower circles while at my phase 10 class, traditionally they were made out of medicinal plants and were hung in the home as a preventative measure. Actually flower circle is probably not a completely accurate translation because in reality they are spheres. We see them a lot as decoration on fabrics like in the beautiful kimono below from Ichiroya and there are a number of embroidery designs which incorporate flower circles.

JEC have two very beautiful phase 10 pieces called Kusudama and Double Cypress Fans. I decided to do Kusudama as it was designed to incorporate all 46 Japanese embroidery techniques, and it will be interesting to re-visit techniques that I have not done since the early phases. I also decided to work the piece on gold nishijin fabric as it's going to a very special piece.

In the photo above you can see how the gold leaf coated paper in woven into the weft of the fabric. Gold, or silver, nishijin is very nice to stitch on but you do have to be very accurate when placing your needle as once a hole is made it will not completely disappear if something has to be re-stitched.

During our class we spent each morning going over every single technique in fine detail and then in the afternoon we practiced techniques we wanted help with. I decided to work on one of the couched metallic motifs because, as you probably know by now, this is my least favorite and worst technique so because Kazumi was available I could take advantage of her experience to get some tips to improve.

This little motif is about the size of a 10p piece and is couched from the centre outwards. To create different looks using silver thread it can be couched using different colours, I decided to couch this motif in pink to give it a warmer look. Couching thread isn't available in pink so I had to make my own by twisting a 1 into 2 thread. Starting this motif was a bit fiddly as it's a very, very, very tight turn for the first few rounds. I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, it's nice and round, but there are a couple of bits which need a fix. Although it doesn't show in this picture a couple of sections are couched too tightly together and the thread has lifted slightly, also the fact the couching doesn't line up creating a brick pattern is bugging me so it'll have to come out and be done again!! I know it seems a minor thing, but it's my phase 10 piece and I want to get it a good as I can.

One of the techniques I've never had to do in any of my pieces is long legged knots. So after Kazumi had demonstrated both knots and long legged knots I did a few practice stitches which worked quite well. Haven't done any of these on the Kusudama yet.

And to finish with tonight this is a photo of our classroom.

Back to blogging

2009-08-14T19:10:00.005+01:00

My phase 10 and teacher classes are now over, so I'll be back to blogging my process soon. A very interesting 10 days was had. I have been given some good feedback on my embroidery along with some tips on how to improve. There is a huge amount of information to take in and process given that we went right back to the basics and reviewed every technique in minute detail. It was great to meet so many embroiderers from all around the world, 10 countries were represented in all, and to spend days talking about our shared passion for Japanese embroidery. The surroundings at Hawkwood college are beautiful and we were lucky with the weather, a little rain, but not enough to spoil anything.

Huge thanks must go to Jackie Hall for all the organising she did prior to and during the courses. Thanks as well to Tamura san and Kazumi san for travelling from JEC to teach on the courses, they had a very busy 10 days teaching 4 different courses.

Our phase 10 class was taken by Kazumi san, whose patience with all our questions over the 5 days was phenomenal. I did very little work on Kusudama during the week, but did make a start and I'll be blogging my process as I go.

During week 2 Tamura san took us through his thoughts and design ideas for a large instalment piece which will be unveiled at the World Exhibition in 2011. Many embroiderers from all over the world will be working on this piece, I'll keep a track of what I'm stitching for this but won't be blogging about it until after it has been unveiled in Australia in 2011. And just so there is some embroidery in this post - this is a photo of a lovely obi worn by Kazumi san during the week.

No posts for a while

2009-06-28T12:31:00.008+01:00

The extra blue silk for braided chrysanthemum arrived so I've finished it off. Only took a couple of extra hours. Off out to buy some foam core this afternoon so I can take it off the frame. Treasure ship is completed and off the frame. Actually I went back and added some extra stitching to the shippo design on the sail. It's not on this picture as I've not taken any more photos. So that's it for a few weeks - my phase 10 and teacher class starts at the beginning of August so I am not going to be posting for a while, well here anyway might post over on the Japanese embroidery blog. I do have a piece on the go, it's a design of my own and is for an on-line exhibition for the Hand Embroidery Network. Because it's for the exhibition I'm not going to post anything until after the exhibition is completed. I'm keeping a notebook/sketch book type thing so I'm sure will have lots to post after it is all over. I'll be back mid August after teachers class and phase 10, hope to have lots of photos to share. Happy stitching.

Once upon a time ...

2009-06-13T21:14:00.007+01:00

... there was a little girl called Jane.

Jane liked to play lots of different games, but her most favorite thing was to play with sharp needles and brightly coloured threads.

One day while the sun was shining she was playing her favorite game, but sadly on this sunny day things weren't going too well.

She was colouring in the background of her newest picture and had two colours of blue to choose from.

First she tried one, but it was too light, then she tried the other, but it was too dark, next she tried both together but that wasn't right either and Jane was very sad :-(

Jane decided that all the blue should be rubbed out, so she did that and then finished colouring in the other petals, well, all but one because she'd run out of blue so would need to contact the silk fairy to get some more. While waiting for the new colouring in silk to arrive Jane thought she would share some pictures of the lovely flower with her lovely friends in magic cyberspace.

Well, OK, I'll never make a million as an author, but I think the chrysanthemum has turned out quite well. And ... it's taken a lot less time than Treasure Ship, approx 60 hours so far (including the rubbing out!).

Correcting a cord

2009-06-03T09:40:00.012+01:00

In my last post I spoke briefly about one of the cords on the chrysanthemum being started at the wrong place. Thought I would expand on this a bit. I've moved the orientation of the photos so it's as it would be if you were stitching. Hoping this will help with the explanation! One of the difficult things about cords is finding and keeping the angle of the stitch, and with this particular one - double central, keeping the pattern central. The cord is formed from four stitches worked on the top left to bottom right angle, then four on the top right to bottom left angle. They cross over in the middle to form a pattern of interlocking squares, these squares should line up along the middle of the cord. You have to be careful to keep each side even, if it's not the squares won't be the same size. So if this is as clear as mud you'll understand why I thought that I'd start on a straight bit so I could get the angles right because once you start going round a corner it's a whole different story.

Now the thing is normally cords are started at the end closest to the stitcher, but in this case the end closest to me was a curve (see pic below) and it is sideways on, but the other end (see above) was fairly straight. So I thought start at the other end, get the angle going right, and then going round the curve will be easy. Hmm. So off I started. You can see that the angle of the stitches is very steep and the little squares ... well ... they aren't!!

It didn't take me long to figure out this was a bad idea. So some reverse stitching later, I started on the other end of the cord. It took me three attempts to get the cord going, and even on this last attempt the first two or three cross overs are not quite right, but then they get better so I decided to leave this attempt in.

When stitching curves the angle of the stitches have to be adapted so the stitches on the inside of the curve are closer together on the inside and wider in the middle, while the stitches on the outside of the curve are wider on the outside and closer in the middle. This means the squares aren't square, but this is ok as it adds to the impression of a curve in the pattern, as the cord straightens they should gradually become square.

So this is it completed, in the end and ignoring the false starts it really didn't take very long to do. It's not perfect, but it was very fiddly to start and then work round that curve at such an odd angle so I'm pretty happy with how it is so am going to leave it be.

For any Japanese embroiderers out there who are wondering why this double central doesn't have padding. The design is a challenge piece and doesn't come with a box chart, there is only a photo. In this it looked to me like none of the petals were padded, and since there is also so guidance on thickness of thread I decided that all flat silk would be 2F while all twists will be 4T. This means that both double and single central cords are quite light being worked only in 2 strands of flat silk so I've not padded them.

The lesson for today ...

2009-06-01T18:32:00.011+01:00

Well it's been a while since I worked on Braided Chrysanthemum but following a couple of days off after finishing Treasure Ship I put Braided Chrysanthemum back onto the stand and started stitching again. This one doesn't take anywhere near the amount of time as Treasure Ship and it's fun playing with all the colours. I took advantage of the lovely sunshine today to take some photos outside. Not many petals left to do on this one but I'm struggling with the light green braid on the left hand side of the photo. I started at the inner end because it's a straight section and I thought it would be easier to start there even though generally braids are started at the end closest to the stitcher. Well that'll teach me(!), there is generally a reason for these things and starting at this end has made the angle of the braid all wrong. So it'll have to come out and I'll start at the correct end even thought it's a tight curve, and therefore more difficult to start, at least the angle will be better.

So the lesson for today, do what it says in the text book.

The light at the end of the tunnel ...

2009-05-27T23:12:00.005+01:00

... has arrived and its name is ... Treasure Ship

It only took 329.75 hours. Next job - a large gin :-)

15 down, 1 to go (nearly)

2009-05-01T19:20:00.006+01:00

In my last post about Treasure Ship I said I was going to concentrate on small areas at a time so the sheer size of the thing didn't put me off now we're into the last stretch. I even said that I wasn't going to uncover sections I wasn't working on, not even to take photos. Well the first bit worked, but tonight I gave in to temptation uncovered the whole thing to take a look. So I took some photos and decided to share. This is my favorite section, I love the plum blossoms. The technique is simple but very effective and, even though gold work is my least favorite technique to stitch, I really enjoyed the gold twiggy bits over the silk foundation for the broom which were lots of fun. There is still a bit of shippo to work on this section, just above the plums. I've completed most of the shippo and pines. There are 16 pines on TS, most of the pines have now got their foundation (only 1 to go), so just veins and then the gold bases to complete.

There are a few more snow crystals to complete and a bit of rigging, but we're nearly there. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to flicker gently.

In our JEC pieces once we get to phase 8 and 9 there are larger size designs to choose from (the embroidered area of TS is about 19x13 inches) and the amount of time these pieces take to embroider is, as much as anything, something we have to learn. I tend to embroider fairly quickly but this one has really slowed me down. The 300+ hours it will eventually take has taught me some interesting things.

Although I love these larger pieces I don't know that I want to spend this much time on too many designs so I will have to choose larger designs very carefully. Breaking TS into smaller units and concentrating on one at a time worked well, so this will be a good way to approach the larger pieces. But I wildly under estimated the time this piece would take, it looked so simple!!! And, given my dreams of eventually selling some of my own embroidery designs, I need to be realistic about timescales and therefore costings (300+ hours at £15/hour=?!).

Fabulous Cat

2009-04-18T22:54:00.002+01:00

You may remember a few weeks ago that I lost the last member of my little cat family. I've found another one, well in spirit anyway, Cocoa the teddy stealing cat! And her owner, Liadain, does some fine stitching too. Check out here, here, and here.

Lost treasures - re-discovered

2009-04-09T00:09:00.009+01:00

Well it's been a while since I've worked on treasure ship, life and treasure ship itself got in the way. This is a big piece with lots of repetition and lots of layers so it takes a great deal of time just to work one small motif. It seemed to stick at one point and none of the work seemed to make it look any different. In preparation for my phase 10 class later this year I had to produce a list of all the pieces I've done and also give a date for the completion of this one. So now I have to buckle down and get it done. So, after a self imposed break I finally sat down at the frame last weekend and started to stitch. I thought the best way to progress with this is just to concentrate on one section at a time and not look at the thing as a whole, I'm not even going to un-cover the whole thing to take photos. I decided to work on the shippo on the sail and the treasures which looked like this when I started.

I've now completed all the blue, red, and white shippo (well apart form a couple because I've run out of red silk, opps!). Next job - the treasures. The magic mallet needed a gold edging. I decided to use gold couching thread for this and it gives a very different effect to the gold. I've decided I quite like this, it's a much more subtle effect than red couching thread.

The magic cloak needed it's top edge finishing in #3 gold. You can just see the gold under the tracing paper. It then needed some decoration around the top. The scalloped edge was worked using one strand of #3 gold. The little angular design was stitched using twisted gold.

So here we are with some re-discovered treasures. The cloak still needs its fastenings and the hat needs a top and ties, but I need to finish the centres of the shippo design before I do those. Something for the Easter Weekend perhaps?

If anyone is counting we're up to 244 hours.

Happy stitching.

Another piece completed and one to be scrapped

2009-04-02T21:48:00.004+01:00

Had another couple of hours stitching on the small plum blossoms design and managed to finish it off. A number of plum trees I saw when I was in Japan had two colour blossoms on the same tree so I did the same here.

Each of the blossoms is about an inch across so the whole thing is only about 8 inches across. I enjoyed stitching this piece and will probably do it again.

I promised a photo of the Golden Butterfly yesterday. This is what I've done so far.

I have no formal design training and don't draw very well, so a lot of the planning of designs and colour schemes goes on in my head. This is probably a very inefficient way of going about things and I think I will have to find some night classes to learn some new skills. Sometimes I get a very strong image in my head and the design just flows, this one however isn't. I can see what I want but just can't translate it onto the silk. So for the moment this design is being scrapped.

Plum blossoms

2009-04-01T23:42:00.002+01:00

A very quick post tonight. I've been working on two small designs one of plum blossoms and one of a butterfly. Can't get a good picture on the butterfly under the light at the moment so I'll post that one later.

The design is very simple so I thought simple techniques would be suitable. The blossoms are quite large and the fabric is obi lining silk which will stand a fair amount of padding. The main petals were padded with two layers of six strands of padding cotton, next layer back one layer and the ones further back none at all.

The centre buds and the single ones were padded with one or two layers of four strands of padding cotton, depending on their size. The calyx is stitched with twisted thread in weft foundation layer.

The branches are flat silk in diagonal layer. On the thick part of the trunk I put in random short stitch holding to add a bit of texture. Plum blossoms and buds also in flat silk. Just have pollen on the light pink blossoms to complete then it's done.

Talk on Japanese Embroidery

2009-03-26T11:36:00.005Z

Just a short post today, as you may remember I am a member of the Japan Society North West. The society runs a number of events throughout the year and on 19th April 2009 yours truly will be giving a talk on traditional Japanese embroidery. You can find all the information here on the JSNW website, along with details of all our other events. Why not come along and say hello.

Braided chrysanthemum - petal curls

2009-03-08T18:31:00.010Z

Well it's been a while since I posted any progress, which has been quite slow I have to admit, but here we are back again with an update on Braided Chrysanthemum. This is where it was last time I posted. As you can see some of the petals curve to the right and some to the left. Getting a nice angle on the diagonal stitches as they go round the tight curve at the end of the petal is much easier on those which curve to the left. The curve on the others was proving much more difficult to get a nice turn at the end. The three small petals (blue, red, and orange) at the bottom left of the picture have this right hand turn and you can see they seem much flatter. Last week I attended one of my twice yearly JE classes, so while there I spoke to my tutor about improving this curve and she suggested a very simple solution of using more grandchild stitches to make the curve tighter. I tried this and you can see the difference below.

This works much better, don't know why I didn't do this the first time, it gives a much more 3D effect to the petal ends.

Now I've got the hang of this I think the rest will go fairly fast (treasure ship permitting).

My reason for starting this blog was to track my journey along the path of Nuido so I deliberately have not included many details about the rest of my life. However you may remember in this post a picture of my 'lovely assistant'. Sadly a couple of weeks ago it was discovered that she had a huge tumour so I had to make the decision to have her put to sleep. Bonnington was the last surviving member of my little cat family. One sunny August day 17 years ago Kitcat (left) arrived uninvited and decided to stay, a couple of weeks later she delivered Oats (centre) and Bonnington (right). This photo is in their memory.

Exhibition in Manchester

2009-02-10T23:56:00.003Z

Well we had a wonderful three days at the Manchester International Convention Centre this last weekend. Thank you to everyone who came along to say hello and for all the lovely comments on our work. Have some photos which I'll post as soon as I can. My thanks as well to the rest of the gang - Carol-Anne and Sue (who braved the weather down south to drive up to the sunny north to join us for the weekend), to Elizabeth who joined us on Saturday, and to Denise. Have posted brief details of our next course over on the Japanese embroidery blog.

Just because it's pretty

2009-01-26T00:27:00.007Z

I've been looking back at all my photos of my stitching and thought I'd post a few pics of Cherry Dawn from JEC. For no reason at all except it is such a beautiful piece it makes my heart sing.

New year, new broom

2009-01-21T15:21:00.015Z

Well it's been a while, but all things technological are now working again and I'm able to edit photos so I'm back. Over the holidays I got less stitching done that I thought I would, isn't that always the way, but I did get some design work done (more of that later) which has been very interesting. I did get some work done on both Treasure Ship and Braided Chrysanthemum and will post about the chrysanthemum later. Over on the Japanese Embroidery blog I've written recently about the Legend of Takasago. In this legend Uba uses her broom to sweep away all sorrows and ill fortune. A broom appears on Treasure Ship representing the same kind of meanings. The broom is one of those old fashioned ones made from twigs (well probably not twigs, but one of those ones used in pictures of witches and broomsticks, I'm sure you know what I mean). The foundation of the broom is stitched with a flat gold thread, this gives it bulk. Over the top of this the twiggy bits are stitched using couched gold thread. It's a bit difficult to explain how this works but here goes. Work in a pair down to where the line forks, take one of the pair and work the off shoot backwards and forwards until it gets back to the main stem, work in a pair down to the next fork ... and so on. Fiddly, but actually quite enjoyable working all the little sections. I started at the top of the broom, by the handle, working from the outside to the centre. Then I filled in all the little twiggy bits on the bottom section. This helps in two ways, it means the lines down the top section of the broom are spaced fairly evenly not bunched to one side. And some of the middle sections (once we get down to the twiggy bits) are actually stitched over the top of the ones to the outside so it helps create a 3D effect.

After all the couching was completed it was time to stitch the binding of the broom. The foundation for this is made from two lines of tightly twisted padding cotton couched over the top of the foundation and gold work. The couching here is quite close together as I needed to make the foundation very firm. It was difficult to make it even as I had to avoid putting a stitch between the pairs of gold thread. As this is being covered up it isn't so much of a problem.

Foundation for three pairs of binding along the top of the broom.

Diagonal stitches in twisted silk thread then cover the foundation. Each line of padding is covered separately but there is no space between them.

I've said before that gold work is my least favorite bit of Japanese embroidery, but I actually quite enjoyed working this section. Probably because it wasn't just a case of couching round and round, but had lots of changes in direction. Plus it looks soooo pretty!

So here it is my new broom for the new year, I am really pleased with how it has turned out. Lets hope Uba is looking in this direction!

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T11:17:00.007Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

Meiji period fukusa, The Legend of Takasago

May 2009 bring you smooth silks and even stitches.

Still here ...

2008-12-06T12:38:00.003Z

Had an email from one of my JE friends the other day saying I'd been very quiet lately. So just a quick note to say I'm here and stitching. It's slow going at the moment, lots of layers, lots of stitching but it doesn't really look very different. I got a new book from Amazon the other day, the fourth in a series by Katsumi Yumioka, published by Pie Books. This one is on Obi and the colours of Japan. The first two are on kimono and their colours, the third on childrens kimono. Well worth getting hold of, lots of interesting information and lots of beautiful pictures for inspiration. So off to read now for an hour and then off to work.

Braided Chrysanthemum - the stitiching begins

2008-11-06T21:59:00.013Z

I've spent some time outlining the petals on the Braided Chrysanthemum, they aren't all done but I decided that the time had come to start putting in some colour. Besides I really wanted to see how the colour scheme looked on the red fabric. Because this is such a different colour scheme and for those Japanese embroiderers out there who might be interested I'm including the numbers of the JEC silks I'm using. (Incidentally, I had occasion to use some non-JEC flat silk recently and it is amazing just how much difference it made to the stitching. Nothing wrong with it I could put my finger on, but definitely not the same quality. I'll never complain about the price of JEC silk thread again, well I will but just in a general way!)

As usual the working is from front to back so the first thing to go in was the turnover of a petal. On the original some of these turnovers are worked in metallic threads and as this petal was going to be my most favorite green (474) I decided to work the end in a metallic green, using four strands of #1 thread.

All the twists on this piece will be worked with a basic 4-1, but on this one I took out .5 of a strand of silk and replaced it with one strand of the green metallic. It doesn't show up very well in the photo but it does catch the light in daylight.

Next went in an orange (228) and blue (518) petal both in a 4-1 twist. These don't have the turn overs on the end so they look slightly flatter than the green one. Next to go in were another shade of orange (226), red (106), white (801), and gold. Sorry these photos were taken after it had gone dark so the colour hasn't come out very well under the electric light. The white petal on the left is stitched using flat silk rather than twisted, it was a bit of an experiment, not sure I like it so it might come out and be replaced with a twist. The petals on this piece are a mix of diagonal stitch and cords. Now I enjoyed working the cords on my phase 5 piece, and it seemed to be one of those techniques which I 'got' straight away, which doesn't happen all the time (don't even talk to me about realistic technique!). But in all the pieces since phase 5 I haven't had to stitch any double or single central cords which this piece calls for. So the question was would I be able to get them right? And the answer, no ... This is a single central braid worked in light blue (514). The turnover was worked first with the 4-1 twist, then I started on the braid. This first attempt just didn't work, I couldn't get the angle of the stitching right. You can see here that the little squares in the middle of the braid aren't. Out it came and in went the second attempt which worked ok. These are a much better shape, it is awkward working braids round a curve, but starting on a curve is even trickier, so although these aren't perfect I'm quite happy with them.

All the braids are worked with flat silk in a 2-1, this white braid is a double central type.

This next petal was worked with an outline of dark blue (518), and the turnover was worked with shell gold. Shell gold (and silver) is a metallic thread which contains other colours (reds, greens, blues) as well as the basic gold or silver. I thought it would add an extra dimension to the piece. I like how it's turned out so I think I'll be using it again on other petals.

After I'd done the blue and white braids I could stitch some of the other petals so I made up some more twists and this is what it looks like at the moment. The yellow petal towards the bottom right is actually a bright acid yellow (308) which is really a bit over the top, but I think it looks great.

Spot the difference - 200 times!

2008-10-30T23:18:00.012Z

Work is on-going on treasure ship but it is slow going at the moment, hence the lack of posts. Some NEWS I have just reached the 200 HOURS stitching point so thought I'd share it with you. Have been doing some work on the pines which is very repetitive but they are starting to come together and look the part. This photo shows the various stages, flat silk foundation, veins, and gold section.

This is the 'spot the difference' section :-) There is about 10 hours difference between the first and second photo.

Braided Chrysanthemum - what colours where

2008-10-12T09:48:00.010+01:00

I've not been doing much stitching since I got back from Bournemouth. After five days of intense stitching I always seem to need some time away from it to gather my thoughts. Over the weekend I spent a few hours doing some planning on the chrysanthemum. As I changed the colours from the original it is not now possible to use the colour picture as a guide for stitching, so I decided to get out the felt tips and do some colouring in. I wanted to make sure that I didn't end up with too many petals of the same colour or with all the same colours in one section.

Version one

The petals which were white on the original I decided to leave white, so I marked them and then coloured the rest in. There is also a light blue in here, but I only had a light blue pencil rather than a felt tip, so it doesn't show up very well.

Version two

Then I did a second version just for some variation. Then I thought what would it look like if I used one of the colours more that the others (well I suppose that should be two colours, since the white petals are a colour as well of course), and so we have version three.

Version three

I think I've pretty much discounted version three, or at least in this colour way. The colours don't look the same on the white paper as they will on the red silk of course, perhaps when I actually put thread to fabric I'll change my mind.

No work next weekend so I'll be able to get some stitching done and will hopefully have an update on this and Treasure Ship.

Braided Chrysanthemum - the beginning

2008-10-10T00:04:00.013+01:00

Wow, this is my 50th post, that crept up on me a bit. Happy Blogging to us all. This is the start of a new piece, Braided Chrysanthemum, you can see the original here on the JEC site - second row first on the left. I saw this on the Kurenai-kai site and just fell in love with it. The pictures here don't do the colour of the fabric which is a wonderful rich red. Each of the petals of this big spider chrysanthemum is formed either by a braid or diagonal layer. The size of the piece doesn't really come across in the photo here, but the flower goes almost from side to side of the fabric (about 30cm) and is about the same from the top petal to the bottom petal. This piece isn't either a phase piece or a practice piece, it comes from an obi design, so there were no instructions with this when it arrived just a colour picture, a design sheet, and a list of colours. If you've been to look at the original you'll notice that on this picture there is no blue dyed section in the centre of the flower. I was very disappointed by this when it first arrived, and really quite upset as I loved the original so much. However I was busy with Iris Stream and Treasure Ship, so I put my disappointment aside, put it in the 'to do' folder and tried not to think about it.

Having completed Iris Stream and with my stitching week in Bournemouth coming up I thought that I'd go back to this one and frame it up so I could sort out the colours when there. I also started doing some outlining of the petals, this helps support the cords during the stitching process.

Actually when I took this out of the folder to frame it up I decided I rather liked it without the blue section in the centre of the flower. So all turned out ok. I may decide to put some blue in with fuzzy effect once all the rest is stitched. Only time will tell. I always enjoy choosing colours but I haven't yet developed the skill of my tutor for putting colours together. So this is how we came up with a new colour scheme, first I placed onto the fabric a tube each of the colour scheme sent by JEC. Then I got out colours I liked and/or brighter versions of the original colours. Then they all went back again and I got out wild and wonderful colours, including the bright green I used on Himotabe below (which strangely seemed to work with the red) but I wasn't convinced. Enter Sensei Margaret stage left to save the day. After swapping colours around for a while we kept some of the colours I choose (including the green), added a couple of new ones, and kept a couple of the originals. I'm not going to share the final colour scheme with you here - it will be revealed over time. You can be sure that it'll be very bright and I think will make Himotabe quite dull!! Following the previous post about the copyright problems JEC are having. I'm not going to include links on any of the photographs on this blog any more (plus I'll be going back to take the others out). This means that it will no longer be possible to download any photos from here. Sorry, but I feel very strongly about this copyright issue. However, if any JE student out there would like a copy of a photo for reference when they are working on a piece I'll be happy to send a copy over - just drop me an email.

Copyright Theft

2008-10-07T18:05:00.003+01:00

I found out recently that the Japanese Embroidery Center have been experiencing some problems with copyright theft of their designs. It seems that this has become such a problem that the Center have had to go to the trouble and expense of using special copy resistant paper for the design sheets which go with our pieces. I've thought about this for a few days wondering why people would do this or why anyone who knows about it would condone it and these are my thoughts. It is outrageous (not to mention criminal) that Kurenai-kai, JEC, and all the people past and present who have been involved in bringing Japanese embroidery to the west are being taken advantage of in this way. I have no idea who may be taking part in this horrible behaviour, or how many innocent people are being taken advantage of by being sold these pirated designs, but I really hope they are not connected to JEC in any way. I would like to encourage any Japanese embroidery student or tutor who thinks that they may have been a victim of this criminal behavior to contact JEC and report it. Even if you only suspect your design may be pirated please get in touch with JEC and ask them to check it for you. Lets all join together to support JEC in stamping out this dreadful behaviour.

Iris & class

2008-10-05T21:21:00.005+01:00

Seems ages since I last posted, and having checked the date on the last post, it has been a while. Treasure Ship is progressing slowly but surely, but there have been very few changes which are interesting to share. At this point it requires a lot of repetitive work and one pine is very much like the next! For anyone who's counting I'm up to about 180 hours and the end is in sight. Just had a very enjoyable week in Bournemouth with all my stitching friends old and new. I always feel a bit cut off up here in the cold and damp north, hours away from everyone else, so it is always nice to meet up, exchange news, and catch up with what everyone has been doing. Two of our stitching colleagues from Guernsey are having an exhibition of their work which started yesterday. If you are going to be on the island in the next month visit the exhibition at the Coach House Gallery, Les Islets, St Peters, Guernsey until 7th November. Three of the five days in Bournemouth were spent working on treasure ship, one day was spent choosing colours and doing some preparation for a new piece, and another day on the iris' which are now completed. I am very pleased with how they have turned out and have learned a lot working on this interesting fabric, which will I'm sure stand me in good stead for future pieces. These iris' were always intended to be offered for sale at one of the local galleries here, but I have to admit I'll be sorry to see them go.

And suddenly as if by magic ...

2008-09-21T16:38:00.006+01:00

First take a piece of kimono silk. Think about some colours and techniques and exchange emails with your tutor for some advice on colours, then start to stitch. Then stitch some more ... ... and a little bit more ... ... and a little bit more ... and suddenly, as if by magic (well some 50 hours of stitching later), a lovely bunch of flowers have arrived in my front room!

This has been an interesting piece to stitch, kind of half way between creating a full design from scratch and stitching a pre-designed piece. I have enjoyed figuring out colours and techniques and have learned quite a lot, about what both works and what doesn't.

Iris and treasure

2008-09-15T00:14:00.007+01:00

One of the pieces which has been in my 'to stitch' folder for a while was this design of iris' and stepping stones. It caught my eye because of the interesting fabric it was on. It is quite a loose weave with interesting woven patterns some of which seem to represent water and some geometrical patterns. I decided to frame it up last week to have it as 'light relief' from Treasure Ship (which is going on slowly but surely). The plan was to work most of the design in a line of staggered diagonals and a few of the leaves and the main flower in diagonal layer. It took me a while to get used to working on such open weave and after I'd worked a few of the leaves and one of the flowers I wasn't sure if what I had planed was working. So a few emails back and forth for some opinions and guidance it was decided to include fuzzy effect as well. So here is the first of the flowers worked with a line of staggered diagonals and filled in with fuzzy effect. There is another iris behind this one which I am going to work just as an outline.

A close up of the main petal from the iris above. You can see from this photos just how open the weave is.

The start of the main iris and some leaves worked with one strand of flat silk in diagonal or weft layer.

I'm finding it much easier to work on this fabric now. It's a bit odd though, the normal tension we would put on the silk is too much for this fabric and it pulls the warp and weft threads out of place, so I've had to get used to not pulling the thread as much as I would normally. However it all seems to be working out now and I'm very pleased with how it is going.

Front and back, back and front

2008-08-21T22:59:00.005+01:00

As regular readers will know I finally finished stitching the Hoitsu Scroll Iris Stream, so on Wednesday evening I spent a couple of hours going through the finishing process. This is quite different to what is done with other forms of embroidery, but is a very important part of the process. Finishing the piece correctly helps to keep the stitches tight which in turn helps the silk keep its shine. This is not a difficult process but it is a bit fiddly and it is important to get it right and to be able to go through the whole process without any interruptions. Even after completing 10 or more pieces the finishing process still makes me nervous as I am aware that at this point it is possible to ruin many hours of work. I was going to go into more details of the finishing process, but it is difficult to explain and probably boring to read so am just posting a photo of the back of Iris Stream once the finishing process has been done.

The Back

And, of course, a picture of the front

Rain washes up more treasure

2008-08-17T22:27:00.009+01:00

As with most of the UK we in the NW have been suffering from yet more wet weather this weekend. Had a few nice hours but then the heavens opened again and down it came, I really don't know where it is all coming from. In any case it didn't stop me stitching so it really didn't matter. I decided I would do some more goldwork so have done some work on the pines and fan. The black and gold clouds on the fan are worked in a twisted black and #1 gold thread and they require short stitch holding to keep them in place. First I completed that and then I edged the fan with #4 gold.

The blue edge on the fan represents the outer fan stick, the lines on the handle of the fan represent the edges of the other fan sticks. I wanted to make these a little different to the clouds and the other edges so I worked them in two lines of #1 twisted gold. After finishing the fan I went back to some of the pines. First I completed the veins on the leaves then couched #3 gold round the bottom of the leaves.

Starting on the outside edge the gold is couched round and round until the top and bottom of the shape touch. As this point the middle of the round shape is filled in, the gold is finished off and the couching starts again on the next shape.

By the time I'd done the top two pines I'd had enough of couching so I packed it in at that point, but I am very pleased with how they are looking.