THE SYMMETRIES OF LINEAR STITCHED FILLS AND STRIPS
As promised here’s a rundown on pattern repeat type, and centering fills and strips in designated spaces on your project. For one, there’s really very little need to sit down and stitch-by-stitch completely graph out the design to your final dimensions. In general knowing where the edges and centers of your space, plus the pattern repeat type is all that’s required. These hints go for both fills in regular and irregular shapes, and for strip or band type designs that march along the width of your project, or decorate the edge of a garment.
And a note on grounds, if I may. Aida, Hardanger, Anne Cloth, and Monks Cloth are types of purpose woven grounds used for modern countwork. They feature prominent holes outlining their base size units. Departing from that established grid can be very difficult and involve piercing the fabric in the solid spots between the built-in holes. Partial stitches do exist in the purpose-woven world, and are much despised by stitchers. Working multiple grids skew to each other on the same piece of purpose woven ground is almost never done. I’d say never-never, but somewhere it might exist, although I haven’t seen it nor the rants of despair from folk who have encountered it.
Evenweave (or near-evenweave) is a bit more flexible. Since the stitchers count threads on evenweave instead of hole-defined units, they can employ multiple grids on one piece. If the stitcher decides to work their unit over 2×2 threads, two adjacent spaces can use different grids, offset by one thread so long as the juncture where they meet is taken into consideration. I did this on my Two Fish piece, using the skew alignment to hint at undulating motion. Note the knot and grid filling. Not only is it stitched discontinuously across the bel, I also interrupted the grid. Both sides are worked 2×2, but NOT on the same 2×2 grid – the tail section is displaced one thread up and over.
So when you see me talking about skew grids or using partial stitches when centering various types of symmetry on a single piece, please know that the ability to do this is mainly something that can be done on evenweave. Purpose woven grounds like Aida will limit the way patterns of differing symmetries can be centered against each other. It’s just a fact of life.
Before I begin, all of the fills and bands charted on this page are available in my Ensamplario Atlantio series, my Epic Fandom Stitch Along, or previously shared here on this blog. All are available as free downloads for personal use. Links are provided.
OK. Finally getting into it. Patterns can be grouped into a few basic clusters, with some caveats.
Center Line Repeats
First we have simple line-center repeats. These are designs that cover even numbers of units, and mirror along a center line. The chosen pattern may be a band or strip, with one vertical line where the design mirrors to its left and right. Or it might be an all-over design or fill, with at least one vertical and one horizontal mirroring line.
This blackwork fill/all-over design has both a horizontal and a vertical center line, marked in red. The motif tiles into square blocks of 14 units. The easiest way to use it is to either count to or (if irregular) eyeball the visual center of the space to be filled, then begin stitching the design at the spot where the two center lines meet. Even if the space to be filled is NOT a multiple of 14 but is any other even number of stitches, if centered this way the design will truncate neatly around the edges, as it does in the sample from Ensamplario Atlantio Volume 1, below.
But if the space to be filled contains an odd number of stitches you will either have to displace the center lines so that there is one more unit to one side or the other, or you might have to work partial stitches all the way around the perimeter for full coverage.
Some people insist on using a single grid for ALL of the fills on an inhabited piece. That means that even if they are working over 2×2 threads on evenweave, where adapting the grid you are using to the space at hand would be quite easy, they choose not to. They end up having to either accept minor misalignments between adjacent patterns, or employing partial stitches to eke out the design. That can be avoided by NOT mixing fills or bands with this type of symmetry with some of those discussed later in this article.
Here’s the same type of symmetry expressed in a band pattern. This one is from my Epic Fandom Stitch Along. Note that in this simple meander there are two lines of symmetry (sometimes called mirror or bounce lines). The pattern replicates in mirror image on either side of them, just as it does in the all-over fill. One full repeat is 36 units, and alignment in your desired space can be focused on the center/mirror/bounce lines of either the up or down facing fronds.
Regardless of symmetry type, if you are filling an irregular spot, and you are eyeballing the center alignment point you might end up having to work half stitches around the edge of your area, again to eke out the coverage. This is one reason why some instances of inhabited blackwork (the kind with the freehand drawn outlines infilled with counted geometrics) rely on heavily stitched, thick outlines. Those “fig leaf” the offending partial stitch spots and make the work look neater.
Here’s a bit on my Unstitched Coif, where I eyeballed the alignment of the fill, worked a ton of half stitches (a challenge on 72-74 count near evenweave, stitched over squares of two threads), then went back and put in heavier outlines to hide irregularities. Zoomed waaaaay in like this you can see them around the edges. For scale, that little bud at the upper left is smaller than a US penny.
Now there are some exceptions and complications. We’ll get to those later.
Center Unit Repeats
All well and good you say, but the symmetrical repeat I want to use doesn’t meet up neatly at a center line like those. In most cases your repeat has a “spine” of a single unit rather than a center line. That column or row of units is repeated only once, and is not mirrored, although the design itself does mirror left and right (or up and down) that non-repeating column or row. That means that a full repeat of the design includes two symmetrical wings, plus that pesky center unit – an odd number of units, total. Here’s a fill/all-over design that features center units. In this case one full repeat is a square of 23 units (one center unit, plus 11 more units to the left, and to the right of it).
And here’s a strip repeat, also with a simple center-unit style symmetry. Like the line unit band above, there are two possible centers. Either one can be used, although convention on band samplers is to feature two main motifs in the center of the stitched area – in this case the pair of beak to beak chickens.
The strip above is from my Workshop Handout broadside, another free download here at String you can access via this post or via the Embroidery Patterns tab at the top of every page.
Hybrid Repeats
Some designs display a delightful flexibility when it comes to centering because they incorporate BOTH a center unit and a center line bounce point/mirroring. This happens with fills/all-overs and for strip/band patterns.
Here’s a sample of a fill that includes both. I’m only marking one repeat of each type on it, otherwise the thing will end up looking like a swatch of plaid.
This design can be aligned either to the center lines (red), or center units (yellow). And here’s an example of the same type of pattern in a strip or band. The center can be the red line or one of the yellow columns.
Again, if a combo of center line and center column symmetrical strips are used on a band sampler in a mixed environment that doesn’t deviate from one universal grid note that true center alignment will not be possible. The even-number repeat centerline bands will all line up with each other. But if you insert a design with center unit/column symmetry but have to use the same “stitch holes” in Aida as the rest of your project, that center column will not line up with the true center of the rest of the piece. Which may or may not matter to you. Food for thought.
Staggered Drop Repeats
Now it gets harder to identify these. This style of repeat is common in fills/all-overs, but less common in strips/bands, but they do occasionally pop up. For the most part they employ mini-motifs, sometimes in straight-on replication, sometimes with mirroring or rotation; and use regular offsets to place them. Sometimes its a simple half-drop, sometimes it’s a larger interval or not regular when the horizontal and vertical offsets are compared. Most of the time these staggered or evenly scattered mini-motifs do resolve into very large area true repeats, with the same motif repeating in the same relative position in the field, but it’s rare to use these in areas big enough for that resolution to happen. How to center them? It’s a bit more complicated.
Here are three with different rates of periodicity (how big the sample has to be before it manifests a true, full repeat), presenting different problems. These are all from Ensamplario Atlantio Volume 1, Second Edition.
The flowers at left can be centered in a panel in one of two ways. Either using the regular center-line symmetry of the very simple little four petaled flower, or by counting to identify the centerpoint of the more complex sprigged flower. Either way will work, although I think using the smaller mini-motif would be visually more pleasing. Note that regardless of the size or count of the space you use these repeats “walk” and will always truncate around the edges.
The snail garden square at the right is a hybrid. It can be effectively centered either on the tiny squares and on the larger snail-bearing unit. Both work nicely. Which I would choose would depend on the size of the space I wanted to fill with it. If the space was large enough to accommodate four of the snail gardens without truncation, I’d probably use the tiny squares as my center alignment point. The snail gardens rotate around them, and optically form a flower-like shape when viewed from a distance. If the space was small, I’d put the garden in the middle to ensure at least one full iteration of it was represented.
The griffin/dragon beastie in the center presents a harder problem. There’s only one element here, and it has no clear center line or center column/row. Additional complications come from the rotation and offset of the beastie motifs. The easiest way to center this one is to find the center point of the beastie itself, match that to the center point of the area to be filled, and work the others around the first, completing the truncated ones as possible. In the photo below, this is what I did with the wing like bits, second from the right in the photo below, and what I SHOULD have done with the little dolphins in the box next to them, but obviously didn’t.
The myriad mistakes in my current piece are what inspired this post. In addition to the errant dolphins in the latest section, you can see that the voided bit currently underway wasn’t properly aligned. It’s a center line repeat, I have an even number of units across, but if you compare the left and right edges, you’ll see that the design is shifted two units to the right. The center of that strip does not align with the center of the set of boxes, above. The dolphin box is intentionally shorted one unit compared to the others in its row because my count across is not divisible by four (available area minus 6 units total for the gutters between the boxes). There are more similar mistakes in the previously completed part, now wound around the roller bars of my stretcher frame.
I confess to making many alignment sins on this one that together have landed me in this predicament, including initially basting the center guideline that runs the entire length of the piece offset to the right by three units; never going back and measuring, but instead working the other vertical guidelines off that one; starting the first blocks and not bothering to confirm centers or edges until it was too late to pick out and start again; fudging everything in to try to compensate for the pile of errors that was accumulating behind me; and not paying enough attention to centering the various fills in their boxes.
I will continue on to completion with this one, warts and all, but I may revisit the base concept of voided strips alternating with boxed fills in a future work.
CATCHING AN ASSIST
According to the posting date, it’s been about 10 days since I last reported in on progress on Assist. I’ve had a couple of mis-alignments due to low lighting and inattention. Some I’ve picked out, others I saved as cautionary lessons. And I’ve taken a slight departure from my usual working cadence.
Here’s the latest in-hoop view.
Obviously I’m working voiding on the row of snaky, vaguely draconic S-shaped flowers. But I’m only half-way done with that, yet I’ve gone on to start (although not finish) the row of smaller fills underneath.
Why the partials?
Because it’s very likely I’ll be attending Arisia over the weekend. It’s a big science fiction convention here in the Boston metro area. There will be discussions, panels, and lectures to attend. I like to keep my hands occupied at such things, so I can better follow along without distraction. Therefore to minimize lap clutter and make this project more portable I want to have enough started with established repeats, so I can work “off book/screen” for the balance of the weekend. That plus using the chatelaine means quick convenience – nothing can be dropped or left behind as we migrate from one panel room to the next.
As far as difficulty, the voiding requires no pattern reference once the foreground repeat is established. The partial fills each have enough detail that I don’t need to refer back to those patterns, either. I can just copy what I’ve already worked. Note that that second one is rather far along. In that case I DID get lost and decided to finish that square out here at home and not trust to luck on the go.
I’ll probably start on the foreground of the next voided strip, too. Either below the four-box fill row, or above the three-box fill row that sits on top of the motto (seen peeking out at top, from the folds underneath the frame). Which one I’ll do will depend on which design I pick next. I think one that’s as wide as or very slightly narrower than the Assist strip will sit nicely at the growing pile north of the motto. Something wider and more demonstrative for below. How wide and how demonstrative is going to be a function of the very narrow nature of the composition as a whole. I only have 102 units across to play with. Lots of my drama queen voided/double running strapwork strips have repeats significantly wider than that. We’ll see.
And a working hint. You can see that I’m not stitching up to the red double-running stitch boxes outlining my fills. I’m leaving a one-unit strip of unworked linen between the red outlines and the fills. Usually I “fig-leaf” any partial stitches when working fills in spaces buy doing them first, then stitching a heavy outline around the fill area to cover all sins. This time I opted for a lighter look. The hint is if you look at the on-deck set I’m currently stitching, and the two completed sets above (visible as partials in and above the hoop) you’ll see that I lay down the first pass of double-running, then work the fill, then go back and complete the double-running by stitching the second pass. I’m doing this because counting those little dashes is immensely easier to do than trying to navigate by counting the stitches in a completed line.
The uncorrected mistakes to date? There are four, and I hang my head in shame.
First, my original basted guidelines were off by three units. The natural vertical center of the piece is three units to the right of my first go at basting. That I didn’t catch until I had finished the voiding on Assist. Voiding is not something that should be picked out by the faint-hearted, especially in silk on somewhat fragile vintage linen. So I adjusted my alignments rather than picking out. When I frame or finish this up as a scroll there will be some compensation to keep the final field even all the way around.
Second, I’m off by an entire unit somewhere between the vertical center and right guide line, probably with two one-thread width displacements in an earlier slubby or worn/fuzzy bit on the vintage linen. There I didn’t catch that until the first row of fills and Assist were done. Oops.
Third, that interlace box. The interlaces are not centered, again they’re off. This error I blame on SWI – stitching while intoxicated. We had a lovely bottle of champagne that evening, to celebrate the close of the holiday season, consumption of the last of our leftovers and cookies, and (in passing) to toast our 43rd wedding anniversary. Obviously it went straight to my head. I left that one in to warn me against similar excesses in the future.
And last, the width of the rightmost box on the current fill line. All of the ones in this row are supposed to be squares of 24 stitches. Except that one. There was only room for him to be 23 units wide. Now four boxes of 24 units plus three separators of two units each equals 102. But there he is, one stitch unit narrow. So it goes. I’ll pick a nice scattered fill with a half-drop repeat and no one will notice. Plus an added benefit of the strident, visually distracting alternating strips is that they break cadence. I can correct the count after the next one is done, and the correction will be difficult to see because of the solid red mass separating it from the fills above.
Oh. I did get a side benefit from the dissolute evening of sodden stitchery. I took the cork cage/bail from the bottle and twisted it into a spool holder for my chatelaine. I may go back and redo this with a silver tone one I had saved from last year’s bottle, but for now, it’s working well. The tiny spool of Corticelli Size A embroidery silk spins with little effort; just enough to make inadvertent unwinding unlikely, but easily enough to reel off what I need.
Will this piece be absolutely perfect? Nope. Far from it. And that doesn’t bother me because I have the next stitching project already in sight.
AND NOW WE ARE FOUR
I report the finish on my RESIST sampler. Completed, signed and dated.
Don’t worry about that dot on the bottom margin – that’s just fluff I neglected to brush off prior to the photo. The message is dead serious, but there are some silly bits in it. Like the dragon heads that parade across the top. The eyes in the original are empty – no pupils. But I put some in on this strip, and got several emotions when I did. My dragon heads look angry, attentive, contemplative, attentive, and bored. And more. Just a whim.
I am also pleased with the Pegasus strip – doodled up just for this piece. It will be included in my forthcoming Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III (EnsAtl3). No timeline yet for that release. Here are the sources for all fifteen bands, top to bottom.
- Dragon head edging – The Second Carolingian Modelbook (T2CM), Plate 25:4. Redaction with impromptu manic eyeball improvisations.
- Acorn meander – T2CM, Plate 25:3. My original.
- Line interlace – T2CM, Plate 11:3. Adaptation of non-graphed modelbook design.
- Twisted meandering eels – T2CM, Plate 27:2. Redaction
- RESIST using alphabet border – Whole alphabet blocks and bits that fit around them, EnsAtl3. My original.
- Lily buds – Several versions in my various works, this one from my free class handout available on my patterns tab. Adapted redaction.
- Kittens and string – EnsAtl3. My original.
- Large floral all-over – EnsAtl3. My original.
- Doubled simple flower strip – T2CM, sample figure on building larger borders from narrow ones, on the write-up page for Plate 7. Original narrow strip, T2CM, Plate 6:3. My original.
- Cursed bunnies eating my hostas again – I had fun stabbing these guys, too, for obvious reasons. EnsAtl3. My original.
- Very large sprouting all-over. Broadside available here on String here and on my patterns tab. Redaction.
- Block edge border T2CM. Plate 23:2. My original.
- Thistles – T2CM, Plate 30:3/ Adaptation of non-graphed modelbook design.
- Pegasus strip – EnsAtl3. My original.
- Rooster edging – (Turn it upside down and you’ll see them). EnsAtl3. My original.
Now RESIST joins the three fangirl samplers I have completed, celebrating the science fiction works of my Resident Male. That’s a lot of stitching since June, shown here on my Wall of Shame, where all my finished but not yet framed works live.
What’s next? Probably another in the PERSIST-RESIST grouping. ASSIST will be longer than RESIST. Also on a high count not-so-evenweave linen remnant. As you can see, the prep step of hemming has started.
I’m torn about colors and threads. And I have to calculate the thread count of this scrap piece. I have a feeling that it’s a bit more skew than the other four, and probably a skosh coarser than RESIST. I have some silks in various colors that might work on it, doubled in happy polychromatic chaos. Or I might do it all in deep red, possibly with a spot of a shiny black for emphasis.
As to what to put on it, I’m also contemplating options. The word, for sure. Possibly some voided bits or heavy foreground long-armed cross stitch strapwork bands (I haven’t done much of that recently). Or maybe I’ll work in some tiles of fills. But not worked inside freehand drawn shapes – just in geometrics. I have LOTS of fills begging to be taken out to play, some of which I came up with on the fly for the Unstitched Coif project. Since that’s off at the V&A, it seems proper that I stitch them up on something I can look at and enjoy here at home.
Stay tuned for more stitchy mischief.
RAGE STITCHING CONTINUES
I’ve made more progress on the non-name sampler I’ve been working on since the beginning of November:
I’ve added three strips since the last post. The pink/purple and blue one at the top, and the bottommost two below the bunnies.
From top to bottom, RESIST was done in some vintage Belding Corticelli silk, size A. I have a bag of about 15 small wooden spools of the stuff in assorted strident colors. All are unstarted 100 yard spools, and most are singles. There are only a couple of colors for which I have two spools. Here are the two I stitched with on this project, along with the no-name black silk I’ve been using for (most of) the rest of this piece (small embroidery scissors and laying tool for scale).
They were among the goodies re-homed to me by a fellow townsperson who was clearing her late mother’s stash of knitting and stitching supplies. It’s tightly twisted silk, and is perfect for stitching at this gauge. I have fallen in love with it. Sadly, it’s a limited resource. The Belding Corticelli mill closed in 1932. I’ll not be finding more when these are gone. Such is the nature of true love.
The boxed alphabet used for RESIST is from my free book Ensamplario Atlantio II, Plates 33 and 34. I drafted up a band with a design element that looked like an H. Once I had that it occurred to me that folk might like to put mottoes or initials along edges of chemises (a historical usage), so I doodled up the rest of the alphabet for use with that design band. The eagle eyed will spot that the design band I employed with RESIST is slightly different than the one in the book. I can’t help it. Anything worth tinkering with is worth tinkering with again. Oh. And the color choice? It’s not a coincidence.
Moving down to the bottom, the very involved wide floral panel beneath the bunnies is also available free on this site. It’s the all-over I used for the discussion of how to redact a design. That discussion is here, complete with a link to the downloadable pattern. It can also be found on the Embroidery Patterns tab here on String. I enjoyed stitching this one. It went much faster than I expected because the design though involved covers a lot of territory but uses comparatively few stitches to do so.
In deliberate contrast to the open airy nature of the floral strip is the close geometric immediately below it. That one is original, a “roughly inspired by” that appears in my (not free) Second Carolingian Modelbook, Plate 23:2.
Now…. What to add next? As usual I really will not know until it hits me. To that end I am paging through my own pattern books, both published and pending. I may use something from one of them or from the free broadsides on the Embroidery tab page, or something from the Epic Fandom Stitch-Along, or I might draw up something new. Right now I’m on the hunt.
ASIDE: That Epic Fandom Stitch-Along tab is rather cumbersome to use if one is interested in downloading the whole project at once rather than week-by-week piecemeal. Would anyone like me to put the whole thing into a single booklet and add it as a free download to the My Books page here on String?
RESISTANCE IS NEVER FUTILE, AND OTHER MISTAKES
I continue my quest for distraction, working on the impromptu doodle sampler I mentioned in my last post. I still haven’t decided what it will bear, but right now I’m leaning towards the single word “RESIST.” Time will tell, but I’m already looking at typefaces. Warm and fuzzy/ultratraditional/edgy and threatening? All nuance the message and are under consideration.
In the mean time I go back to my mail and comment inboxes and note that there are a few notes that claim envy of my work because I “never make a mistake.” Few things could be further from the truth.
I make mistakes ALL the time. In spite of how well I try to idiot-proof my methods, I consistently prove that I am beyond idiot-proofing. I could throw out excuses – I stitch mostly with divided attention, while watching TV, armchair kibbitzing/team playing video or console adventure games, listening to podcasts or books on tape, or sitting in a conversation with family or friends. I also confess to “stitching under the influence” – often our evening TV hour is accompanied by a glass of wine. I pick patterns on whim, and don’t always hit the right contrast/compliment point I was after. And I suffer from Memory Hubris. Once I’ve established two or three repeats of a design (in any orientation), I go “off paper” and attempt all future iterations from memory and by copying the initial segments, even if the newly stitched bits are mirrored or rotated from the prior work. I also fall prey to the common double-running flaw of trying to get away with using a too-long strand of thread. Needless to say all of these contribute to a healthy stream of problems.
These problems include:
- Missing the correct start point or alignment line, so that the work doesn’t meet up with or is uncentered against established stitching;
- Stitching off grid (not hitting the exact over-2 or over-3 spot) so lines and angles are off by a thread or two;
- Losing my place in a design and repeating an element where it was not supposed to go, or skipping one altogether;
- Veering off into hyperspace – getting totally lost on the number of stitches I need and their proper placement, especially on long diagonal runs with nothing to steady me nearby; and
- Deciding that I don’t like my bungee-jump pattern choice, and would prefer something else instead;
- Confronting errors in thread management – for example, twisting, knotting, snagging, catching the tail, disrupting the spots of prior starts/finishes.
What do I do about them? In rare instances if the problem is just an errant single stitch that doesn’t upset placement of the rest of the design, I might leave it in. This however is rare. That single stitch will glare at me with dragon eyes every time I look at the piece, even if no one else can spot it. Mostly I pick the errant work out and start again.
There are comparatively few descriptions of how to rip back safely, without danger to the ground or surrounding stitching. I’ll try to outline my method for doing so in double running. Cross stitch, back stitch and the like would follow most of the same process, with a little accommodation for stitch structure and working protocols.
OK. Here’s the latest sin on the latest sampler. I made a very big alignment error on the unfinished bit at the bottom. The top of the hearts and arrows design as stitched here may look good, but it’s only half of the pattern. There’s a vertical flip that I had barely begun, with arrows that point up. As stitched, that second half won’t fit. (Oh, and I’ll be reworking the previously released chart to make the logic easier to stitch. )
I also felt that I wanted another narrower band here before working a wider one. So, since I would have to rip back 90% of the hearts and arrows band anyway, I decided to eliminate it totally.
Here’s my frogging kit – a laying tool, my best embroidery scissors – sharp all the way to the tip, with a rounded safety end on one blade, a pair of precision tweezers – the kind sold for electronics assembly, and Silly Putty, which I’ve written about before. Note the absence of a seam ripper or any other cutting implement. (Yes, I remembered to take this photo after I had already begun the Big Rip).
I could “unstitch” the piece, slowly drawing out each stitch in turn, reversing the direction in which the double running stitch was created. I will do this if I’ve got just a few stitches to remove because of an alignment misadventure, and then I’ll keep stitching with the same thread. But it’s not optimal for a big removal. For one, drawing the stitching thread through the ground that many times will degrade it and make it unsuitable for re-use. Long lengths of thread drawn through the ground also run a higher chance of crocking (depositing dye on the cloth), or leaving fuzz behind. When the errant bit is this big, better to snip and remove.
But you can’t just snip willy-nilly. Each snip is a chance to wound the ground cloth, and the condition of the cloth and the soon-to-be sacrificed thread must be taken into consideration. For example, if the thread is very soft and fuzzy or prone to shredding or crocking (think wool and most commercial cotton 6-ply flosses), I might make my snips in the front, but pick the work out from the back. If the thread is long-staple, structurally sound and unlikely to crock I will both cut and pick from the front.
The first thing to go is the long stitching tail. Snip. Gone. Then I start at one end of the work and snip two stitches side by side, preferably diagonals because they are longer and easier to grab. I usually do several of these pairs at a time. But I don’t rush in with my scissors. First I use the laying tool to gently “pry up” each stitch to be cut. Not enough to deform the ground, just enough so I have slack into which to insert the lower blade of the scissors. Here you see the laying tool making room under a stitch for scissor blade placement.
That lower blade is the one with the rounded bump NOT the thin and wickedly pointy other blade. This safety end helps guard against inadvertently catching and cutting the ground.
Once two stitches are cut I tease them back an inch or so, stitch by stitch, using my laying tool, and occasionally the tweezers. I work two at a time because of the every-other stitch construction of lines laid down in double running. One of those dashed lines will have been stitched after the other, and by cutting two adjacent stitches I can tease out both of them, quickly determined which path is newer and then do that one first, followed by the other. It’s always easer to remove the newer stitching first because it sometimes pierces the older stitching, which can cause snags as you rip. Once I’ve freed an inch or two I snip the freed bits off about a quarter inch from the surface. I’m about to remove that long thread seen in the piece above. I do this to minimize the length of thread pulled through (remember – crocking, fuzz).
Removal stitch by stitch, snip by snip, taking care not to hurt the rest of the piece is tedious. It takes me considerably longer to rip back than it does to lay down the stitching in the first place. One thing I was thankful for in this piece is my thread choice. Since I’m working in silk here there was very little residue left behind as I remove the stitching. That reside is where the Silly Putty comes in. I dab it on the surface to remove any remaining dye and fibers. No erasing or rubbing motions – I support the fabric from below with the plastic shell, and do a quick and light vertical press of the stuff. BEFORE you try this on your own precious work please check out the article I linked above. I am willing to accept risks for my work, but you might not want to. Know what they are before you attempt this.
Once everything is picked out, and surface fuzz/dye crocking has been Silly Puttied into oblivion, I have a blank canvas again. Some of the stitching holes are a little distended. I will use the tip of my laying tool and gently stroke the ground cloth at a 45-degree angle to the weave. That returns the threads to proper alignment. The result:
And what goes there? Bunnies.
And yes. There’s a mistake in the bunnies already. The rightmost finished bunny is looking at a partial leaf. I’ll go back and catch that “oops, I skipped over it” error when I’m done with the current thread.
Perfect? Not me. Never.
WHAT I DID SUMMER TO FALL
Starting 27 June and finishing yesterday evening, 25 October, I have cranked out three small samplers, one after another.
All three were inspired by books written by my Resident Male, although not all of the source books have been published. Here’s a better shot of the latest, fresh off the hoop. (Yes, I will eventually press and frame them all.)
The last strip at the bottom is in the tradition of 16th and 17th century band edging patterns that often accompanied a wider main band design. While most of these narrow bands were floral, foliate or geometric, some of them featured creature heads, occasionally bird-like, lizard or dragon shaped, but all cropped and facing in the same direction. Those edgings would present with the baseline against the main design, so that ones below the main design were upside down, and dance around the corners. With those in mind, I have ended my Treyavir-inspired piece with the severed heads of lantern-eyed goblin monsters, gelnids, among the formidable foes of the novel’s hero Reignal.
To recap, I used black Sulky #30, double stranded. For the accent color I used standard DMC floss, #3820, sometimes two plies, sometimes one ply. All of the black foregrounds were done in double running stitch. Several treatments were used for the fills and accents. Here’s the list of accent treatments along with pattern sources:
- Acorns – plain old cross stitch (POCS), two plies. My own design.
- Chain – double running, two plies. My own design.
- Leafy meander – mix of double running and four sided cross stitch, two plies. My own redaction of a pattern appearing on a sampler dated 1687, accents are my own mods.
- Geometric triangles – simple boxed fill in double running, one ply. My own interpretation of an idle doodle done by J.R.R. Tolkein, more on this here.
- Flower meander – contour lines in double running, one ply. My own design.
- Motto – four sided cross stitch, two plies in the black Sulky. My own alphabet based on a mashup of several Uncial-derived pixel alphabets from the early Macintosh era.
- Narrow bead – double running and single stitches, one ply. My own design.
- Falcons – Long armed cross stitch (LACS), two plies. My own design.
- Tulip buds – double running, two plies. My own design.
- Flower and rod meander – POCS, my own design.
- Sword interlace – POCS, two plies. My own design.
- Step birds – simple diamond fill, one ply. My own redaction of a sleeve decoration on a portrait, circa 1500. It’s on the Patterns tab, here on String.
- Roses in boxes – POCS, two plies. An adaptation of a pattern appearing in my Second Carolingian Modelbook, plate 27:4 – my redaction of a border from a historical artifact.
- Monster heads – POCs, single running stitch, French knots – two plies.
Everything described as “my own design” above, will be in either my forthcoming books Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III, or The Third Carolingian Modelbook – both currently in process.
Now with this sampler done I can’t sit idle. Progress on the next might be a bit slower because I have various holiday deadline related projects to complete and ship out. And I have to decide if I am going to continue the series immediately, with the next bit of embroidery dedicated to either the Resident Male’s mixed SF/Fantasy short story collection The Temple of Beauty, or one of his other in process works; or if I’m going to go totally off script and do a piece entirely on whim.
But to be prepared, I’ve already selected a small stash remnant, hemmed it, and basted my edge and centerline guides, shown here between the completed pieces for scale:
It’s not as long as the last two, and significantly narrower than Stone by Stone. And the linen is higher count.
By my penny method, the coin covers 30 threads north-south, and 30 threads east-west. Multiply by 1.33 (a penny by definition is .75 inch) and we get an evenweave thread count of about 40 threads per inch. Green and black Stone by Stone was stitched on 33.25 thread per inch evenweave. The blue and red piece for Fractured Symmetry was on skew count 37.25 x 32 threads per inch linen, and the black and yellow Treyavir piece was on big-as-logs 26 threads per inch evenweave.
While this next piece will be physically smaller, the available “real estate” for pattern display will be roughly similar to the previous larger pieces that were worked on coarser grounds.
I haven’t decided on whether this one will also employ two colors. Right now I’m leaning to an all black piece, but one that uses multiple thread thicknesses. The reason is because I have come into a wealth of black threads in various weights, mostly rayon, but some cotton and silk as well.
Back in late summer when I was getting ready to go to Cape Cod for an extended stay I noted that I was rapidly eating into my spool of black Sulky #30. I was unsure if I would have enough to finish the yellow and black piece. Not having time enough for mail order, and not trusting that mail order would find me at our beach place (no street address delivery, you have to pick up mail and most UPS or Amazon sends at the post office), I went hunting in person. I started at the store where I had originally bought the Sulky, three years ago. They no longer stocked it, nor did several other local possibilities. But as I was chatting with one of the sales clerks and commiserating about mid-project disappointment, the next person in line said that she had the thread I needed in stash, and would be happy to share. We exchanged contact info, and she went home to stash-dive. I drove over to her house (just the next town over) and found a delightful bag of goodies awaiting me – several spools of black in assorted weights. I left my own thank-you present behind and scurried home with the goods. So my possibilities have multiplied. And on the finer ground, the elegantly fine faux silk rayons provided by my ever so generous benefactor will shine. (Oh, if you are reading this Kind Benefactor, ten thousand thanks again for helping me out of that jam!)
Don’t be surprised if I now segue to crocheted snowflakes, both production and blocking, or other crafts. I will be picking up this stitching either alongside those efforts, or after. But you can be sure that in terms of embroidery, I’m armed and dangerous, and I can’t be stopped.
PENULTIMATE, BUT ROSY
Having fallen a bit behind in timely progress posting, I present current status covering three strips.
First, here is the sword interlace – my own design with no direct historical precedent. Here it’s finished and the color accents have been applied. Since I wrote about it in my last post there’s not much to add other than I am pleased with the way it turned out. The yellow bits are worked in two strands, using plain old cross stitch for the blades and pommel, and two strands in double running (on skew count) for the interlace embellishments and sword hilts.
This pattern in its original slightly taller and more graceful form it will appear in Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III. I think this would make killer trim on the shirt of someone who might favor martial motifs rather than floral or plain geometrics.
The next strip down has debuted here on String, about a year ago. It’s available at my original post, and in the embroidery tab page on this site, where it’s listed as “Sleeve Band, 1500.” I may put it into The Third Carolingian Modelbook, as well. (Yes, I’m working on that one, too). The short story is that I redacted it from a portrait in the collection of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Accession K1651; Italian, circa 1500. Here is its page in Art UK.
Although the majority of the design is as close as I could get to the sleeve decoration in the portrait, for this decidedly non-historical piece I took two liberties. Obviously the first is my use of the second color – in the case done in single strand, simple diamond mesh to contrast with the strongly horizontal/vertical foreground in black. The other departure is the small black square I added at the centerpoint defined by where the birds’ tails meet. That detail isn’t on the original and isn’t on my chart of it. I added that because I work in double running, and it served as a very convenient bridge point that helped me navigate jumps between the non-contiguous motifs.
The only connection I can see between this motif as a tribute to the Treyavir source material is that this style of pattern persisted for a very long time, working its way from haute adornment for noblewomen during the Renaissance to becoming part of a peasant folk tradition that could have been stitched anywhere from the Baltic to the Aegean at any point in time over the past 300 years. And there is a very brave peasant woman in the Resident Male’s novel.
The third band is something that started out with historical underpinnings but took a whole bunch of left hand turns along the way.
If you have a copy of my Second Carolingian Modelbook to hand you will find the original on Plate 27:4. The accompanying blurb cites it as being redacted from an embroidery at Belton House, Lincolnshire, UK, registered with the National Trust as Inventory Number 436944. But in the original the roses were a supporting secondary border, all sprouting from a single straight baseline in the same direction.
I started working the first one that way, then decided to go feral, and do them more closely spaced together, and in the zig-zag manner below. I also added the second color accent I didn’t bother regraphing the design, I just did the mental rotation and kept going. If you like it this way, you can find the book and do the flip yourself, too.
As for why I did it, this is a themed piece after all. Treyavir features an estate that’s a safe haven for women who are economic refugees or endangered survivors of a feudal, patriarchal society. So I’ve taken that and put my roses each in their own secure room, open to come or go as they please, yet protected from life’s more brutal realities. Non standard presentation, but I think it’s an improvement on the rather humdrum original.
Finally, here is the whole thing to date so you can see the balance of density, accent color, and movement. I have room below the roses for one more strip. And I’ve drafted up something special to put there.
DO WHAT’S RIGHT
And we have more progress to report on the latest sampler strip in my series of stitched pieces commemorating the literary output of my Resident Male.
First we start with the now expected Mysterious Saying. In this case, “Ant-Aransa,” a quotation from the inspiring work – Treyavir. It translates roughly to “Do what’s right.” An admonishment that should be heeded more often for us all.
The lettering is not from my usual source for typefaces. I started by looking up pixel based fonts, many from the early days of screen display, and mashed up several Uncial like adaptations to chart out the letters I used. There is no one clean source, but the closest would be Scriptorium. I probably should have allotted more space for the hyphen, but so it goes. The lettering is worked in four sided cross stitch (each cross stitch outlined by a straight stitch on all four sides. I did that to make the saying pop, and to have optimal coverage.
Below Ant-Aransa is a very narrow ancillary border from the upcoming Ensamplario Atlantio III. I believe I show it there in combo with other design elements, and without the second color accents.
Moving on, I designed the strip in progress specifically for this sampler, with specific points of reference to the source inspiration. Treyavir is a work of fantasy with science fiction elements. It tells the story of Reignal Maigntar, Falcon Knight, so of course there have to be prominently featured falcons. Other story elements here include the waning sun, his spear, Grey Hallet (his castle/manor house), and curious crystalline magic gems. All present and accounted for.
As usual the foreground black stitching is worked in double running, but I’ve chosen to do the yellow voiding in long armed cross stitch. This choice was probably not optimal, due to the headache of squeezing that stitch into a few of the very narrow spaces between the foreground motifs. But again, there it is. I might include the falcon strip in Ens Atl III. That decision is still pending. As is revisiting the center of the suns to add some interior decoration. I will wait to see the whole strip completed, including voiding before I make that choice.
What’s left? As you can see below I’m only at the halfway point and there is still plenty of real estate to cover. Probably more swords or other weaponry. In a knightly story there is always room for armaments. Other than that, I haven’t a clue. As usual I’ll figure that out when I get there.
POST REBOOT PROGRESS
Although I’ve been lax about blogging, I have made progress on the Treyavir sampler.
Although it looks like I used several yellows for the accents to the plain black stitching, they are all the same color. What makes them look differently are the numbers of plies, the stitch used, and the stitch density. The yellow in the acorns is done in two plies of DMC #3820 in plain old cross stitch. The interlink accents are two strands of DMC in double running, as are the yellow bits in the odd foliate S-repeat below the chain. The triangular counterchange design uses a single strand of the DMC in double running, worked in a simple box fill. And the flower meander currently being stitched uses that same single strand of DMC yellow and double running, but in a very open and sparse manner.
Catching up since the last post, Strip #3, the vaguely leafy S-repeat, is not my own original. I redacted it from sampler dated 1697 (a bit later than my usual sources). It’s from Detached Geometric Patterns and Italianate Border Designs with Alphabet” 1697. National Trust Collections, Montacute House, Somerset, NT 597706. It’s the black one in the second row, upper right. Obviously the yellow is my add, specific to this piece. I’ve puzzled out several other designs from this sampler, and may include them in the next Ensamplario volume, since being post 1610, they are out of the timeline spread I try to stick to for my Carolingian Modelbook series. But in one place or another they will eventually escape from my desktop.
Skipping ahead to Strip #5, this simple meander is another of my own doodles, and will also be in EnsAtl III, but with a departure from that to-be-published version. Like all of the other placements of yellow in this, the background play was improvised on the spot just for this piece.
The one above the in-process stitching deserves a longer explanation. Strip #4 is something a bit far afield. I can’t call it my own. I would say it’s “After J.R.R. Tolkein.” That’s right. I used an on-newspaper doodle done by The Professor himself as my leaping off point. The heavily embellished newsprint page from August 1960 was displayed in the “Tolkein: Maker of Middle Earth” exhibit. The photo of it was captured by a fellow follower of the Prancing Pony Podcast: Tolkien & Middle Earth discussion group on Facebook, and shared in that group on 9 August 2024. I played with it and produced my version within hours of that post. Here is the inspiring image:
I was moved by the three-color bit at the upper left. Redacting it to be compliant with my blackwork standards was a bit problematic. For one, I stick to a single unit, 90°-45°-180° angle schema. I avoid half stitches and stitches taken over 2×1 units or other multiples. Curved lines are also a challenge. But for all of that, plus trying to keep the thing in as small a footprint as possible, I do think the lineage of my rather art-deco looking version can be perceived.
I also note that the visual designers working on the aesthetic for Gondor in the movie versions of Lord of the Rings might have been likewise inspired by these doodles. Evidence:
Now, what’s this design doing on a piece dedicated to the work of my own Resident Male? I looked at the strips already laid down and then went nosing around in my doodle pages for something that would contrast well with them. Preferably of medium width and a geometric, with potential to be worked up as a relatively solid band rather than a meander or baseline-sprouted design. I wanted something to balance the chain links above it and provide counterbalance to the extra wide designs I’m considering for use in the lower half of the piece. This one was just too juicy to pass over. And flowing from arguably the greatest wellspring of fantasy literature, from which every epic in that genre since has contained at least a drop of legacy, the filtered scion of my interpretation seemed appropriate.
Next up, another Mystery Inscription from Treyavir. Possibly a narrow defining band to frame it, then on to some really complex custom strips that echo bits from that book.
REBOOT
Yes, I did go back and tease out ALL of the stitching seen in my last post. I was not happy with the discontinued DMC linen I was using. Single strand it was (mostly) too thin for this 26.6 tpi linen ground. Doubled, the slubby nature of the thread – especially where two thick sections ended up side by side – made what should be smooth lines very haphazard in appearance.
Not being near home base with my stash to hand, nor near any useful retail outfits or access to reliable one-day delivery where I am, I had to rely on what was already in my stitching box. Back to the black Sulky 30. In this case, on the very coarse ground, two strands work nicely. I teamed the black up with a strong golden yellow (DMC 3820), also worked as two strands.
The yellow is not dark enough to be distinctive on its own for the linear elements, but as fill and voiding, it is effective. So I’m playing with it as accent rather than as a full-fledged “partner color” as done with the two colors on Stone by Stone and Ferthan, Fuur, Fustovv.
The sharp eyed will note a major error on my part, that I will go back and fix the hard way. Look at the right side of the piece. The chain elements end there two units further along in the repeat than they do along the left edge of the stitching. Because the squirrels are not a symmetrical repeat, I did not notice that my centerline was off until I did the second strip. I will go back later and fudge those two left side units in the shorted strips so that everything is nice and even.
And if I hadn’t confessed this sin here, I bet you would never have noticed.
The squirrels and the double chain are both slated for inclusion in Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III. Both are my own designs. The chain will include variants like corners, a centered yoke treatment, so that it can be easily stitched up as embellishment on cuffs and collars for shirts and chemises.
I haven’t decided yet to include the current strip in EnsAtl III, or to hold it in reserve for The Third Carolingian Modelbook (also in production, but not as far along). The reason is that it is a redaction rather than an original. I have a clean point source for it, although it’s late (1697). More on the design as the stitching develops and I figure out how to bling it up with yellow accents.
As to the size of this piece, it’s narrow, but long. You can see how much real estate I have to cover:
I do have a few very tall strips to include on this one. And another Enigmatic Saying in an Unearthly Language. Stay tuned!
String-Or-Nothing 