Stitching AND finishing

Since the start of the year I have taken up some stitching again, some needlepoint pieces from my late mother's stash and one cute little cross stitch piece. For the needlepoint there have been some supply problems from one of the needlepoint yarn makers (like, they have not shipped anything for over 2 years due to the economic downturn), and as a result I was at a standstill for a while on my large Iris.

So while I waited for more yarn to come in, I also completed some socks:


. . . and the back of my Rayon Blue Heron sweater (with help from our new kitty who loves to chew the yarn in twain. But that's another posting . . . ):

Blue Heron Rayon sweater with bust shaping. I really, really
like the shaping on this pattern - it's slinky and is going to be just fabulous
for a spring or summer event. Starting again on a
smaller size is going to make all the difference.
And with that nice lace pattern, I think this means I get to treat
myself to a nice, lacy camisole??

Finally, about early March, some yarn finally arrived and I was able to finish my large Iris!! I was able to take it off its frame, too, and this is a good thing because I found yet another piece of my mother's that will fit perfectly on this frame. I had fun playing with choosing the colors, as she had received it as a gift with DMC embroidery thread as the yarn/thread for it, and she just couldn't figure it all out. She had started stitching the background with 1 strand of Persian yarn and it was really hard for her to see it. I got to play with new and pretty colors back in January, so this is going to be something all of my own when I finally start on it. Probably this summer.

In the meantime, I finished stitching the background of my large Iris which was the only thing missing:

I am so happy with how this piece turned out. With Persian yarn, I could combine strands from the old and from the new dye lots and the RH final corner looks seamless.

Now comes the blocking portion of it, which I'm not going to do until I decide how I want to frame it. Which, I admit, may be a while; I have a ton of needlework already to hang in our house, and this piece will block back into shape. I know - I've done it a hundred times with pieces much more cockeyed than this one.

The other stitching piece that I finished recently is my little bird. This was one of 3 birds of a series I bought when I learned that the Danish designer, Eva Rosenstand was going out of business. Her company later found a buyer, but they no longer weave their own linen nor dye their own threads. This latter, especially, is sad for me - her view of colors was unique in all the world and only her kits made prior to 2002 or so will have her original vision to them. Fortunately I have several of her kits, one of which involves the rich Dutch blues, that I will begin someday. It will match the one that I finished a number of years back.

ANYWAY. This little bird is the final in the series of 3 - the first was the Wren in the Furze (yes, there is a nursery rhyme that starts "The Wren, the wren, the king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze"); the second was the little bluetit; and this one is a little brown bird in a Cherokee rosebush (or its Danish equivalent):

Here s/he is! Standing so proudly, and the leaves which are yellowish-green and colors I would not ordinarily use are really quite a complement to her brown-ness and the pink of the roses.

The beauty of this design is the simplicity of the color changes - the bottom petal on the top rose just looks like it is folded up a little bit. And what suggests this? The sudden color movement from mauve to pink with a single strand of light grey backstitching to delineate the edge of the petal from its back. The human eye does the rest. People asked me frequently "Surely you must design your own patterns?!" to which I only have to show this picture to explain that there are some of us who stitch and bring pictures to life, and some who can imagine and create. I am in awe.

I have also been making great strides with the other Iris picture, the one that looks more modern? Not cubist, but not as realistic as the large Iris by Lee Designs. It has no shading, but each of the petals and leaves is its own patch of color. Which makes the entire piece very striking. Strides of it are here:

Part of what gives this piece its beauty is the intensity of these blues and purples. I needed more of the dark green DMC needlepoint yarn, and it did not go as far as it needed to. The Rolaframe is a doozy to set up - it takes 2 people to mount a piece of needlepoint onto it, and many were the times my staff and I spent setting one up for a customer.

And one more thing: my infamous swan piece is finally done!!

Needlepoint UFO

Of course, if I have pictures of a project, I just HAVE to have a story with it, no? Well, this one will make all of you stitching (and knitting) procrastinators feel oh so much better.

In October of 1997 (yes, that's the last century), Webmaster Bill and I decided to chuck it all and go to France on vacation. His mother had died earlier that year and he was feeling kind of glum, and I had received a call from my old alma mater that my French professor was leading a group through Paris, same as she had done during my studies there in 1985. We had some extra cash and made arrangements to travel. Meeting up with Annie and Lynn and her students in Paris was just a blast (was I really that young, too?!), and we were treated to a tour of Montmartre and its streets and its vinyards. At last, I paid a lot of attention to what Annie was saying, Bill really enjoyed the knowledge, too, and we had a nice dinner in a nice restaurant, courtesy of the France Program.

Webmaster Bill and I toured the Louvre, just ourselves, which was a blast since my only knowledge of its facade was just after its fire and during the construction of the pyramid, so I only knew a long, high wooden wall while I walked past the courtyard on my way to Art classes inside. The pyramid for all its controversy about its newness and its construction was quite magnificent. We took a tour of the Roman and Greek statuary so that we wouldn't get too exhausted and cranky with each other, and we also toured the Musee de Cluny and another mideval museum mentioned in a Paris tour guide that featured the mideval store signs. No words, just the picture. I was a bit lost trying to figure everything out, since all of the pictures were like nothing I could envision as 14th century commerce.

But I digress. Once we reached the city of Quimper with the lovely Gothic cathedral (even I couldn't get lost in this town!) and its Celtic heritage, Webmaster Bill came down with a bad headache. We won't say the "m" word here, but it was probably something close. So off to an Apothecary to explain headache symptoms in French (why don't they teach this stuff in school??), back to the hotel room, then off to do some shopping on my own. While traversing the city center just before dejeuner, I came upon a needlepoint shoppe and there were more canvases than I could certainly pick from. And I had forgotten that it was time for lunch when everyone shuts their doors for a couple of hours, so I found a nice still-life canvas and went on my way. The open air market was just then closing, too, so I didn't have my pick of chickens for my lunch that day, either. And we're not talking a greasy sandwich or chicken tenders, or even a nice, plump carcass - we're talking the brown-feathered cooking hen standing and clucking, waiting for the cook to come and test its quality. This is one of the things I love about France - all the food is so fresh and the farmers are (were?) very much a part of the process. Not sure how things are going since the E.U. regulations came on the scene - I hear there are protests from the farmers wanting to hold on to their farms and livelihoods.

So, time passed. My canvas sat on top of my record albums, I selected the colors from the DMC wool options that came with the canvas, and we all just waited for time to pass . . .

. . . till last summer when I was working late on Thursday nights, a stitching piece for a customer was coming to a close, and I needed something to work on while the evening progressed. And look what I found! My old, still life canvas, just waiting to be stitched. Popped it onto a Rolaframe, made sure I had all the colors I needed, and hey presto, I was ready. I wish I had stuck with a truer shade of white, as that particular dye lot was a little too cream except in direct light, but there you have it. Here are the pictures:


As is so often the case with these screen-printed canvases, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the circles and the lines for shading or coloring. Once it's stitched, though, the roundness of the apples and grapes looks much truer to form - the eye kind of supplies the missing shapes. And these rust shades are just so much my very favorites, and the purples of the grapes, rather than clashing with the rust, just really stand out as the foreground. I had forgotten, too, how very quick needlepoint is - my first stitching "session" included finishing all the purple grapes and stitching the entire purple portion of the jar.


Ah yes, the copper pot. It's still unstitched by this time (late September) so you can see how the painting of the pot has some overflow from one shading color to another. And the red will present another stitching challenge - is it one vertical row all the way up, or does it become 2 vertical rows at the very bottom, narrowing to 1 vertical row at the very top? These are the predicaments that made me an advocate for hand-painted needlepoint in my shop. I always felt that it takes much more skill and artristry as a stitcher to stitch screen-printed needlepoint, and it was not until now that I could sense the inner chutzpah to say, "Oh, to heck with the light copper - that red needs to show off its red-dishness now, so I will venture into the realm of the light copper." Or the dark lines of the stones - they're cock-eyed if you look at them stitch by stitch, but taken as a whole they look like rustic mortar in between the stones.


Here is the top portion, with the fallen leaves (notice the lovely rust shading on them!), with the grey outlining yarn still in my needle. Just before I began stitching this piece, I pulled some yarn that had been missing from the DMC listings. I used Anchor to supplement the DMC wool, and you know what? I really prefer the twist of the DMC. The Appleton was a little rougher to the hand and as I stitched with it it began to untwist. It's simple enough to fix, really, but I was quite disappointed. With all of the needlepoint book publishers who laud its colors and use it for their oh-so-gorgeous patterns, I found myself quite disappointed with its simple quality when I began to use it. I was happy that you can't tell the difference in the finished piece between Anchor and DMC. But the difference in quality did give me pause.


Finally, here's the stone background. It is possible to tell the difference both in this picture and in the direct sunlight between the white part of the stones and the cream, but the difference is much more pronounced on the canvas and I wish I had gone with my instinct and used a brighter white. Still, the white on the fruits would have been too stark, and the cream is fairly white so the stones won't mind too much.

I really, really like how you can't tell, once it's stitched, where a color or a line was on the printed canvas. I guess it takes some growing up, where the need to emphasize a color does not mean the taking away of another color's "territory." Funny how our minds work when we are younger!

All in all, I'm quite happy with this piece. I was able to find a deep copper of a shade that I had used up while stitching through another shop, and that makes me oh, so happy. I have the top left hand corner to finish before this piece is ALL FINISHED (pictures will follow!), and then I have 2 needlepoint canvases that I bought, literally, 30 years ago. Have I taken them out of their boxes? Yes. Have I put them onto frames to begin stitching? No. But the threads are all ready, the canvases are anxiously waiting, and once I finish some commission stitching, then this piece, I'll be able to start some needlepoint canvases I bought when I was 14 and visiting London with my high school's band trip.

Happy stitching to all!

Susan

Flower Power Bag in progress

No Annetrelac sock here, and I'm getting more into stitching since I finished up several knitting sweaters before the hot weather really started, so it's on to "What are the ongoing shop projects at Nease's Needlework?" Well, of course, I'll be happy to share! Now, the first project I mention here is a Lopi felted bag (not something you think about in Georgia summers), but we'll just say that air conditioning is a wonderful invention and the various stitching projects will have their own blogs soon, not to worry!

So I was looking at all the lovely colors of Lopi, thinking how great they would be if they could turn themselves into a felted bag, and lo and behold, Designs by Shelley had a great bag pattern. It's called "Flower Power Bag" and featured a multi colored bag with flowers attached to the pocket. You knit the bottom of the bag in one color, the two sides in contrasting colors, then knit and attach the front pocket and straps and voila! It's ready to felt! It knitted very quickly and I worked on it at the shop, since I work on Thursday evenings for the time being and Friday afternoons can be a bit slow during the summer.

Here's a picture of the bag pattern from Designs by Shelley:



You can see the other Designs by Shelley bags at her website http://saboardman.tripod.com
and order them from Nease's Needlework. Call or come by the shop to pick out your favorite (shameless plug!).

I modified the colors a little bit, since I didn't have Lopi in yellow and I wasn't sure how Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride Bulky would felt on a Lopi bag, so I decided to use 2 shades of rose for the sides (which are picked up and worked in stockinette stitch from each long edge of the purse bottom), and the navy that I used on the bottom is the pocket color. I used green for the top, which is knit after the edges are sewn together, and for the handles. If you feel you need practice doing your mattress stitch to sew sides together, Lopi is big and bulky and easy to see! I know that Lopi is not everyone's favorite yarn to work with, especially in GA's 90+ degree temperatures, but in the shop in the air conditioning, it wasn't so bad. The front table held the bag while I worked on it which helped with the weight of it since it wasn't sitting on my lap as I knitted.

And a word about the handles - I fully expected they'd be knit as I-cords but they weren't. They were a 5 stitch stockinette stitch that you knit for 20 inches and thank goodness I remembered how to knit backwards. I had learned that technique years ago when I learned entrelac, as it makes the work go more quickly since you're not turning the work from back to front on a limited number of stitches (10 or less). So I guess the designer (Shelley) wanted flat handles for the bag rather than small round ones. And you know, it makes sense: felted bags can be heavy and I'd much prefer having a flat handle that will fit easily on my shoulder, rather than a small round one that will dig in when I load the bag with items.

Anyway, since I've taken these pictures, I've finished the handles and sewn on the pocket. I'll take pictures of the completed bag in its unfelted state next week, after I've had a chance to catch my breath from the trip I'm taking this weekend with Webmaster Bill. I can measure it and show how large Lopi is before felting when knit on size 13 needles. Once it's felted, I'll probably use some scrap yarn and do some needle felting of flowers onto the front of the bag to fit in with the instructions (they do say "Flower Power," after all!).

So here are the pics:
This is the front of the bag, and the side where the pocket goes. It took very little time to get this far - I started on a Saturday late afternoon, and knit on Thursday evenings if the shop is slow.

Here are the yarns I used:



What you may or may not be able to tell from your monitor is the shade of green I used. Those of you who know me well will know that this shade of green, AKA 70's green, is one of my least favorite shades in all of color-dom. My employees (most of whom who love this shade) took great joy in pointing out to me that everything old is new again; my thoughts are "but must this 70's green be new again, too???" It does go with the bright shades of rose, though, in a way that shows them off without their rosy-ness being too bright.



And yes, there is my side seam with my mattress stitch. A kind and knowledgeable knitting teacher taught me how to do this seam while we were enjoying a glass of wine and some chocolates at The Mountain retreat center, and I've never disliked seaming since. There just might be a lesson in there!

So hope you enjoy this posting, and I'll have more pics to put up in a week or so!

Another view

Here's a close-up of Allie's sock. Wow, Anne sure is some gorgeous yarn.

Anybody out there who was thinking of participating in the knitalong but hasn't done so yet, please join us! Just email Susan and let her know you want to sign up.

Pretty pretty pretty yarn

Unlike everyone else, I chose a yarn that has minimal color variation cuz, well, I wanted to see the subtleties of the shading when I start my entrelac pattern.  So I took some pictures at the shop and have posted a couple.  It's kind of hard to see the subtlety in just one shot, so here are a couple in a couple of different lights.  The color is just a shade darker than the second photo, kind of a dark rust.  Which is a color I wear often, so I'm really looking forward to getting started on knitting this cool pattern soon.

Mmmm...yarn...

Hey, everyone! I had a hard time choosing a colorway for my Annetrelac socks. There were several gorgeous almost-solid skeins at the shop, which tempted me, but I wanted more color variation for my entrelac blocks. The colors in the skein I ultimately picked remind me of a box of chocolates--cocoa and caramel and nougat and luscious fruity centers. Delicious.