PATTERNS PLATE 2
And here’s the second page:
#10 is unusual in that the little isolated straight stitches that fill in the “background” area behind the large cross shapes are not stitched on the same grid as the rest of the pattern. But if you’re working on even weave you’ll see immediately and clearly where that stitch belongs.
The sharp-eyed will be able to pick out #9 and #7 in the detail shot of my underskirt. I assure you that #10 is there too, but it’s shown in a very small snippet. (I’m going to have to take more detail shots of this piece and of my Forever Coif for this series).
Which brings me to an obvious observation. You’ll note that some of these patterns offer small repeats – like #10. Others like #11 are larger, covering more ground before the design cycles. Smaller repeats work well in smaller design areas. Larger repeats show better when used in larger areas. But that doesn’t mean that either scale pattern should reserved exclusively for one use or another. Sometimes “zooming in” on a sub-unit of a larger design is a perfect fill choice. And sometimes the uniformity and regularity of a fine-grain pattern is what’s needed to fill a larger area, especially if it’s near other areas with fussy or complex fills.
Thanks again to all who have encouraged this project. Not the least of whom is Long Term Needlework Pal Kathryn Goodwyn (author of Stalking the Wild Assisi). Oh. That reminds me! ** Hi Fred! **
PATTERNS PLATE 1
Here’s the first page of the Blackwork FillingsCollection, as discussed in my last post. I intend to publish a page each day or so until I run out of pages. (I may take some time off over the upcoming US holiday week though.)
The doc below is a full page JPG (click on it to view/download it at full scale). Eventually, when all the pages have been shown here (and I expect that to be in the neighborhood of 20 or so), I intend to also offer the entire collection as a single PDF, for home printing or viewing on any PDF-capable reader.
As far as the provenance for these patterns – my notes from 1978 aren’t complete. Some I found by examining historical blackwork samples. Others I doodled up as I worked on what became my underdress. And a few (though none on this page) are fresh, invented as I played with graphing up the others.
I did try to constrain the angles employed in all of my filling patterns to 90 and 45 degrees in order to maintain a visual symmetry among all of the geometrics used, and to restrict all lines to the native grid of the fabric (no half stitches or stitches displaced one thread over from the standard 2×2 thread matrix). However, there are a couple of exceptions. One is Pattern #5 on today’s plate. The stitching logic for that one is to work the diagonals of squared cross stitches; then take the long stitches from each of the “shoulders” of the stairstep diamonds formed by the intersecting lines of cross stitches into the centermost point of each diamond. It’s easy if you’re using plain even weave linen – that center hole is very evident. But if you’re using Aida, or another ground cloth a bit of fiddling may be in order.
As to what I mean by the copyright restriction on the page – if you’re working up your own sampler, have at these patterns. Enjoy! If you’re planning on making works for sale or donation based on these fillings – either finished stitched pieces or published designs, please contact me. In all probability I’ll freely grant permission, but the courtesy of notification and formality of reply is respectful to all parties involved. And if you’re looking to republish or reproduce these pages or the patterns on them, please contact me for specific license to do so before reposting, reprinting, or republishing my work.
Thanks to all who voiced support for this venture. I hope the forthcoming pages prove useful, and whet everyone’s appetite for other full scale works to come. Questions, comments, criticisms and other feedback is most welcome.
SQUARES!
Given Chris Laning’s confirmation of our independently devised charting method, and my own impatience to get started, I’ve decided that using GIMP in the multi-layer mode is the way to meet my graphing challenge. That means one layer for background grid, one for pattern, and a “mask” layer of little white donuts around each grid point to separate the solid pattern lines into stitch units. Thanks also to Ariel who had a very innovative suggestion about using MetaPost, but the complexity of some of the patterns I will be doing will quickly exceed the practicality of her solution.
To practice up for these more complex designs I decided to regraph the collection of 72 blackwork fillings I published back in 1978, plus some more from my own notebooks that didn’t make it into that booklet. These are the fillings I used in the blackwork underskirt I stitched back in 1976-1977.
Not being able to resist a doodle-capable medium, I’ve done up a few more, too. I’ve got about 100 of these fillings now graphed out in neat little squares and ready to share, but I’ve not decided on the most efficient sharing method. I’m leaning to composing them into pages, and sharing the pages one by one, so that they can be seen before they’re downloaded. An alternative would be making a new PDF booklet and post that. In either case, my intent is to publish them here for free download under my own copyright, rather than try to sell the thing.
Here are two samples to whet your appetite. Any feedback? Suggestions?
And special thanks again to Chris, who has asked that I spread the word among both SCA and non-SCA stitchers about a valuable embroidery resource. The SCA’s West Kingdom’s Needleworkers’ Guild maintains a very useful on-line library of articles on historical stitching – all from the hands-on perspective. You can find it here. I guarantee hours of fascinating reading and inspiration!
FLOWER SPOT MOTIF
UPDATE: An easy-to-print PDF page of this pattern is now available at the Embroidery Patterns link, above.
Still crunching along on my strawberries band on the Clarke’s Law sampler. But last night I stumbled across this simple and sweet little pattern while web-walking through various museums’ on line collections, and I had to graph it up.
This chart was inspired by a photo detail shot of a coif and forehead cloth in the Manchester Art Gallery’s collection (thanks to Needleprint for calling my attention to their website). If you head over to the Manchester Art Gallery website and search on item 2003.63/2 you’ll find it. The photo itself is copyright and can’t be reproduced here.
The description cites the original as being linen, embroidered with silk, with the stitching being worked in back, buttonhole and knot stitches. It also notes that the original was worked on the diagonal. I particularly liked the one unit offset in the repeat arrangement of the sprigs. It brings life and movement what might otherwise be a very static pattern.
It’s unclear in the original where the stitches cited are placed. From the photo it looks like little accent dot to the lower right of each flower is a group of four knot stitches as shown in the upper row of my charted repeat. The holes in the cloth where the stitches have eroded seem to support this (if the dots were formed by straight stitches, there would be a fifth stitching hole in the center of the dot unit). Still, I present an alternate interpretation in the lower row, using a group of 8 straight stitches in a diamond shape to define the dot unit. This pattern would also look nifty if spangles were sewn on in place of either the knots or the straight stitch diamonds.
Enjoy!
PANIC BUTTONS
UPDATE: THE BORDER DESIGN BELOW HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE PDF COLLECTION AT THE EMBROIDERY PATTERNS LINK, ABOVE.
Well, I’ve decided to do a border around Don’t Panic. Again it’s one from TNCM, or rather, two that are presented together in the book. The first one is a very narrow geometric strip, the second is a bead (I think it looks like a march of panic buttons). The pattern is one of my originals, heavily inspired by historical sources, but not a literal transcription of any one design. The book doesn’t present a corner, but in this pattern one is very easy to improvise.
As an early holiday present, I share it and the corner elaboration here:
The astute will note that the repeats of the strip edging and the bead unit are different, and that a span of this pattern will not necessarily work out even, with all four corners identical. Because the step strip edging is so narrow this isn’t a problem. It looks fine ending it at the squared off corner with either the little L unit shown above, or truncating it one step earlier so that there is a little square next to the larger corner block (shown on the photo above, in the upper left corner). The key is to make both ends that terminate at the corner block the same so that each corner displays logical consistency. The four actual corners of the work are so far apart that any minor difference in the strip among them won’t be noticed.
It is however important to keep the bead units as near complete as possible. My north-south border strip works out to be an exact multiple of my repeat. You can see the happy march of whole bead units on the right. But what about the longer east-west panels?
I suppose I could be **perfect** and count them out, or plot the whole thing on graph paper first. But I’m a leap-off-the-pier problem solver. My solution is to work an even number of beads on each side, starting at the east and west corners. When the two sets met in the center if the count is off, I’ll either work a centered elongated bead, or I’ll figure out some other bit of complimenting ornament to fill the center space. I might for example choose the centers to sign and date the work.
The narrow strip then presents its own problems. I’ve established the repeat sequence on the right hand side. If I were to start it again from the left, I might run into a similar conundrum in its center. Instead, once I handle the bead problem I’ll continue working the narrow step strip from left to right, letting it end wherever it chooses to at my upper right hand corner. I might have to pick out the little bit of vertical strip already worked at the inner left so I can make it match the horizontal where both strips abut the box corner, but that’s life.
PHOENIX CHART
As promised, here’s the chart for my double running stitch phoenix
Click on the chart thumbnail to see a larger version. Apologies to those with slow connections – it’s big.
LATE ADDITION: For those of you who would like a larger, clearer version of the chart, it’s available at the Embroidery Patterns link, above
Enjoy!
String-Or-Nothing 