0 Assembling the stumpwork dragonfly

It's finally complete! The dragonfly is done and today I share with you how the last stages were done.

First I covered the last of the padding stitches with satin stitch in two strands, making the far left hand side considerably narrower to form the head.

Next I added two beads for the eyes.  I still feel these are a little large for the context (actually, the whole insect feels much too large for my comfort), but the ones supplied with the kit were even larger, so it could have been worse!

Following on from this stage was adding in the legs and one or two other parts in Kreinik Cord.  I used the grey-ish brown shade here.

I also added in one or two stitches in dark grey on the tail area in keeping with the real thing - as seen in my good old Brtitsh Wildlife book.=)

Last of all, the wings were attached using the method detailed in my tutorial on assembling a wired stumpwork flower.

And here is the whole finished item from two angles:

So, that's the last of the old DMC stumpwork kits worked up.  I'm glad it wasn't the first one I tried, or it might well have been the last!  The other four were far better.  The designs and instructions were superior and truer to life.  Yes, I know there can be a good deal of artistic license with stumpwork, but I personally feel that the scale inequalities and so on that are part and parcel of the traditional raised work style are more fitted to figurative work, i.e. pictures that look rather like 17th century pieces.  Many modern designs are much more realistic and that's the type of raised work I like best.

What's coming up next?  I've made a start on the first of four bookmarks that are to be gifts for my in-laws and another couple when we're in Germany next month.  They'll all be counted work, which will be nice for relaxation.=)  After that, I need to do two silver wedding cards, both of which will be 'gold' work and freestyle - probably silver hearts with various filling elements and also to finish Sir's anniversary present, which I wasn't able to get done in time to give him this morning.=(  The sampler is coming to Germany with me and I hope to make considerable progress on that there and then I can look at some fresh ideas.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: Assembling the stumpwork dragonfly

0 Raised padded stem stitch band

Has it really been almost a month?  I'm shocked!  Well, here I am, still in more or less one piece and with a valiant effort on the dragonfly project to share.  Basically, I've worked out how to do the head, body and tail and the first thing to do was to ignore the instructions that came with the kit which, in part, were:

It seemed to me that this working plan was not only biologically inaccurate - the written part described the rounded end as the head and the long, thick part as the body, when the body is where the rounded part is and should have had a small area added for the head, and the 'body' should be much thinner and called 'the tail' - but also that the stitch instructions weren't quite right.

I realised that it was a padded raised stem stitch band that was being described here, and found much more helpful instructions in  Country Bumpkin's 'The Embroiderers Handbook', which you can see a part of here:

See a major difference?  The kit said work all along one band, but the CB book says to work from one end to the other in columns rather than rows.  As this is what every other set of instructions I've seen for stem stitch band, padded or otherwise, said, I decided to use the CB version instead.

As the tail part was clearly far too wide - dragonfly and demoiselle flies tending to be rather on the narrow side here - I cut the padding back from three stitches wide to two.  Still too wide really, one would have been enough, but I went with two just the same.

The next step was to add in the bands all along the length of the tail section.

After that, beginning at the body end, you need to hook each stem stitch through each band and work from one end to the other.

Repeat this step until the whole area is covered - you might need to put in more lengths than you might think in order to keep the stitches close together and cover the padding well.

And here's the finished result from both top and side:

The next step is to work the body area and the narrower area you may have noticed that I created for the head.  After that, I'll add in two beads for the eyes and put in some legs and so on.  Finally, the needlelace wings, which are now all complete, will be attached and this piece will be done.

Oh, by the way, for anyone who's interested, I've started a Google+ account and am happy to add anyone who follows/reads my blog to my Stitchers circle, where you'll get posts about new blog updates etc.  I also started two communities: Creative Embroidery and Stumpwork and Raised Embroidery, so please do look those up and join!  See you there!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: Raised padded stem stitch band

0 The Dragonfly Blues

I remember it being quite a song and dance last time I did a stumpwork dragon/damselfly and this time is proving to be no different!

First of all, I took a look at the materials in the kit and felt that some changes were in order.  The DMC white metallic thread is all very well for bee wings, but I felt that the colour wasn't quite right for this dragonfly.  So, I checked in my trusty Collins 'British Wildlife Photoguide' and saw that the wings are, as I'd thought, much more of a light, aqua blue than white in nature.  DMC's expanded range of six-stranded metallics contains a lovely, irridescent aqua colour, so I selected than one instead and, rather than struggle to cover the silver-coloured wire, I decided to use some white paper-covered wire from my own supply.

Also, I thought that the pinky brown thread that was put in for the legs etc was too thick.  The book showed a brownish colour though, so I picked out a Kreinik cord, 011C Gun Metal, to work those in.

Having got the colours sorted, it was time to move on to the dragonfly body.  This photo shows the first stage and you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd let a child embroider a rocket on it instead of the basis for an insect!!  This is done with soft cotton and, I think, is a fairly decent idea in itself, but with the exception of the shorter bits for the head.

You can see why in this next picture.  The idea is to work stain stitch over the straight stitches (and raised stem stitch for the body section, which you can see the initial 'bands' for here too), but, I'm not sure if I just worked it very badly or what, because instead of having a head tapered at each end and looking realistic, I found myself with one that was over-fat all the way along and that I couldn't taper in at either end!  This could work quite well as long as the shorter soft cotton straight stitches stopped short of the ends of the section meant to be the head.

Moving on to the wings and here's the wire couched in place for the first wing I worked - one of the more shaped back wings.  Sadly, I managed to well and truly goof it up by not catching all the detached buttonhole stitches together down the centre (I dread to think what I actually did do with those stitches!!) and then to put the outer close-worked buttonhole stitches with the edging to the inside instead of the out.

So, one wing that couldn't be used and, after leaving it a few days, I tried again and produced these two.  I made a good effort to make sure they were worked as mirror images so that the outer edging would be on top BUT I managed to mess that up too and finished up with two identical wings!!  I hate to admit this, but I'm going to use one upside down, fairly safe in the knowledge that no-one will notice and also that I'm tired of these wings and want to be through with them!!!

Here's the first of the front two wings in progress.  As you can see, I decided to use orange sewing thread for the couching on of the wire and tacking together of the two pieces of the needlelace pad just to make it more visible.  This has a minus side too - it's also quite visible if it proves tricky to remove, which it did on one of the back wings.  Anyway, there's just the outer edging to put on this one and then I can safely work another identical one afterwards as they're more of less symmetrical and it doesn't matter.=)

So, in case anyone's been wondering 'What's keeping her with that dragonfly?'  Now you know!

Well, people say, 'Third time lucky', don't they, so perhaps my third attempt at this kind of stumpwork insect will go somewhat more smoothly, (although that sentence makes me seem a good deal more superstitious than I really am, which is not at all!!.  In the meantime, I hope to have the finished item to show you within the next week as, ideally, I'd like to have a go at mounting all four of these DMC pieces and get them on the wall in a hanging display.  And that will be a post to itself!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: The Dragonfly Blues

0 A new stumpwork and a new venture

Recently I've been slowing working on the old DMC Dragonfly stumpwork kit.  This is the last in the series (well, there was one more, a sunflower and caterpillar design, but I don't really like it, so never got it) and is half done.  This kit was more complete than the last in that I have all the threads and beads I need this time, apart from a suitably coordinating yellow thread for the flower centre beads, but was still short one needle.  The other shall we say 'irregularities' in this kit were that the printed design (over-thick lines as usual....) was a mirror image of the photo on the kit front and there were stems printed where there are none on the photo. For such a big and respected company, I think DMC have been a bit lacking in attention to some detail in some of these kits.  But then, perhaps that's one the problems of being so big...

This first 'in progress' shot shows how the padded satin stitch is worked.  First you fill in the shape a little smaller than you want the finished thing to be and working at right angles to the planned direction of the top stitches.  After that, begin to layer the final satin stitch over the top.  If you're working a pre-printed kit, or indeed any outline on fabric, remember to bring your needle up outside the line, not on it.  If you do this you are sure of covering the line completely.  If you bring your needle up on/through the line, then you will still see a good half of the line outside your shape.  If there's another layer or line of stitches to be added, that's fine, but most of the time there isn't, so do take care to cover the line well.=)

Here are two shots of the completed surface work with a seed beaded flower centre.  The colours are a little 'cool', pale and un-natural (except the flower and the deepest green) - I've never seen turquoise blue leaves before, but then, it is only a representation!=)

Next up is working the dragonfly to which I plan to make one or two changes in materials.  More on that soon as I'll be taking plenty of photos during the process and, yes, there'll be a tutorial coming up for that.  When?  Depends how long the wings take as there are 4 needlelace wings to do and that might take a few sessions worth of work.  Watch this space!

And now to something different....

What do two sections of an old printer packing box..

...a set of second hand dolls house bedroom furniture bought this week on e-bay...

...and an ironing board laden with laundered and nicely softened silk fabric pieces have in common?

They are part of my new venture, which is to open an Etsy shop selling handmade gifts and dolls house textiles within the next few months.  I'm going to be doing some one of a kind, some limited edition (i.e. only 2 or 3 of that design will be made) and some repeatable designs of bedding, scatter cushions/pillows and maybe even curtains for dolls houses made out of really nice fabrics and inspired by the fashion bedding I've seen when we've visited home and DIY stores over the past few months.  Other things I hope to include are some hand made purses/bags and maybe other things like bookmarks and so on.

I need to get a few things trialled and prototyped first and then make enough to stock a decent shop, so it won't be open for a couple of months yet, but I will tell you when it is.  There will be a separate blog dedicated to what's going into the shop to start shortly before the shop opens and I'm madly borrowing library books talking about using social media for sales and working the handmade marketplace (I have to wait for the latter as someone else has beat me to them - sensible person!), so I'm trying to get all the quality, experienced information that I can before really getting going.

Something else I hope to add to the shop in time will be the embroidery kits and so on that I've been toying with the idea of doing for some time.  I've decided against producing wholesale and doing trade fairs etc as that means a lot more work for less than half of the profit and I don't mind staying small.  Far less pressure and I can, basically, take a break or even quit completely at any time I like without wholesale orders stacking up!=)  In time, I hope to produce full kits, design and instruction packs and part kits containing the instructions and harder to source materials such as stumpwork wire, beads and pearl cottons and/or metallics.  I'm also playing with the idea of materials only sets - coordinated colour materials packs that one can get creative with and use for one's own design ideas, maybe even with a few sketches and example pieces included in the blurb.  So, I'll be doing some research on-blog later on in the year, all being well, so please get thinking about what you would like to see on the market and what you would need in terms of materials in a stumpwork kit - everything?  Nothing?  Or everything but the fabric and stranded cottons (like Victoria Sampler accessory packs)

So, tomorrow DH plans to cut those pieces of card for me to make my first mock-up dolls house room set.  I'll be painting or papering the walls and adding in some things to make them look as realistic as I can.  I don't actually own a dolls house, so I don't have access to one to use as a set, but we did have that miniature coffee service in our display cabinet.=)  In the meantime, I'm trying to clear the decks of other projects and work, so have been doing such joyous things as mending and altering to get the pile down.  Four out of six workbasket jobs done already.=)

More soon....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: A new stumpwork and a new venture