Negative space explored

 I love working with the negative space in lace. It’s fun to design with that element so prominent. I like paying attention to the silence in music also. A well-placed rest can bring a melody to life.

When we pulled up stakes and moved a decade ago, I found a wonderful group of fiber crafters and artists in my new town. Several meet once a month to explore all things Embroidery as part of a chapter in the Embroiderer’s Guild of America. I’ve learned a huge amount about thread and design and finishing and creativity from this group. Our October meeting explored a simple Hardanger project. Here’s what I have so far:

Mistake fixed

 Remember this funexperiment? Well, upon further examination, it’s a fail. Snowflakes in nature have 6 points. This one ended up with 7. Now, there is a reasonable explanation.

I needed to add yarn to both “shuttles” to have enough to finish out the snowflake. I cut extra long lengths just so I wouldn’t be distracted by fiddling with short ends. Then, I got so caught up in the adding that I lost my place in the pattern. I added alright…..7 extra rings.

I set it aside. For a week….or more……

Then I decided I really would like to gift the snowflake. Out came the mistake, out came the pattern, out came the scissors. But I was having difficulty figuring out which rings to keep and which to cut. So, out came the stitch markers to identify which rings started the repeat, which rings were extra, and which rings I needed to join.

After sleeping overnight on that, I took a breath and cut out rings. Now to figure out exactly what I needed to tat where. Since I picked out enough of the remaining rings to have a good long length of yarn, I was confident that I could tat the final ring while hiding ends. I just needed to figure out where to hide ends, if it was possible to join or if I was just going to tie knots. Oh, and one small detail:

I realized I didn’t have a good enough grasp of the hook tatting technique. I needed to use shuttle or needle. With yarn, needle it was.

After another sleep, I felt I was ready to set up the needle, grab a flosser to help hide 1 end, and sacrifice to the knotting gods (i.e. brew the appropriate cup of tea) to get this show on the road.

Here’s what I ended up with. Now to grab a tapestry needle to hide the other 2 ends.

Tada…..

All fixed.

Ready to gift.

How where’s that glass of wine????

Another Assisi project

 

Here’s my third little sample. I hope it will work for the fundraiser.

Seems I took a short Holiday

I realized last weekend that I neglected to post Thursday. Oops. I got caught up in working on other things and just didn’t pay attention to this detail. My bad. So what distracted me?

House stuff: The bricks in our fireplace need to be reset so that the back doesn’t fall into the firebox.

A fellow organist is traveling out of the country for an unplanned trip to family. I can’t cover all of her upcoming services, but I did pick up one.

My tatting time has been mostly figuring out how to adjust the bootie pattern for a bigger foot. I see the need for using smaller size thread so that little toes and fingers don’t get caught up in the lace. My resident engineer designer has been helping with where to add stitches. This is what I have so far.

Thoughts of Negative

No, I’m not angry at the World. I try to be positive overall. I have been stitching up small Assisi motifs for a fund raiser. The focal point of the design is where the background cloth shows through your stitches. In this case, cross stitch. I’ve enjoyed stitching them before. I have benefitted in my tatting designing from learning about this style of surface embroidery. Negative space is more important. I have one more motif to stitch up. Here’s the second one I’ve done:

Sifting through ideas

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time brainstorming ideas. Several will make good workshops. Several are just not good. Or at least not good enough to spend more time on them. I’ll be spending the next few days sorting through everything to decide what to work on over the next few months. After all, Christmas is coming!

The good kind of Fireworks

 Living in California, we have “fire season” (which is just about year-round now) when you cannot have fires on your property or shoot off fireworks. It’s against the law. Really, we mean it. The goal is not to have fires that burn homes….or people.

Summer Fireworks
designer: Anne-Marie Anderson-Mayes

A couple of years ago I completed a canvas with some interesting stitches. The designer, Anne-Marie Anderson-Mayes, named it Autumn Fireworks. It was fun to stitch! Last weekend, I completed my version of Summer Fireworks. I really like the center block. I’d like to use that stitch combined with some tatting. More to imagine……..