Poking my head up from yet another marathon sprint at work here. With promise of another one hard on the heels of the last, I’m probably surfacing just long enough to note limited progress on my sampler and report other news.

First the progress:

You can see that I’ve completed another row of text, and I’m on to another double running stitch panel. I’m working this one voided too. It’s a mishmash, with the bulk of the elements taken verbatim from the sampler that provided the previous strip. The hops flower(?) and the strange ocarina-like turnip things on the side are direct quotes. The finials on either side of the hops flower were very difficult to copy though, so I took the liberty of substituting bird heads for them. Lots of patterns of this style/era include animals, humans or birds (all or in part) sprouting from vegetation. My treatment of the voided area is however a total flight of fancy. I chose to use half-cross stitch, massed into a field of diagonal lines. I used a diagonal fill on the Do-Right sampler, too:

Unlike the graph paper like squared fill I on the grapes strip, I haven’t seen historical precedent for the diagonal line treatment. But it’s not totally illogical. If you’ve seen an artifact worked this way, please let me know. Other unusual treatments of the voiding include working the background narrower than the foreground and the direction of my diagonals. I’ve only seen one historical piece worked this way – a late 16th early 17th century panel photographed in Cavallo’s Needlework. I graphed that one out, it’s in TNCM on Plate 74:1 – I worked a bit of it a while back, and am considering doing it again on this piece:

Mirroring the diagonals on either side of the central motif is new. I haven’t done this before, and I’ve never seen it done on any other piece. Again – I can’t claim originality, there’s only so many ways to do things in needlework, and it’s a sure bet that the most obvious have been tried before. One last thing I’m planning on doing is NOT filling in the voiding in the background behind the little triangular areas above and below the strange, mutant turnip things. That will make the central hops flower motifs on their lozenges of darker background look a bit like a series of very large beads.

Given my impossible work schedule, the stitching density of both the foreground motif (again worked with two threads of my DMC floss), and the background (worked with one thread), this panel should take me quite a while. After this one comes the rest of my quote. So far I’ve stitched “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indi-” Next comes “-stinguishable from magic. In all probability, the “magic” won’t fit on the next line of text. I’ll deal with that problem when I get there.

Next post – snails in the Antipodes! My dream casket! (Not the kind you’re thinking of…) Stay tuned.

Technorati : BLACKWORK, COUNTED-THREAD, EMBROIDERY

Charlotte asks about the colors of the bands on the Clarke’s Law sampler. She says that each successive band looks lighter than the one before. I answer:

So far I’ve used only two colors of embroidery floss – DMC Red #498 and DMC Black #310. The top band was done in long-armed cross stitch, using two strands of red. Long armed cross stitch produces a particularly dense and raised texture.

Outlines on the grapes band were worked in double running stitch using two strands of the red, but the background grid filling was done in one strand – also in double running.

The current plume flower band is worked in double running using just one strand.

Between the relative densities of the various source patterns and the density of the working methods I’ve ended up with the progressively lighter look for each band even though all are worked using the same thread.

My plan for the rest of the bands is to do more of the double running work, choosing bands of different visual densities and working some but not all of them voided (with a background fill, but not necessarily solid). The next one will probably be somewhat closer in look to the grapes panel, but in between that and the current band in darkness. I will alternate bands of various densities with the black lettering. I’ve used plain old cross stitch for both the letters and the red embellishing squiggles that loop around the letters. If you compare it to the long armed cross stitch snippet above you can see the difference in coverage between the two.

When all of the lettering is done I’ll consider working more long armed cross stitch. Depending on how much room is left on the cloth, I might just go for broke with one massively large pattern, working it voided, so that the piece has a nice dense anchoring segment at the bottom. Or there might be a couple of bands of progressively darker stitching leading up to it. I haven’t chosen the patterns yet and I’m not sure exactly how much room I’ve got, so you’ll have to stay tuned to see how it all works out.

To answer Ellis – the reason you can’t see any lines drawn on on the linen for stitching over is because there aren’t any. This piece is done on the count. I’m using the weave of the linen as my guide, copying patterns drawn out on graph paper, with each grid of the graph paper corresponding to square of 2×2 threads.

To answer Marya – if my pattern contains a straight line that spans two or more graph units I do not make one big stitch over all of them. I make an individual stitch for each grid unit, even if they are all in one straight line. This keeps the work neater and more true to the graphed original. Long stitches are also more likely to catch on things.

To answer [anonymous] who noted that all of these patterns seem to rely on just 90 and 45 degree angles – yes, you’re right. I can’t rule out totally that diagonals over a 1×2 grid unit weren’t used (30/60 degrees), but so far I haven’t found a historical piece that used them in this type of pattern. It’s possible that some in-filled blackwork diaper patterns (the dark outline, different geometric filling variant seen below) used stitches at those angles, but I haven’t had the luxury of examining enough historical works close-up to make that determination. Lots of modern blackwork does use those angles. But for me, I’ll stick to the orthodox and limit my design to 45s and 90s.

Technorati : blackwork, cross stitch, embroidery