Crewel Friday and a bit more...

New Year's weekend provided some lovely stitching time.  I completed the acorns, began the main stem, outlined the hills with split stitch and stitched the deer. I feel I'm jumping around a bit but the main stem and hills are the same color family and I want to get them well underway before taking a break for some color with the last two leaves. motivation. I've also just about completed my paper.

Last week I won lovely prize. I'd mentioned I'm participating in a 30-day creativity practice with others, organized by Quinn Creative.  As part of the conversation, she asked us to post our words for 2011. She selected two participants to win these cute inner critic dolls. 

While it's supposed to be used to silence your inner critic, these days the way work has been going, I've been using it to remind me to keep my yap shut when I long to spout off.

The doll came with this awesome card.

The long holiday weekend, along with our monthly support group on Thursday, also allowed me time for Japanese embroidery. I stitched the flat silk foundation for the middle fan blade. It's a deep burgundy color (which some people see as purple, some as brown). The trellis on top is done in two metallics, alternating--gold and a variegated pink. I still need to tie it down at the intersections. I hope to get that done this coming weekend.

Japanese Embroidery

I woke up to snow this morning. The dusting on the evergreen bushes and lawn was pretty.  The sheet of glaze ice on the sidewalks and streets was not. I had an amazing amount of trouble trying to get the car door open with my arms full of packages going to the post office. I'm glad no one had a camera filming my flailing and struggles!  I finally managed and went off to physical therapy and then took everything to the post office.  another task done!

We held our monthly Japanese embroidery meeting a week late this month--it was yesterday. I got a lot done--all of the second layer of the fan blade laid and tied down.  The photo really highlight spots where the bottom layer was moved out of place--I can tweak it back into place easily. (Finding things like this is one reason I like to photograph my work as I go along.)

I also learned a lot this week. A few weeks ago I lamented that I'd laid some of my basting lines right on top of the design lines and I'd had to go over them to cover the design lines. Hmmm, well. I didn't.  Ruth reminded me that a gold border that goes around each fan blade and that covers the design lines.  I'm not taking it all out--it's just going to be a slightly fatter fan blade. But I'll know better when I do the other blades. 

I was very careful as I laid this second layer. It should form equilateral triangles and the third layer of the hemp-leaf pattern goes on top of this. If this second layer isn't even, then the third layer is more difficult to do.  I used both my triangle and a sheet from a set of 7mm guidelines on a transparency. Between the two and measuring each stitch carefully, the triangles came out pretty accurate. (These transparency sheets also come in handy for crewel fillings.)

I want to begin on some of the flower and leaf motifs, but I need to get some of the other solid fan blades completed first. (In Japanese embroidery you stitch the foreground before the background, the opposite of most European-style embroidery.)  The other fan blades are all flat silk (this first one has a twisted silk foundation). Flat silk can be a challenge in winter, between static and rough hands. I'm working on keeping my hands in good shape.

I'm tracking the time spent on this piece. So far--15 hours (that includes mounting it on the frame and couching the design lines for accuracy). 

I've also worked a bit on my crewel piece. I plan to have a photo of that next week.