WIP LARGE - Mirabilia's "Enchanted Mermaid"

 

 

This is my (reboot) newest gigantic WIP.  Mirabilia's "Enchanted Mermaid".  I started it in Spring, 2012 but really didn't work on it over the summer, well, because it was summer!  This is my second attempted Mirabilia piece.  The first was "Winter Queen" but I abandoned it.  The reason I gave up was that I was still more of a novice back then but have built up more experience and confidence leading up to this pattern.  This one, though, I cannot wait to see finished with all of the fancy treasure beads and seed beads, etc.  I dyed the fabric but really kept it super light though....I was afraid of ruining it.  Since I am back in University full time now, I can only limit my cross stitch time while I am listening to audiobooks for school to maximize my time.  



Completed Cross Stitch – “Wicked Night” by Isabella Abbiati for The Primitive Hare

 

This piece is stitched on a 28-count Ivory-coloured Lugana cloth, dyed with Dylon’s Velvet Black and stitched with one thread over one.  The dyed piece's dappled effect reminded me of the moon’s surface at a magnified level and I found the pattern to match after the dye experiment. 

If you are not entirely familiar with your different cloth types for stitching just yet, Lugana cloth is an evenweave fabric.  Evenweave looks like a piece of graph paper and Lugana is a smaller version of Aida cloth, which is a larger evenweave.  The nice thing about working with an evenweave fabric is that it provides an easier way to count your stitching against the pattern, allow for overall stress-free stitch placement, and nice uniformity.

What makes Lugana different than Aida is not only the size difference (Aida is typically 14, 16, 18, or 22) and Lugana has a higher count such as 25 or 28 but there is also a texture and dye-ability difference which I will get into in a bit. 

But what do all these numbers mean?  Well, just like your computer monitor or TV, the more squares or dots per inch means a higher or stronger resolution and the less squares per inch means, well, it looks more blocky the bigger it gets (Minecraft is a good model).  Think of micro (small) vs. macro (big).  So, for example, in this piece there are 28 stitches per one inch.  The pattern size is 77H x 163W.  H = height and W = width.

By doing a little math, you can figure out how big or small your work will be.  For example, let’s divide 77 into 28 and 163 into 28.  Remember we are still working in inches, so the design will be 2.75”H and 5.82”W on a piece of 28-count Lugana cloth.  The size of the cloth I am using is 5” x 14” which is important to know as you need to have an extra few inches around your design.  If you don’t have a few extra inches of fabric around your design, you run the risk of it unravelling or making it hard to stitch and/or frame.  See how it works?  It’s called scalability.

Getting back to the graph paper example, it would translate to 28 squares per inch and in the case of a TV or computer monitor 28 dots or pixels per inch (dpi or ppi).

So, why isn’t there an Aida cloth that has a 25 or 28 count then?  It’s the ingredients used to make the cloth.  Aida is made out of 100% cotton which is of course good right?  It is but only to a degree.  The cotton fibers are too large to work with after a 22-count and the evenweave openings look more like pinholes instead of uniform squares making it very difficult to work with as far as stitching may go.

In order to get around this problem, Lugana cloth reduces the amount of the cotton blend and increases an intermingling of part viscose rayon.  The combination is roughly a 50/50 split give or take a 1%-2% difference between the blends.  Viscose is plant fiber and viscous rayon is plant fiber that goes through an additional chemical process to smooth out the fibers a bit more.  With smoother and more refined fiber, smaller weaves can be achieved.  The overall texture between Lugana and Aida is smoother/flatter versus slightly coarser and raised fibers respectively.

As you may have already guessed, plant fiber and cotton fiber absorb water and/or dye differently which definitely has an impact on your specific or experimental dye job of creating artistic-looking cloth for the background of your work.  Cotton will absorb liquid more quickly and rayon will slightly repel liquid before absorption.  Picking out the right cloth is a combination of personal preference and technical requirement for the piece you wish to wonderfully create and both fabrics are lovely to work with in their own special way. 

Completed Cross Stitch - "Seasonal Fantasies - Autumn" by Katrina Farabaugh

 

 

As a few of us begin to move from the Spring of our lives into the next season, sometimes we just start to…change and change without prior warning.  Hey!  What's up with that???

Now you may or may not be thinking that this solely relates to age but I believe that there could be more. 

Maybe the 'more' is a cross-pollination of thoughts and ideas made from your own eye and ear observations, or others’ opinions massaging and assaulting you, or your own positive and negative experiences producing a different hybrid flowering of your own perceptions. 

Or how about this: it is the accumulation of life struggles that instead looks like a savings account built by pennies of experience locked away somewhere to be drawn from at a later and more convenient time. 

But if you're more favourable to the maturity thing, I know I’ve come across several people younger and older than me that are more insightful than someone double in age from me or themselves.

It’s fascinating what triggers a transitional shift that touches off a new period of where we think we are and where we believe we are going.

Where are you in your life right now?  No, seriously, where ARE you?

Me?  It appears that my life is taking shape based on the late Charles Bukowski's prose.  I recently withdrew my application from a potential government-based position after 14 weeks into the process and remain on the cusp of finishing my degree and have 5 courses left (one full-time term).  Five doesn't sound like a lot but please believe me when I say it's the equivalent of two full-time jobs (and without pay).

Since making the firm decision of going back to university FT in 2012, please believe me when I tell you that I hit every xylophone bar of different emotions between the academic process and the strain of sacrifice for the illusion or real security of a greater good. 

The range moved back and forth from happiness, satisfaction, frustration, exasperation, feeling fed up/beat up, renewed, defeated, broken, healed, "jailed" and "on parole" (from school terms of course and not the penal system), feeling successful, feeling like a failure, satisfied, scared, euphoric, depressed, feeling invisible to feeling seen and recognized, losing self-esteem, gaining insight, and all at the same time it's as if I ran a marathon while standing still for the last few years.

During school, I lost one of my pets due to long-term illness, and for a while almost lost a parent too for similar reasons.  No amount of care, compassion, or support will ever completely stall the status of someone's else life or death situation.  It's a different season that sits just outside the regular calendar (for all of us I guess..).

So maybe you're in the same situation as me where you may be parachuting down from some remote point and the ground is now coming into focus but are unsure which direction you should head into once you land.

After school is complete I would love to move somewhere new and start a unique and different life (been researching 1-2 states in particular).  It seems that I have already done and experienced everything I can where I am now.

However,  I have never been much of a mover from home to home (no really, I should change my name to Stonehenge ha ha).  I feel terrified to make a huge change on my own  and yet all the while worry about the regret from letting fear take the lead keeping my life on ice and do nothing. 

Have you ever felt this way?  Do you know anyone with or without regrets over life changes?  Is there anything that makes you feel fearful that you want to get past?

A small note about the cross stitch, I dyed the linen piece with green, yellow, and blue RIT dye using brush strokes and the fabric count is between 28-32 pt.

Completed Cross Stitch - R. Ivan's "Alice"

Iconography.  You know who this is without me giving any "deets" (details) which I think is kind of cool actually. 

That is the beauty in seeing an image and understanding who or what it represents and all of its associations without an explicit explanation.  If you have ever read a Dan Brown book:  think Robert Langdon.

This is my first experimental design (I have a gran
d total of 2 btw) that has ever made it to cross stitch completion and I am glad it is still a "back burner" thing because it is very, very time consuming and frankly not very easy LOL.  

There is a lot of agony that comes from finalizing details and design (fashion designers unite and groan all together!) ha ha.

As an example, for those of you who know your shoes, I was hemming and hawing over whether to add socks to be sported with the Mary Janes.  Am I right?  Small, yet important detail.

But the main reason that I wanted to post this is that I wanted to show now matter how a small an idea or big of a desire anyone has, you can make it real and it does not have to be perfect on the first go. 

Now this may apply to you differently and in your own way but whatever your dreams are, start small and try and take some steps to make it real and see how it goes.  You can always change your mind :-)  But challenges are good (e.g. "ahem"...linen vs. aida/evenweave.."ahem").

So, this micro cross stitch is just that....very tiny (1.5" high) and at the time of making it (at night) it was a little tricky to see good placement for back stitching (Ottlite was too far away). 

Although I did not mark this remnant, I believe this is a 22-count Aida cloth that I cut up from a larger bolt and experimented with green RIT dye (I still have to try Kool-Aid, coffee and tea and see the different outcomes).

Instead of dipping it in a wash, I just used a paint brush and painted from the bottom up and also from side to side in one application.

So hey, now I can say I have designed and "published" my first cross stitch picture.  I can't wait to hear about and see some of the steps that you are taking in your life for your desires to come true too!

Completed Cross Stitch - Luli's "Stella"

 

***
First, I just wanted to take the time to thank you.  You, yes you, sitting there right now reading this--you are awesome!  Thank you for all of your kind words, support, encouragement and whether we have exchanged any words or not, I appreciate your precious time that you take to look at the completed cross stitch pictures and WIPs on this blog.
Thank you for being here.
***

We all need something to look up to don't we?

For some it is hope, for some it is a special person or even someone looking up to their own reflection in the mirror and being either his or her own best inspiration.

I could not tell you the last time I just literally looked up and kept my head up to look up and around.  Maybe my last vacation sightseeing??  But day-to-day?  Not sure about if you do the same as me but I think I'm either looking straight ahead or down....a lot.  A few examples would be like when I'm reading, watching TV, cross stitching, and I was going to say driving but I guess you have to look up at the signals but I was thinking more along the lines of looking up towards the sky.

Some people who come to mind that look up a lot are astronomers (hopefully not at the sun), rock climbers, bird watchers or hey even UFO enthusiasts right?  There really isn't too much that I can think of that makes most people look up very much really (I could insert a Godzilla or Superman joke here but I won't..haha).

But getting back to hope I guess for every positive there is a negative right?  The song by the band The Trews called "Hope and Ruin" comes to mind reminding listeners of this (pretty good song but I'm not a fan of the music video despite part of it being filmed here in Toronto though).

Is hope a disease that keeps us perpetually ill with want or desire that may or may not come to fruition? or is hope that inner drive which gives each day new meaning that feeds a perpetual and renewable interest in life?

One thing that I believe may be true (from my communication studies):  // if you hold your head up your mind and spirit will perk and follow the same trajectory \\  Please try it sometime soon? :-)

This completed stitched piece was made just after spending almost a week at the hospital with one of my dogs (he is doing great now and is back home) and it gave me pause to reflect on just how precious the things that we love in each of our lives just really are.  It inspired the choice of this cross stitch subject.

Details regarding this piece are as follows:  finished size = 5" x 7", stitched over 2 threads on a 32 count linen with DMC B5200 and DMC 816.

Completed Cross Stitch - Lanarte's "Nibbling Beechnuts"

 

This is my latest big project finish.  This was a kit.

I started it on October 10, 2010 and worked on it on and off until completing it on October 12, 2011.

I was very determined to finish it by the one year mark as I forgot that so much time has passed on my WIP that I 'whipped' myself into gear and made it my #1 goal to finish it and here it is.

Here's how I encouraged myself: listening to "The Help" and the first 2 Harry Potter books on audiobook formats.... You're so busy listening to the wonderful stories that you keep cross stitching just to keep listening!

My latest thing is to put a start date on my patterns so that I can see how long I have been working on it because time passes so quickly that it is easy to forget when I first start a project and especially if I have a few on the go.

Completed Cross Stitch - Charley Harper's "Cool Cardinal"

 

 

 

The American Modernist nature artist, Charley Harper, has a minimalist style that has definitely stood the test of time.  He has worked with the Audubon Society, various zoos and even the Ford Motor Company and his active years appear to be about the 1950s to 1970s.

 

One of the reasons I point out that his work is timeless is that just for one example "Cool Cardinal" was originally released in 1974; the hand-drawn cross stitch pattern from KD Artistry, Inc. (for Puckerbrush) is from 1985 and finally, here it is again in 2013 in thread and fabric form.

Here is my list of random information bits about this latest completed work:

 

1. Finished size:  15.25" x 4.25"
2. Linen 28 or 32 count, possibly Monster Mash from Picture This Plus
3. DMC white used not DMC B5200; DMC white is more yellow and B5200 is more blue (brighter white) - I only had white on-hand at the time (maybe B5200 might have been too overpowering)
4. Used 3 strands instead of 2
5. Would not recommend linen for geometrical work
6. Kreinik Metallics #032 blending filament used with white (really adds a delicateness to the snow and keeps the overall work from looking too flat or heavy because of the bold colours and lines)
7. Would not recommend this pattern for beginners - too hard to understand some of the instructions
8. Discovered a new technique from this pattern:  the use of interchanging double and single lines of backstitching for effect (that was really cool...no pun LOL)
9. Snowflakes got a little tedious to work on at times
10. And lastly, one time I looked up from this work and saw a cardinal sitting outside my windowsill...awwww

 

I have added a picture of the Kreinik blending filament to show the iridescence because unfortunately it does not seem to show up through the photographs (sorry, I tried several times with natural and artificial light).

Completed Cross Stitch - Aliolka’s “Red Fox and Grapes”



Yinka Shonibare’s use of Dutch wax cotton fabric in his “How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once (Ladies)” 2006 was the inspiration for the background.  It was one of my favourite pieces from Art History this year (Thank you Professor S. M.!)

The Dutch colonists first learned about Indonesian Batik in the Dutch East Indies.  The process is putting hot wax on cool fabric to transform plain cloth into patterned cloth through a wax-resistant dye technique.  Dutch wax fabric became popular in West Africa and became to be associated with the bold print designs you still see common today.

 The dye is soaked into the fabric where there is no wax.  The wax gets melted off, the process is repeated until the layers of colour and design are desired.

So, I did just the same but got a little lazy (meaning I had no design in mind) and impatient to try this out.  I took a medium sized candle, waited about 10 seconds after lighting the wick and just poured whatever candle wax drippings would melt fast enough onto the 22-count Hardanger grey cotton fabric. 

The wax looked like a bunch of little ugly blobs and I thought to myself, “uh oh…maybe this isn’t going to turn out like I thought.  This will be my ‘test and throw away’ piece then”. 

In keeping with the Dutch wax boldness, I vamped up the choice of dye to red RIT and purple Kool-Aid.  Here is the list of my steps:

1.       Wax drippings (drops of dots)

2.       Red RIT dye dip #1

3.       Melt wax off

4.       Light bleach wash in the centre of the fabric

5.       Second round of wax drippings (side-to-side splashes this time)

6.       Grape Kool-Aid dip #2

7.       Melt wax off

8.       Red RIT dye dip #3, just the edges of the fabric

The final product is what you see through no pre-planning just experimentation.

The cross stitch subject is based on Aesop’s fable of “The Fox and Grapes” but is inspired from me not getting into my desired program earlier this year.

Here is short summary of the fable:  fox wanted to get some juicy grapes, couldn’t reach them and because he couldn’t reach them, figured they were probably sour anyway.

Since I did not get into the program, I figured that I probably would not have liked it anyway.  Maybe I am right, maybe I am wrong. 

But I got over my “sour grapes” and am still pursuing my degree because it is still my #1 goal.  Why should I give up over one wee minor setback despite my new fuzzy situation?  Have you ever felt the same way about an obstruction?

I k-n-o-w that one day after I grow and learn a little more, my reach will extend far enough to grasp my “juicy grapes” and they won’t be sour.  :-)