Work In Progress Wednesday - 31 Oct 2012

Another Wednesday and here's the current state of play on my Works in Slow Progress. First of all, the sampler:

I've done a slight bit more than you can see here since the photo was taken, i.e. have put in the lazy daisy stitches on the rest of the upper left hand bit of the rose scroll.  You might notice that I decided to replace those erroneous blue stitches after all and I think it looks a lot better now.  The blue didn't make a good contrast, it just confused matters and it looks a lot more like roses now, instead of just clumps of dots!

I also got the stumpwork rabbit going again.  Here's the photo from the book I'm working from with all the threads I'm using as well.

I completed the shading of the head as you can see.  However, I'm not at all pleased with it and am seriously considering starting all over again with it.  I certainly do want to re-do the lower part of the head and the eye area as I've not used dark enough thread - I used the second darkest instead of the very darkest, but it needs to recede somewhat, being the furthest part away.  So, that's up to be re-done.

I haven't done anything on the peacock feather as yet as I haven't been out to get the 9" hoop, (which I'm assured can indeed be bought from Hobbycraft - there weren't any available when I was buying all my hoops a few years ago), but I hope to do that soon.  I'm not in the market for any fancy frame systems and I find wooden stretched frames much too heavy for me to hold and need too much umph to get set up.  So, I'll get the missing size of hoop.  I like hoops.  If they're good enough for the likes of Helen M Stevens, then they're good enough for me!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Work In Progress Wednesday - 24 Oct 2012

Not too much to show off this week, I'm sorry to say.  There are two or three hours work displayed on the sampler here.

It takes such a long time to achieve anything on this one, especially the cross stitched parts as they're so 'bitty' - a couple of stitches here, three in a row there, a single one over here, and so on.  I also discovered that I'd misread one of the symbols whilst stitching the upper part, thus the rose centres ended up being teal blue instead of deep lilac!!  I might replace it, I might not.=)

Oh and Sharon, you may have told me the piece was lovely before, I don't remember exactly, but I haven't the least objection to being told it as many times as you like!!!  Might help with motivation....

Now onto the peacock feather piece.  One or two mentioned last time that they were intrigued as to what I was going to do with it.  Well, I am a bit that way out myself, if I'm truthful!!  The idea is to continue to couch rows of rayon threads so that they end up something like this picture I did from a real feather (I think - it was a few years ago and may even have been from a photo) below:

I haven't done any more of the stitching yet, but I have pressed the fabric, got the necessary threads out and trialled a couple of possible work frames.  If only I had a 9 inch hoop!  Are such things made, do you know?

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

The Sunday Yarn - 21 Oct 2012

This week has seen me working on two baby cardigans at once!  I'm 'sharing' the size 10 (3.25mm) needles between the two patterns, which isn't strictly necessary as there are another two pairs in my mum's needle bag, but doing it this way makes me work on both and not just do the easy and quick one to the neglect of the slower, more complex design with the finer yarn as I have to make sure that the right guage needles are free at the right time.

I've got almost one sleeve done on the lemon piece.  I do like this one - both the snuggly yarn (texture AND colour) and the pattern, but it takes a fair bit longer, of course.  I've 30 rows left to do on this sleeve now.  The first of the two balls of yarn is coming to an end and I'm beginning to get concerned that there'll be enough!  I've decided not to even attempt matching mittens as I'm sure there won't be enough yarn for those.

I've also started this green version of the white one I've already done.  This one is a size larger and, wouldn't you know it, the back is actually larger than the lemon back even though the lemon one is a size larger again! Go figure, as you American ladies say!=)  Anyway, I plan to decorate this one with purple trims and flowers but, as it's a larger size, I doubt I'll have enough yarn for bootees as well, so I'll just settle for mittens this time.

I was browsing the shop where I got the lemon yarn and found two balls of the flecked peachy-pink below going for only 99p each. There were also stacks of yellow ones, but I liked this one best and the shade seemed to me to be far more suited to a Chinese baby's colouring than our blue-ish pinks would be.

That's all for this week, I'm afraid!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Completed 'Rolled Roses' Brazilian Embroidery

I'm delighted to announce the completion - and successful framing - of my long-in-progress Brazilian embroidery piece!  HURRAH!

Here are the last two WIP shots from last week.  The first one was what I got done during the rest of the Wednesday that you last saw pictures on and the second is, I think, from the next day's work.

After that, I just pressed on to completion and didn't take any more photos until the whole piece was done!  This afternoon, I stretched it in an 8" embroidery hoop after spraying with a clean water spray to wet the fabric.  It dried beautifully taut and ready for framing.

Last, but not least, I put it into one of those Anchor Flexi Hoop Frames (which I'll be detailing the process of soon, alongside some regular framing as Sir and I are doing a few of my pieces on Sunday afternoons together) and here is the completed item ready to be given as a gift to a lovely Japanese lady who put us up in her Oxford home last winter.  I promised to do an embroidery for her and I think she'll like this!

Do you?

So, that's my first Brazilian piece done.  How do I feel about it?  Well, I'm quite pleased with the finished results, but it was rather tricky to work some of it.  I'm not sure if I really enjoyed it in the final analysis and I can't really see myself ever working the larger kit I own - although I am interested in doing some small sections of it.  Jury's out on this one, I think!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Work In Progress Wednesday - 17 Oct 2012

I haven't done much on the sampler this week, but this how it looks just now with the light flowers completed and the rest of the leaves put in around them.

Next up for completion is this funny looking object that long-term readers may remember from 4 years ago and my City & Guilds work.  It's a sample in appliqué and couching and, when complete, should look rather more like a peacock feather than it does now!!  So, I need to give some thought to how to proceed with this one and start doing a little on it as often as I can.

"But wait!"  I hear you cry.  "What happened to the Brazilian Rolled Rose piece?"  Nothing bad has happened to it, in fact, I've finished it!  I just need to stretch it a little before the final photos are taken and then it will have a post all to itself.  Look out for that later in the week, all being well.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

A Little Ribbon Embroidery

I've had a couple of Crafty Ribbons kits in my kit drawer for a while now and have been meaning to get them worked up.  However, when looking at the designs, I couldn't help but feel that the best hadn't been made of its potential.  This is the 'original', what do you think?  You get a small square of black fabric to work it on and, yes, it's plenty big enough for the design, but really nothing like big enough to put in a hoop.  In fact, although this is my fourth kit of this brand, I've never once used the fabric supplied in the package owing to its over small size.

I decided that the first thing to do was to create a new background and, as I had three small projects in mind that I wanted non-plain backgrounds for (including another kit by CR, the colour choices for which make me wonder how they could bring themselves to put it into production....), I decided to have a go at a bit of painting.  Below are the materials I thought I'd use, meaning to do natural, landscapey sorts of things with them.

And below again are the materials I actually used!!

This is what the piece of fabric with the three painted sections looked like when wet.  Notice that I wet the whole area I wanted to paint first so that the colours merged and spread out well on the fabric. 

And this is what it looked like dry - considerably lighter.  As you can see from the tubes of paint photo, I've used watercolours and I really should have remembered how much lighter they dry.  Having said that, I didn't really mind the change too much as I've made the mistake of having an over-poweringly painted background before.  I also learned that Sap Green' dries with quite a hard edge (as does Permanent Rose to a degree) - something to look out for another time.

The middle of the three was the one intended for this ribbon piece as I wanted to give the impression of a pot of flowers in a yard with a wall/fence (the brown-ish colour) and some greenery (the green spots dropped into the brown whilst still wet), on a paved area (the grey at the bottom).

The embroidery itself took around an hour and, as it was done in evening light and was a quick stitch, there are no WIP photos this time, but here's the finished piece, mounted in a card and looking a lot nicer, I think!

Do you agree?  I do like the general design and love the plant pot button - in fact I'm planning to get hold of a few, probably from the Crafty Ribbons booth at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show, presuming they'll be there.  So that part was good, but I think the black background, to say nothing of the awful slightly blurred and totally 'flat' photograph on the kit was a big no-no.  Not surprisingly, I got this as part of a sale on their website - discontinued kits.

PS, In case anyone's wondering what's planned for the other two painted backgrounds, the simple answer is nothing.  I found the green on the left hand one just too vibrant and felt it didn't go with the ribbon piece I had in mind and the right hand idea just no longer works for me.  I was going to do a small sampler with a crazy quilt appearance as a support for my catch-up on TAST.  I still quite like the idea, but don't think this one worked and so will consider trying another one soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

The Sunday Yarn - 14 Oct 2012

I haven't done much knitting over the past week to be honest.  My readers who are really only interested in my embroidery will be pleased to know that I've been pressing on with two projects there - one completed and the other not far off (no, not the sampler!!), so knitting has been a little neglected.  Having said that, I managed to finish the back of the current baby cardigan I'm working on last night.  What puzzles me is why the right hand armhole (when viewed like this, from the back) looks so much lower than the left when it really is only one row!  Odd.

Another Ravelry (a HUGE yarncraft forum) member said she'd worked this pattern and that it had mistakes in it, so I'm a bit concerned about how it will go from here given that I'm only in the elementary stages of learning to knit.  From looking at the pattern and comparing it to the photo, I actually can't see how the pattern corresponds to the top section of the left and right fronts, so I'll need to go carefully there.  I think I'll take a break from this one for the time being as this is a 6-12 month old baby pattern and I still have a couple of 3-6 month ones I want to do.  Doesn't make sense to do it this way around!!

The other day I got one of my stitching magazine IKEA files off the shelf to put away the latest issue of 'Stitch' (and the first one I've bought in over 3 years) and came across this:

I'd been looking for it all over the place!  It'sf from a 1972 women's magazine and my mum must have saved it back then.  She gave it to me in the early 1980s and I'd kept it ever since, just mislaid it recently when I decided to take up knitting seriously.  It details how to work 60 different patterns, some with one colour but using cables and other fancy patterns and others with up to four different colours.  Just what I wanted to learn some more pretty stuff!

So, I might do a little playing around with some of these and make some small samples soon.  I wonder if anyone else has a copy of this still??=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Work in Progress Wednesday - 10 Oct 2012

Today I have two photos of each WIP to share! Such richness!!!LOL

Firstly, I discovered a better way of getting the colour to be more like the real thing than the camera shows and so you may notice that the photos are not so yellow-green as they have been up to now.  Today's shots are more like the real colour of the materials I'm using - cooler than the older photos where too much blue was removed, but warmer than the original shots which were far too blue.  Here you can see progress as made over two or three sessions work this last week:

Moving onto the Brazilian piece and I've been filling in yet more greenery.  Sorry about the bleached out look in the foreground of this first shot.  Actually, it's not as ill focused as it looks, it's just that the variegated thread goes quite pale at this point and the light reflected off it to quite some degree.

In this second one you can see that I've already begun to add in some of the fine work on the lower left hand side of the piece as well as replacing one dodgy bullion in the top right part of the main rose section.  It used to be baggy and ended up making the rose look triangular, now it's rather too long and sticks up, so I may have to do it yet again.  I might try anchoring it down more first as I'm not anxious to add any more bullions than I need to to my work list!

Putting in this other detail has improved both my mood doing the piece and the look of the whole thing.  The fabric puckering is a problem, but it gets covered with fine stitchery, so I don't need to trouble myself greatly about that.  Light still reflecting quite a lot on the lighter green shade of the main stems.  I'll have to find a way to improve the lighting by the time I'm ready for the final shots at least!

I'm hoping to get a few more areas done by next week as I really want to finish this piece in the next fortnight or so and then move on to completing the old peacock feather.  Clearing two pieces this month and making good progress on a third will feel great!

I was very disappointed to discover the other day that Webshots is closing down!  I have over 300 photos of all my work on there and am now looking for another free photo hosting site that allows for creation and easy viewing of albums and that, unlike Flickr, doesn't restrict you to just 200 photos.  I also don't want to use a service which requires others to sign up for it in order to see my pix.  I also have a Photobucket account, but I'm not keen on how albums work there.  So, if anyone has any ideas and recommendations, I'd be interested!  I'm looking for free hosting with a decent amount of storage and good album functions.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

The Sunday Yarn - 7 Oct 2012

Greetings and welcome to the Sunday yarncrafts update.  One project is coming along surprisingly well and the other is now totally finished and ready for handover tomorrow evening.=)

The lemon 4-ply cardigan back is coming along much better and faster than I expected, although I have had one or two hitches and 'pull backs' when I missed wrapping the yarn around the needle for the extra stitch  needed when creating a 'hole'.  Of course, I've since realised that I could just pick up some yarn from the row rather than risk pulling it out, esp. as it can be pretty tricky to catch all the stitches when they're off the needle.  I seriously recommend paying enough attention to not make mistakes!!  Here's how far I've got with the back and, as you can see, I've already begun decreasing for the sleeve edges.

Here is a small close-up of the pattern.  I really like this one and the yarn is so lovely and soft - aptly named 'Snuggly'!!

Here are the mittens that you saw last week, but now with the finishing touch of some pretty, red ribbon.

During the week I also made some matching bootees, which have been trimmed up with the same embroidered design and a slightly wider ribbon.  Knitting these was quite an education as, at one point, it divided into three sections, then I had to pick up stitches along the side of the middle section in order to finish  as a whole bootee only needing the back and bottom sewing up.  Of course, I did the stitchery before sewing up, just as with the mitts.

Here's the complete layette now, which will be handed over to Yufei tomorrow. She's really huge and still has a month to go.  Poor thing's very uncomfortable so we wanted to give her this quite early to cheer her up a bit.  She already has two boys and said a while ago she wanted a daughter to 'make pretty', so this is my contribution to her plan!!

I hope to get a photo of the baby wearing them to post sometime soon!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Work In Progress Wednesday - 3 Oct 2012

Another Wednesday has come around and I have one working session on each WISP to show this time.  First the Brazilian piece.  I had a very interesting comment left on my last WIP Weds post by Rosalie Wakefield of BE fame with some suggestions on how to make bullions better and how to avoid the thread problems.  I haven't yet tried her method (although I will) as I decided to give myself a break from the eternal bullions and add in some greenery instead:

Even with expert advice though, I don't think I'll be making BE (Brazilian Embroidery) a regular feature of my work.  Yes, it is lovely and, yes, the threads are glorious - at least to look at, but I don't think it's my thing and I'll most likely be selling my big 'Ariel's Heart' kit in the near future....

The sampler has some leaves and flower centres added and I'm almost tempted to offer a prize to the reader who can spot where!!!  

Having this Wednesday series is really helping me to at least do something on these pieces each week, even though they could hardly be said to be steaming ahead.  The fact is they are moving ahead and I'm longing to get the BE piece done and to a less confusing part of the sampler (although I think I'm beginning to 'get' it to some degree) and then get my other two stalled pieces - an old C&G peacock feather piece and the stumpwork bunny - back going again and finished.  I really want to do other things, but I just don't feel I can with four WIPs.  I don't usually like to have more than two on the go, so four really is OTT and uncomfortable for me.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012