Showing posts with label Rust Red Iris Needlepainting. Show all posts

 

The Rust Red Iris went off the other day to it’s recipient, Sally, for her birthday.

She’s framed it ….. looking good!

Now to finish the Poppies before Kit’s birthday on the 28th.

I thought I'd show the Iris out of the hoop and with the protective muslim removed, before it's washed and blocked.
You can't really see, but it's *filthy*

I've realized that I need to cut the backing to size and hem it to the back of the linen - I'll do that after washing, so the two pieces of material can move independantly. I'd hate them to pull against each other.

And here's the back :
I'm not a very tidy person, as you can see.

And here it is!

That last petal worked to bring all of the colours (the golds and the reds) together.

Next is to wash and block it. I'm going to use the instructions in NeedleNThread
http://www.needlenthread.com/2007/12/finish-work-how-to-frame-piece-of.html
I hope the couple of tension problems I have resolve themselves in that process.

I'm not going to frame it. The piece of linen it's on is quite large, with a cut lace edging.
Once it's washed and ironed, I'll take a photo with the camera!

I'm looking forward to getting it out of it's frame!

I enjoyed doing this petal. I think it worked pretty well. :-)

I've got some comments about the way I do things :

• When there's a change between two hues of colours that are not 'next' to each other in the colour scheme but I need them to blend- such as from lightest gold suddenly to dark gold.

When this happens, the change stands out a lot if I do it 'normally' with long and short stitch. I've been 'helping' the transition by doing a split stitch on the first line of stitches of the new colour.

The scan after this one, in the bottom left corner, shows the dark orange on top of the light orange *before* the split stitching. Nothing gentle about that blending! Also the angle of a couple of them look wrong, even tho they aren't.

The split stitch has the effect of making the new stitches skinnier, so they don't stand out as much. The next line of the new colour is done just as normal.

The stitches aren't particularly clear in the scan - but see the change from dark orange to light orange? I have no idea whether I should be doing this or not, but it seems to work.

• Long Curves.

I'm talking about the situation where a colour has a long long way to go on a curve.

I've looked in the instructional parts of Trish Burr but haven't found anything particularly helpful on this, except the mention of using short stitches. Nothing on hiding the joins, which is what I'm going to be describing here. It may be that I'm not approaching curves correctly, but this method seems to work ok.


A curve consists of lots of short lines.

The scan above shows some curving of the light orange and the partially done curving of the cream, finished.


More to the point, you can also see the short stitches that I used to make up the curves for the remainder of the light orange on the bottom right hand side there. These are 'real' stitches that I've placed as guidelines in preparation for adding in the rest of the stitches. They are the longest straight lines I can make, and still get that acute curve.

They can't be too long, or the 'curve' ends up being a series of lines at angles that are too acute and it looks like a 'shoulder' or abrupt change in angle, not a curve.

I've found that I then need to go back over the joins of these lines and insert some random stitches. Otherwise there is a distinct line where the short lines change angle.

I try to vary these short lines a bit, in order to avoid this line - but given you are working on an angle that is only changing slowly, there's a limit to how much you can move the placement of the lines.

On the scan, following the curve of the light orange/gold anti-clockwise, the joins of the straight lines can be seen. I hadn't placed the 'hiding' stitches yet. I had further up the curve, and you can't see the joins.

Random stitches over the top to hide that meeting line seems to be the best way to go - although, like I said, I am doing this only because I've found that it seems to work.


Here's a picture of the actual design.

The curves look like they are all straight stitches, that somehow just ... fit into the curves. The pixellation makes it impossible to see if in fact 2 or 3 shorter lines were used to make a curve, then the joining lines hidden.

• Once upon a time, a long long time ago, I was a gymnast.
  

When preparing a routine for a competition, I'd choose a favourite music track.
By the time of the comp, I would hate that music track. I would have heard it so many many many times by then.

I wouldn't say doing an embroidery design is exactly the same. I don't hate the design by any means. But I wouldn't like to work on a design I didn't like in the first place, because there is SO much effort involved, and you spend so many hours just staring at the design, trying to work out how it's done. Loving the design to start with helps *grin*.

I think the "90%" done stage is a frustrating one. So close yet so far.

• I've found that I work on an area in 3 or 4 stages

The first is the basic laying down of the stitches as I think they should go.

The second is looking back at the original design and making some changes to my work. Making small adjustments here and there - adding extra stitches to change the shape slightly or to emphasize an area of blending, perhaps.

The third is the 'fix up' such as filling in any gaps, hiding joins etc

The fourth is like the second stage again, but it's after I've had some time to go away, and then come back and look at the design again. Or it may be that I've completed an entire petal and want to make a change so it fits together as a whole.

It's a very organic process, I can say that much.

Michael and Mary, I'd love to hear your comments about these methods (and anyone else! :-)

Kit, my friend who is also a graphics designer, had a look at the iris with an objective eye the other day. I've stared at the pattern and the embroidery for so many hours now I can no longer see it objectively and pick up these sorts of mistakes.

She discovered the following issues :

(following the circles up from the bottom)

• The bottom needed a "horizon line" to average out the bottom end of the embroidery to be straight. This is to stop the poppy looking as though it was leaning over, especially since it has the big stem coming out at a 60 degree or so angle above it.

• The stem emerging from the bud needed just a few more stitches, so it emerged from the bottom of the bud, not 2 mm or so above the bottom.
  

• The width of the stem needed to be even (I knew that one, just hadn't gotten around to it)

• I'd re-done the fold over at the top of that back leaf just before I spoke to Kit.
  

I wanted it to look like my other fold overs, which look much nicer (eg the one just to the left of it, in browny-gold).
My fix didn't look good. (What is shown is the old version, before the fix. I haven't got an image with the fix).

I've re-done it since, but I'm still not happy with it. However, the material is stretching, after being a bit abused, so I'm going to leave it be.

I originally mixed the colours on that foldover by going over and over, doing lots of layers in that small space. Trish talks about leaving gaps in the book, but I didn't understand what she meant at the time. I do now.

You literally leave gaps inbetween each stitch, and then come back and fill in with the other colour/s later on.
It does get a bit eye twisting when you are doing it in long and short stitch, because you are alternating both the stitch length, and the horizontal gaps between the stitches, but it's easy on a fold over when you are using satin stitch.

Here's a pic where the lower fold over has mid-orange mixed with dark orange :

The fold over isn't 'built up' to get that colour mix, because I left space for the second colour.

I have a number of other areas I'm not happy with

• the small leaf down the bottom. Kit couldn't recognise it as a small leaf until I told her what it was.

• the bottom half of the right petal - with that mix of green, pink and cream. It just ain't right.

• the 'line of light' running down the stem just wasn't bright enough
  

• I realised a big ooopsy. Looking at the back leaf - it's right side should proceed right down into the middle of the iris, down to the base of the iris centre, from which all petals should emerge - not stop at the TOP of the iris centre. (That's my mistake, remembering that I changed the design)
  

Re-doing it would be an absolute nightmare, as the colours would have to be re-done. I'm just going to leave it be.

To balance the bad, I love

• that left bud, which kind of looks like a seashell

• the petal I've just done, in brown/golds (although the change-over to the darker colours at it's bottom right isn't *quite* right
  

• the petal I'm doing at the moment

I think the 'line of light' running down the stem is now TOO light (even lighter in the scan).
*sigh*
But all the other problems are fixed.

The final leaf mixes the brown/gold with the reds, to pull it all together.

This was the easiest petal I've done

• Like the right petal, the left petal naturally divides itself in two. Here's the top of it :-)

• There is a shadow under that little flap. The book said to use the darkest colour but it stood out too much. I used a dark red instead, and it seems to work ok.
  

• I've got some tension problems - below the right petal and to the right of the right bud. I hope they don't stay once I've blocked the embroidery

• The bottom half of the right petal (the last one I did) looked funny to me with the mixture of light green, dark green, pink and cream. I realized that it was because they were long stitches, whereas the rest of the petal had quite short stitches as an effect of blending the colours so much.

So I took some pink and some cream and put in some small stitches, splitting the long stitches to break them up

• I'd needed to put a line up the edges of the top petal, because it was merging with the right petal and I've added one on the left to match.

• For the bottom half of the left petal, which I'm about to do, I actually took the design and marked out the different sections in pencil on the page. Those markings were already on the embroidery itself, but I found a couple of extra, including a shading that I hadn't noticed and a bit of a change in shapes.

I think marking the shapes on the design page is a good idea and I'm going to keep doing it from now on. It's really hard seeing what's happening. The lines are blurred because it's long and short stitch (that's the whole point) but where do you place that basic "cross over" line, especially dealing with odd shapes?

I think adding in this left petal is really making the iris look like more harmonized and is a big step, because it brings the centre into the design, instead of one red petal and a brown centre.

Any comments on why I have the tension problem most welcome.

I did take out quite a lot of the green, and put in some pink - to try to work it in more naturally.
The difference between the top and bottom parts is quite clear with the change in stitch direction.

Looking at the scan makes me wonder if I need to do some work on the at that part of the petal - where the pink/cream/green/dark green mix starts. There's a curved light line that seems to be standing out a lot.

I'm also tempted to add some more dark edge on the top part - but that's not the pattern and I know that I'm a sucker for the darker colours. I'll see how it looks with the flower more completed. I think the dark edging on the bottom part has worked beautifully, but it looks so patchwork-y on the top part.

I also put in a split stitch line of two different pinks between the top petal and this right one, to make the delineation a bit clearer. It is a bit clearer in the original than the scan because you can see the texture of the stitches, as well as the colours.

So these are all small design decisions to be made later when I see what the flower looks like as a whole.

I think this sort of process/thinking is shown by how the fold over at the top of the top petal looks a lot more natural even with just the marking up on the left petal next to it. Giving it some company makes it look like it belongs.

Onto the back petal - it's all marked up. It's in more brownish sort of colours, which will tie into the centre. Yummy - more new colours to work with.

The right petal can be divided distinctly into two halves - the colours and the stitch direction change (the stitch direction on the bottom half is more curved)

So here's the bottom half

and the flappy bit on the top petal, which I'd forgotten to do last time I posted. It looks lumpy on the scan - but that's the lighter colours 'coming forward'.

I felt like it was an exercise in geometry - look at the way the un-embroidered part of the petal is marked up.

It's hard work trying to get the blend of colours right in the petal. I've had to do a lot of over-sewing simply to get them mixed up enough. I hope, with experience, that I will be able to put down just one layer and end up with a completely random mix, but I can't do it yet. I need to add more stitches on top of the existing ones.

I keep thinking of Michael Cook's peony, where he seemed to achieve colour mix without too much oversewing (or any!)

I might extend the darkest green a bit. I'll see how it is when the whole petal is done, because the bit above is a small bit of cream then a lot of light pink, so the dark green might end up in proportion with that.

Ok - this time I worked it from the top down, and it turned out perfectly, except ......
I nearly went MAD filling in the cream.

I wanted to avoid a herringbone look for the centre, but there seemed no way to get around it.
I did it 4 times, and tried using very long stitches (as the design does)

but then ended up with a lot of very small stitches, and texturally it looked terrible.

So I ended up doing it 'herringbone' last night.

Ooops - haven't done the turnover at the left top yet

It looks very red- but other petals have the brown of the hood, and will 'bring them together'.
I do love the graduating reds - it looks great!

This is the top petal about as I'm doing it - since some of it has been cut off at the bottom by my design of the hood, I'll be doing from above the line :-


Here's the petal, outlined in thread and all marked up with stitch direction, and approximate divisions for the colours :-

Trish Burr said to start from the top outer edge and go down, but I thought I'd do 'light before dark'. I was worried that I'd run out of space for all 5 colours required, in spite of my planning.

And it hasn't worked. The 'tower' of lightest colour going up through the middle of the petal isn't high enough and is the wrong shape - too squat. The stitch direction along the bottom isn't right. The stitches curve as they go up the petal, and I just don't know what I'm doing at the bottom there.

So I'm going to take the scissors to this, and start again, this time from the top edge (listening to the designer!). It might work from bottom up and I just stuffed it up, or it may be that this particular shape only works when stitched one way. I don't know. I'm looking forward to seeing a petal in all it's shading tho :-)

Firstly, DragonSally (for whom this iris is for) helped me by finding some more images of bearded irises.

This one is the closest in design, and photographic angle to the one I'm doing :



This picture below shows all of those inner parts of the iris and how complicated they are. No way was I going to try and reproduce that, any more that Trish Burr tried. I've stuck with my simple hood.


Right Bud :
I'm not 100% happy with the way this turned out. There are little problems with the shapes of various parts of the bud.

I put a line of split stitch in cream up the side, to delineate the vertical 'fold' but it doesn't quite look like the design.

I think the cream fringe ended up being a bit too small.

I do like the inner part.

Also, as I stitched the bud, the stitches in the long leaf next to it got all loose. I did some more stitches over the top and secured them down again, but I've obviously got tension problems.

There is some puckering down the right side of the bud, and a bit between the other bud and the stem as well.

I think this is partly because one of my cats sits on the frame at every opportunity, trying to grab my attention since the frame gets so much of my attention, so I'm constantly re-tightening the material.

Also, the frame is cracked at the top where the screw tightens it.

And, of course, any problems I've caused myself.



The Stem :

I did some more work on the stem, making the area of lightest green even. I also put in a bit more darkest green at the top. The stem looks at bit funny because it narrows just after it intersects with the long leaf. I might have to re-visit that (not now - I'll scream)

That's what takes so much time with this. Not laying down the stitches, but fiddling around laying down more stitches here and there and everywhere trying to get everything to look right.



The Hood :

I'm really pleased with this - especially since I took a risk and changed the design.

I used one strand of cream Madeira silk together with the 3 different colours of DMC each used to make the French knots for the beard, and I think it looks good. It makes it stand out a little.
I've noticed that over time as the piece gets worked on, the threads kind of .... retreat and get 'worn in'. French Knots don't end up standing up as much as they started off doing. Although stitches amalgamate together better. I think it's a hand pressure thing as I work on other parts.

I'm wondering whether to extend the beard down a little over that front petal, but that will have to be done after the front petal is done, which is the last one (working from the back petals to the front, - right then left then finally the front one, so it'd be the very last thing I'd do in the piece. I'll see.

Now I've almost finished the right bud I've turned my attention to the actual iris, and had to deal with a problem that's been bothering me for ages.

Looking at centre of the original design, there's a hooded thing, with the iris beard emerging at the bottom. The centre and most of the right of the hood is hidden by a petal emerging from the middle of the centre.

Believe me, I've spent hours staring at this, and just can't make sense of it. Not of that petal emerging from the hood.

I don't know if I'm not seeing the design correctly. Especially since the stitch direction lines on the black and white version of the design didn't seem to match up.

I looked at lots of pictures of bearded iris's yesterday and I've just made some design changes.
They make sense to me, and I need to understand what I'm stitching if it's going to work.

I've done the hood in entirety, and have that petal rising up behind it.
I've also extended the petal on the right a bit, to go behind the hood.
I just did the hood with waffly edges, and uneven sides, with the beard coming out of the middle.

There's a bit of smudged pink around because I started with tailor's chalk but I couldn't draw clearly enough with it, so I switched to pen (!). There are a couple of corrections there, but I know how it's supposed to go.

I'll have to alter the shading a bit as well.

If anyone can understand the original, do tell. Then I'll scream - but it'll be a bit late.

Now to finish the right bud - I've just got a line of highlighting to do.

The remainder of the threads arrived the other day - the ones for the petals. I put them over the embroidery so they could be seen against the existing colours - but it didn't work, did it! But you can see the colours. The dark shades are yummy.

Almost finished the right bud. Looking good. I've been out of commission for the last 4 days, so progress has been a bit slow.

I've done a lot of blending of light gold and light green, and broken it up a lot more.

I'm happy now.

When I finished embroidering yesterday, I thought I'd finished the flower base.
It looked like this :


(Here's the original pattern again)


I noticed that the dark green bit on the right wasn't the right shape. It was too skinny.
So I added some fatness.

There just wasn't enough green in the middle part of it. (of any shade). Given the khaki looks so like the light gold, I was left with a single blue-green stripe down the middle.

With the "frilly bit with a gold base and light khaki top" I realised that the base of it wasn't dark enough. It and the khaki just blended together (lightest khaki and light gold are actually quite similar).

The book said "use shadeS of gold. " even though only one colour of gold was specified for this part of the flower. So I took the next darker shade of gold that is used in the entire embroidery and used one strand of it and the light gold as a double thread to sew over the base, upon which became dark enough to stand out a bit.

I did the same thing with the line that runs across the base of the flower base (between it and the stem) that is in stem stitch because I had the same problem.

I also noticed that my stitch direction was wrong - more horizontal than vertical. I figure that while I'm learning this, it's a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy - trying to place the stitches correctly in order to blend well. and also place them in the specified direction. Or I'm just not paying enough attention. *grin*

The direction I'd used looked fine, it just wasn't the one specified in the book. By going horizontal I had made it look rounder.

I sat and stared at it for awhile, and realized that I wasn't quite happy with it yet.

I spent a couple of hours on it this morning

You can really see what I was talking about with the light gold vs the cream being the lightest colours in my version. The cream is on the left. It's just as clear in the original in the book that it's a different colour to the light gold.

It looks a bit TOO bright on the scan - there's the tiny almost fluorescent speck there, the whole patch looks 'lit up' and it doesn't look like it blends into the light khaki very well as the bottom. It does in reality.

I realized that the overall shape of the bud was incorrect. The dark green bit and the cream ruffle now didn't match up with the rest of the right hand side of the ruffle. I don't know what is going on there. I had a stitched outline!

Anyway, easy enough to fix by adding a bit more to the right hand side further down.

And the left hand side had taken on a curve. I rounded it off again with some khaki and light gold.

This morning I just 'worked' with the colours. I added in a second green to the "green stripe" I added in more of all the colours just here and there. Mucking around to make it look right.

The strange thing was that as I went I was only looking at the pattern occasionally (mostly for the placement of the green) whereas when I originally stitched the base I was eyeballed-stuck-to-the-page to the pattern). My stitch direction changed and went vertical. It ended up looking more like the pattern in terms of stitch direction than it had before!

The effect of doing this is that the base has ended up with two or three layers of stitching and is looking quite padded. That's fine - it kind of suits it given that it's the base of the flower - slightly higher than the stem.

The one thing I don't like is that I lost the "back parts are done first, front parts done last" thing, which, in addition to the padding I've ended up with, means that the ruffle doesn't 'sit forward' like I think it should. You can see in last night's version of the base that the ruffle seems to stand out more. I'm not going to add another layer of stitching, exactly the same as the existing layer, to bring it up to the height of the rest of the base!

I did add some cream into the pale part of the ruffle to mix with the existing light gold because pale colours 'jump out' and it'd help it look 'forward'.

Somewhere along the way, I added a few random stitches of different greens into the stem so it looked a little less stripey. It looks stripey in the pattern, but not regimental stripey.

Something I still have to fix is that the pale part (that I did in stem stitch) is too wide across at the base.

Well, I've certainly made this flower base my own. Looking at it sitting next to me now, I can see where a single stitch of one of the blue greens would fit in well.

Also, I think it could do with some more blending on the left hand side. The division between the cream and the green looks very bold. I find that seeing pictures of the embroidery on the screen gives a different viewpoint and I can see problems that I didn't spot in the original, or have gotten used to seeing and just 'accept' them. I find the same thing with my calligraphy.

Here it is as a full picture :



I'm going to start on that right bud now after just a tad more work on the base.

It'll be interesting to see if I've learnt from the base, and find this bud more straight forward. It does have tricky bits but I'm looking forward to it especially doing that inner bit.

It's the base of the iris next, not the right bud.

Here's the base of the iris, and then the specified DMC threads


Call me crazy, but I'm having trouble here.

There is definitely a cream patch on the left hand side, much lighter than any of the other colours.

There is one of the khaki greens used (second thread alone), and this is used heavily in the front part of the base - in three separate sections. You can see where I've marked up where the various colours go.

From the left - (well, I'm not sure - it's all a blur!), then
cream overlaid by khaki,
khaki,
green that is 5th thread along,
khaki.

Then a ruff of lightest green (third thread along) and light gold (second thread along)

and then at the back, the two darkest greens (6th and 7th)

Having written that out, it's not as bad as I thought. It only leaves green #4 unloved. I'll try some in the front section on that blurred section.

But still, that cream patch. No way is it light gold (otherwise the lightest colour).

I'm sure it's my problem picking out the colours. This is my first project. And it doesn't really matter as long as it all looks good. This base is bringing together the blue-greens of the stem with the yellow-green of the leaves.

Writing this out has helped heaps.
And I can see a bit of re-working on the horizon. I shall call it 'playing'. *grin*

Green! Green! It's all green!

Anyone reading this, please don't spend one iota of a second trying to work it out. The scans are way too off (and too unclear on the threads). I'm just muttering to myself - and it did help me to write it out.

It'll be interesting if I do introduce the cream and it does look totally out of place. There's always the problem of getting the colour printing correct in books as well.

It was exciting changing to a different hue of green.

The stem was in stem stitch (appropriate enough).

That lightest part of the long part of the stem. I did that in a slanted stitch (so it ended up with the stitches closer together than stem stitches) to make it stand out more. In the design, that colour looks a lot lighter and stands out more, but I do have the right colours.

On getting the right colours to use for the project - I have 4 boxes of DMC thread, very few of which have thread numbers on them. Kit sent me her DMC colour card, so I was able to match the colours. I still can't believe how many shades of green there are. I have 4/5 of a box of green and I still had a lot of trouble getting the right ones.

It's going to be a race whether I receive all the terracotta colours from the on-line thread company in the mail before I get up to needing them. The colour card was too old to have them, and there was just no way I was going to be able to match them from the picture in the book (yes, I spent an hour trying). And no numbers on the cards meant trying to match the thread colours to possible colours on the computer screen as another alternative .... uh uh. I just bought 15 terracotta/mahogany shades new. It was a lot easier!

Something about working with the design. I find that I alternate between working with the design as closely as possible, and working 'freelance' to make the piece look 'right'. It's not possible for me to follow the design perfectly so I do need to add in some adjustment factor for where I've made accidental changes. I'm just talking about placing single threads and stitches here.

Given that sort of thinking - the cream foldover halfway down the bud has some light brown markings on it. I didn't do them. I thought it looked fine as it was. I have had trouble with threads (even tho they are single threads) looking too bulky, and have actually groomed them in with a fingernail on occasion to get them to physically blend. I just wasn't go to go there with the brown when I was already happy.

Onto the right hand bud, which I'm looking forward to. It managed to loose it's frilled edge when I sewed the long leaf, so I drew it back in, and did a few extra stitches on the leaf edge to compensate where I'd made more of an 'innie' on the bud. I did outline the outline - I don't know how the frills disappeared!

Mary C (NeedlenThread) just said something important to me. She thought I might have had problems with those leaves because I did the darker colours before the light.

That doing the lighter colours then blending over the dark works much better

Light, then dark

Light, then dark

Trish Burr said to work down from a certain part, but I worked up, just because it was easier for me physically and I didn't know any reason not to.

Light, then dark.

That's much better -although I might revisit the light gold on the tip of the long leaf.