Embroidered Art

This colorful craziness is a piece I did right before I graduated from college and got married. I used an intaglio print bird I had done, printed on fabric, and arranged in a three by three grid. It's quilt-like, but intended to be hung on the wall. Every other bird is either painted or embroidered, and then sewn onto additional squares of mixed print fabric, and bordered in a wonderful umbrella print from Kaffe Fassatt. The result is kind of weird, very non-traditional, brightly colorful; and I've never been quite sure what to make of it!

Pincushiony

This pincushion marks one of my first forays into embroidery. I was able to finish this project pre-Baby for the handmade pincushion swap on Ravelry, one of the best swaps ever! I hope my partner likes it. The side and bottom fabric is from a scrap I purchased, and looks so retro-flowery to me.

Of collars and cuffs

I've been trying to keep busy with lots of projects while waiting for Baby (now overdue). These cuffs were made for a winter white swap on Ravelry, and I love how they turned out, I almost couldn't part with them. The white lace is from the French Alencon lace that my wedding dress was made of, sewn onto linen and embroidered for a little pop of color.


These were mailed separately and are intended to be worn as a bracelet, but apparently in the '50's, women would have sets of removable cuffs and collars to wear with their sweaters. They could remove and wash them when dirty, or just change them up to match different outfits. Great idea, huh? Especially for hard-to-wash wool and silk sweaters. I suppose they probaby attached the collars and cuffs to buttons on the sleeves of their sweaters. Hmmm...this may be the start of a new project.

If you have any vintage collars or cuffs of this sort, will you share your knowledge, please?

Wooly Wonderfuls

For free entertainment Saturday nights, we sometimes go to the bookstore and get a big pile of books to page through or read (yes, we're those people, who read and do not, usually, buy). DH and I split up, collect some books we want to look at, and meet at the cafe. I have to say, I don't expect much from the craft selection, as I've pretty much exhausted it at most stores. But Saturday, I found this little jewel of a book, Wooly Embroidery; it is worth all of $14.95. There are great instructions for all kinds of embroidery, including crewel, using wool thread, and some sweet little projects. These buttons are from the book, done on scrap linen, and the larger embroidery is destined to be a needle case. I'm proud of myself, I've actually used a craft book that I bought, instead of just look and drool!

Fini!

I decided to add some flowers to the ends of the green tendrils, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. Overall, a very enjoyable first crewel experience; I was anxious to do more.

So I did. Just a little sweet bud on some fingerless gloves destined to be a Christmas present.


Now, I must make other things worthy of embellishment.

Beginnings...

The Not-so-Plain Jane sweater; now I'm pondering how to proceed from here. Maybe some geometric flowers extending from the vines?

Thinking and planning

My beautiful crewel wool came today from Renaissance Dyeing in France, so I've begun planning my design. In some respects, I want to get the design drawn perfectly on my paper first, but in another way, I kind of want to just start the design and work spontaneously. You can see my doodles so far. I'll probably make a compromise between the two and just start with my design in mind and see where it goes. The "starting" always seems to be the hardest part of a project for me, at least in my art work. In my knitting, I have a tendency to start rashly, and never finish. What helps motivate you to finish pieces you've started?

Plain Jane...8 years later

This sweater has been 8 years in the making. In high school I worked at a patisserie and had a wonderful Russian lady as a co-worker. She introduced me to top-down sweater construction. I went to her house a couple of afternoons, and she taught me how to do the math to design a top-down raglan sweater, with any yarn and any gauge. Unfortunately, the math and percentages have been long forgotten, and my notes are nowhere to be found. Cleaning out my stash the other day, I found the sweater, body finished, languishing at the botton of the box. I finished it, and now am awaiting my order from Renaissance Dyeing so I can start the embellishments, because, as is, this is a plain jane sweater.


I'm going to try crewel work, and I aspire to a finished product something like this or this. Pretty ambtious, huh? Here is my practice work, with regular worsted yarn.


The crewel wool I ordered comes in all kinds of luscious shades and is dyed using all-natural dyes in the Pyrenees mountains. Wish me luck!