A Bunch of Poppies - Finished

This piece was finished ages ago, and sent off to it’s recipient.

I forgot to take a photo before I sent it, and poor Kit has been in hospital.

Here it is now :

She’s going to get it framed when she can :-)

A Bunch of Poppies - Finished

I've finished!

I've removed it from the frame - it just needs washing and ironing. Little bits of frame-stringing thread everywhere.

I'll put up a picture after it's recipient, Kit, has received it - so she won't have seen it in it's entirety beforehand here.

Bunch of Poppies – The Scroll Frame

When I was lacing the scroll frame for the Poppies project, I used a single layer of bias binding as the material through which to insert the lacing.

I should have used a double layer. After all this time, and repeated tightenings, the bias binding is showing serious signs of wear.

I’ve had to re-lace two or three entire sections during the course of the project, starting new lacing holes because the old ones have started to tear and wouldn’t take being under tension anymore.

 

Bunch of Poppies – Second Red Poppy Finished

I think this is my favourite poppy.

It’s amazing how putting a little orange thread in changes the tone of the red appear to tend more towards orange/red range than the other red poppy.

This poppy also shows the importance of the order in which the petals are done – the ‘most behind’ petal is done first and then the petals worked in order until the ‘most forward’ petals are done last.

If I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have the bottom threads of the two side petals sitting just over the top of the bottom petal, which is ‘behind’ them, which is important to the appearance of the flower.

This is in contrast to Japanese Embroidery, where frontmost elements are done first. Carol-Anne talks about this in http://threadsacrosstheweb.blogspot.com/2008/03/front-to-back-or-back-to-front.html

I’ve finished doing the green leaves too. My needlepainting style appears to have changed a little while I was doing the poppies, because the leaves look a little different to the rest.

Bunch of Poppies - Blue Poppy finished

It's interesting to see what a difference the choice of threads makes.

With the blue and purple poppies the lightest shade was two shades lighter than the medium colour. It looks like a strong light is shining on them and they are reflecting it.

With the red poppy I used 3 contiguous colours and it is far more blended. It looks like a weak light is shining on it. You can still see the lighter parts.

(comment from Kit, the recipient)

I've started the second red poppy. It has some burnt orange in it. The combination of it with the dark red looks like fire - it's lovely.

Bunch of Poppies – First Blue Poppy

 

I’m appreciating using a scroll frame rather than a hoop. I had tension problems on the linen when I did Rust Red Iris on the hoop.

The placing stitches are on the rightmost petal of the blue poppy, ready for the rest to go in.

I find putting placement stitches down first a huge help in guiding me as I do a shape.

Bunch of Poppies – Red and Purple Poppies Finished!

Bunch of Poppies - Red Poppy

I ended up taking out all of the stitching and re-doing it.

I’m very pleased with the result. The large lower petal is still a bit V shaped at it’s apex, but oh well. I’m not doing it again.

I’ve even put in the chain stitching over the edge of the petals that require it.

Bunch of Poppies – Starting a Red Poppy

 

I’ve started on a poppy – to give me a break before finishing/fixing the leaves. (on the left there)

The photo shows the 3-Dness of the felt padding really well.

There isn’t any thread padding to be seen – I’ve already embroidered over it.

I found, embroidering on the felt

• I needed to use a definite 90 degree stab method, otherwise the felt ‘pushed’ itself to bulk up to the unembroidered part
• It needed a little haircut after I’d done each layer, as working with it made it a bit fuzzy, and I didn’t want bright red fuzzy bits sticking up through the stitches.

I’ve made two mistakes.

• The first – the left most circle.

With the folding over petal and the dark part that shows of the inner fold  - the topmost *point* of the fold-over needs to meet up with the topmost part of the inner fold

• The circle further down and to the right

I've mucked up the stitch direction on the upper part of the petal. It should have been vertical, not leaning into the centre.

It's given me a 'V" shape in the colouring of the petal.

(there was some kind of brain disconnect between me looking at the photo in the book, which shows stitch direction and me actually doing it. Blame it on the TV programme I was watching at the time. I'm not worried by the mistakes - it's all in the learning :-)

I think that I can fix it by taking out the bottom of the V by adding some more of the medium colour there.

If that doesn't work, I'll have to re-do it.

Or I might just re-do it anyway - taking out the existing stitches, or it'll be way too bulky.

• I also think that the other darkest part (at the top left of the poppy, next to the inner fold-over) needs a few strokes of medium red. (It has the shape of a long ovoid, outside another another long ovoid (petal) that is colour blended, although it doesn't show up very well in the photo)

At the moment it doesn't look very separate to the inner fold-over, apart from the change in the stitch direction of the two, and its like "what is it, what's it doing there?"

It needs to be clearer that it's a petal in it's own right, that's really dark because it's right at the back. Just a few stitches of the medium red, that's all.

Bunch of Poppies - Padding

There are two types of padding used in this needlepainting -

felt, cut to be 1mm smaller than the petal to be padded,

and two layers of stitching.

The layers of stitching are done at angles diagonal to the direction of actual embroidering.

 

You can’t really see the dimensionality, although I did try to capture it with the camera by taking the pictures with the canvas at an angle.

Doing the felt was a lot easier that I thought.

I found Mary Corbet’s recent comments on directional satin stitching from her blog www.NeedlenThread.com in her recent posts about monograms to be of help when doing the thread padding.

I found that putting down threads every couple of mm to act as guidelines was a great help too.

Bunch of Poppies - Correcting Mistakes in Needlepainting

After a couple of comments on my last post, I thought I'd comment back in an actual post.

Take the stitches OUT? (if I'm not happy with them)

Yikes!

Actually, I have been known to do that. It risks putting holes in the linen or loosening the weave of the actual linen, which will cause tension problems in the embroidery.

I almost always embroider over the top of the problem area. I am talking about an area that is perhaps 5mm by 2mm large - not an entire leaf or flower. If an entire motif was incorrect, I think I'd very carefully remove the thread.

The Rust Red Iris project has so much over-embroidering you wouldn't believe it.

I was a bit concerned about how much over-embroidering I was doing at one stage and talked to Michael of Wormspit.com about it, and he didn't think it was a problem.

You don't want to do it so much that you end up with an effectively 'padded' area because of the build up of thread. And it gets harder to embroider because you are putting the needle through existing threads.

But it's a far preferable option to removing threads in most if not all cases, IMHO.

One exception, where you might want to take the threads out, might be where you need to replace very light threads with very dark ones, or vice versa

--------------------

Now, I asked Mary Corbet of www.needlenthread.com about this issue. She is a FAR more experienced embroiderer than I am. She answered in a comment to this post, but I thought it a good idea to put it here, in the main post.

She doesn't do over-sewing. I assume she gets sections correct in the first place, because she's a whole lot better, so doesn't need to correct part of a leaf or petal like I do.

Here's what she said :

Hi, Megan!

I don't generally have a problem taking threads out if I discover a mistake as I go. In fact, I prefer to! If I finish a petal in long and short stitch and it doesn't look quite right because a stitch is out of place, I don't mind going back and stitching over with one sneaky little stitch, but if it's a section that needs correction, I'd just as soon take it out.

Nice thing about long and short stitch is that it's a very forgiving stitch - it's easy to go back and fill in a spot that needs touching up...

But, when it comes to a whole petal looking not-quite-right, I'd rather take it out and start over (unless it could be corrected with one unnoticeable stitch or two).

I'm not one for building up stitches on long and short filling, either!

Oh, and nice thing about linen - it's a tough fabric, generally. You'd be surprised how much you can take out and put back in, without damaging the foundation. In fact, I just took out a whole petal on my silk sampler last week, and it's stitching up just fine over the fabric.

There's a tool called a "boo boo stick" that some stitchers like to use - it's got a spiral and wire brush thing on each end - it works well for brushing off the fuzz from thread, or for helping to remove threads fairly quickly. I've got one, and I use it sometimes, but I'd just as soon use tweezers and snippers to remove threads. I also keep a toothbrush in my box, to brush off fuzzies from the fabric.

Bunch of Poppies - Leaf Work

I've finished all but one of the leaves - but I need to do some correction work.


Looking at the top bunch of leaves :

The one facing down has way too much 'darkest' colour in it. To look right, it needs dark colour just on the tips - where it would be in shadow as 'it is lost in the bunch'.

That leaf to the left - what is going on there? Not good things. I think I may make it all dark.

I'm going to do a bit of padding, just for a change, and then I'll fix these up. The numbers on the petals are to help me keep track of which tiny piece of felt is for which petal.

Bunch of Poppies - Progress on leaves

I've almost finished the leaves, and I have finished the stems.

This photo shows the threads I'm going to use on the flowers themselves, and some of the felt I'll be using to pad some of the petals

Bunch of Poppies - Anemone Simple

Anemone Simple, plate 37 from Choix des plus belles fleurs et des plus beaux fruits by Joseph Redoute is the painting that Trish Burr based her embroidery on.

http://www.art.com/asp/display_artist-asp/_/CRID--458/PG--1/posters.htm?TNID=2&ui=D37EDB3DC7C4427A87174AEC7ABC8DA9

shows the original painting.

Yes, I know the painting is called "Anemone Simple" and I'm calling them poppies. That's because the recipient wants them to be poppies, and they look similiar enough :-)

Here's Trish Burr's version as a reminder :

• Mr Rodoute's pale flowers are even paler than Ms Burr's

• His red poppies tend more towards the blue-red, which, interestingly, I am also going to use (tho mine will be even more blue-red and darker)

• In simplifying the leaves (which really had to be done, or we embroiderers would have gone nuts), Ms Burr orphaned that leaf that I was talking about in the last post - the one on the outer edge of the red poppy.
  

In Mr Redoute's painting, you can see that that it isn't orphaned.
In my fix to cover that now extraneous pen line, I'll accidentally be going back towards the original version, in a very simplifed sort of way

Here is a version that I found, still in progress, being done by a lady called Anna Maria Selehar

http://www.stitchamaze.com/guest_gallery_ams.html
with the actual picture being near the bottom of the page and at http://www.stitchamaze.com/enl_guest_ams_anenomes.html


and here's mine, a bit closer up than in the last few pictures :

(remembering I purposely swopped to emerald green leaves rather than olive ones to suit my blue-er colour scheme)

Ms Selehar's stalk is 'punching' through those leaves as well *smile* - although she has done two seperate leaves it does give that illusion unless you look closely at the stitch directions, which are slightly angled away from each other in the two leaves.

Bunch of Poppies - Outlines and Leaves

I took a break from doing leaves and stem stitched the outlines of the poppies ....

Next to do is the remaining two stalks and the remainder of the leaves (near the top and also the fix-it job I mention below). Then I get to start padding some of the petals.

I'm naughty - I should have done all of the stalks before doing the leaves - the rule is that objects that lie underneath other objects are to be done first - so they 'retreat' into the background - a matter of stitch layering at the edges where they meet. So I'm cheating on the stitch layering.

With that middle bunch of leaves I recently finished - I made a change. I combined several leaves on the right into one big leaf. I feel that it really 'pops' out of the picture to come towards you

I do have a couple of problems.

1) the arrow on the left. That was supposed to be two leaves. I've done it as one leaf, so it looks like the stalk is erupting from the middle of the leaf.

I was too close to the picture when I was sewing it, loosing the 'big picture' and doing two seperate leaves wasn't working, so I combined them, forgetting about the effect that would have on the stem - and then later looked at the picture and thought "ooops".

I'm not that worried that I'm going to re-do it though. It can be a 'quirk'.

2) the arrow on the right.

In the original there is a bit of leaf on the *other* side of the poppy. It's not connected to any of the leaves in the centre, but it does look good to have a bit of greenery out there as well as all of the greenery in the middle.

I had to do that line of the bottom petal of the red poppy petal 3 times before it looked right, and have gotten stuck with a pen line that won't be covered by stalk or petal.

You can see the bit that won't be covered at the base of the right arrow - in between some leaf, and a stalk.

My solution is to say 'well, there *should* be some leaf that is reaching up in that direction anyway, so that outermost bit of leaf isn't an orphan. I've drawn in the arrow to show the direction the leaf should go, ending at the 'orphan' leaf.

If I create leaf over the line, orientated in the direction of the arrow, I will cover that pen line and also give that outer leaf something to hang onto.

It means fixing the existing leaf a bit - it's got darkest edges where it finishes at the base of the poppy atm, but for it to make sense for it to go behind the poppy and all the way to the edge, it should only be light/mid green before it disappears behind the poppy, and then dark when it emerges out the other side.

As for the construction of the purple poppy, I don't get it, but will do it as is.

More Leaves

I think I'll start padding a rose, just for a break from doing the leaves ....... cutting out bits of felt and doing stitch padding

Oh rats - it's out of focus again. I don't know how I manage that. It's supposed to be automatic. Maybe I don't wait long enough.

Balance

-------------------- Shapes
Looking at the original design, at the bunch of leaves in the middle (the bunch I'm currently working on) :


the larger leaves were added by the designer on the right to balance the flowers on the left/top. See them hanging out there to 'take the weight'? Otherwise the flowers would look like they are going to tip over, or there was a big bare spot where something should be.

In the original design those 'balancing' leaves are really funny shapes (that hook thing with a mouth, and those two claws behind it). Personally, I don't get the zen of them being leaves.
(Maybe I need to go look at a leafy bunch of poppies)

Meanwhile, I just can't embroider shapes I don't understand. They won't come out looking right either, because I don't understand them.

So I changed those leaves to more of the multi-pointed ones. But I hadn't done them big enough, and needed to make them a big bigger, which I've just done.

And the leaves on the left weren't big enough either, so I did a bit of re-outlining there as well. I've done a bit of leaf re-design. The drawings in the book were pretty casual. The main thing was to get them coming together in the middle in that sort of 'arched' shape.

----------------------- Colours
With the two designs together, the difference can be seen between the original olive green scheme for the leaves, and my emerald green scheme. We're going for opulent, dark and romantic, rather than the lighter blue and pink flowers in the original.

Kit and I got out our thread cards over the phone the other day and picked :-

814-816 in darkest maroon to a mid maroon, (2 flowers)
550-552 for darkest purple up to a dark lilac (1 flower - the one behind the big red one)
719-793 in dark royal blue up to a mid blue

The blue ones I'll be doing will be much darker than the ones in the original design - the original ones have a lot of creamy blue in them.

The behind of the flower at the top left will be a rust orange 919. It will be a second red flower rather than have a pink and yellow bottom. We don't like pink and yellow very much. Luckily having a second red flower there balances colour-wise as well. If the big red one was right next to it, it wouldn't look right - but the colours will still be spread out nicely across the bunch.

All Framed Up

Firstly, a rather better (in focus) picture of the leaves I've done so far, (and a little more) :


I did the extra leaves while the embroidery was in the scroll frame.

After washing and ironing the embroidery, (simply because it had already picked up some dirt) I found that the linen was rather bigger than the frame it was supposed to fit into. I folded over the extra material and hemmed it, making sure that the hem didn't intrude into the space where I'd be embroidering on the front.

I then sewed some bias binding tape right around the edges, making sure that the top and bottom + bias binding just fitted into the frame, and the left/right edges were a wee bit (inch or so) short in width (to allow for the lacing). It's the lacing that really gets the linen tense, I saw a bit later on.

The idea with the bias binding is that the sewing holes used in the tension-making process of attaching it to the frame are in the bias binding, not in my good linen.

I made a mark in the centre top and bottom on the webbing of the scroll bars, and a mark at the centre top and bottom and matched them up, pinning outwards from the centre. Then I whip stitched the top and bottom to the frame webbing.

Lacing the frame was much easier than I thought. I came up through bias binding at the top, without securing the end, then went around the frame, came back through the bias binding, and down the frame/embroidery.

I was keeping an eye out that the embroidery was staying straight, and so were the loops I was making around the frame.

(You can see the olive green bias binding tape I used in the photo).

Then the years of experience in lacing corsets came in handy. Using a finger, I tightened each loop as much as it would, secured one end of the thread, then did a bit more tightening for luck, then secured the other end.

The way I secured the thread was by wrapping it around the bolt and nuts of the frame. I think you are actually supposed to wrap it around the frame itself using clove hitches - it might be a bit hard getting it back from around the bolt. Ooops.

(You use a really really long crochet thread for to do all this - not even cutting it off the ball, and having heaps of thread to play with).


I am concered that the linen seems warped at the corners. (I didn't take the photo to show that, but to show detail of the two types of attachment, but here you go). It's totally totally fine for 7/8 of the area of the linen, but the corners are a bit 'off'. I don't know if this normally happens or I did something wrong (tension being too loose in one direction would be one possible problem).

It won't affect this embroidery, as it's in the middle, but would be an issue if I was embroidering right up to the corners.

I could tighten the tension by

• re-lacing
• rotating one of both scroll bars around a little. (this involves undoing screws, urgh)

The tension at the moment is that if I hold a finger down above the part I'm sewing, it makes that area drum tight. The whole piece isn't drum tight-bound a coin. I could sew without using a finger to hold it down, but it seems easier to sew that way. I just hope temporarily changing the tension at the spot I'm embroidering doesn't muck up the tension of the whole piece. Maybe my tension IS too loose?

Some Leaves

A slightly out of focus picture of the first set of leaves. I think the colouring is lovely.

I also noticed that the flowers have padding - both of felt, and of satin stitching. It should look lovely at the end.

A Bit of Stem

I've gone over the outline in micro-pigment pen. Sometimes I went a bit wonky, because of the lumps in the linen and not gone quite where I wanted to go, but it's all fixable as I go alone and outline in thread.

I've done one stem, and 3/4 of another in 3 shades of brown/green neutrals, in chain stitch. 7 stitches wide. The 'cut' bases of the stems are done in satin stitch. The chain stitch takes forever but I do like it.

On my first attempt, on the shorter stem, I did the outline in the green used to outline the leaves above, as it said to in the book, but I didn't like the effect. (remembering that I've changed the colours to ones I wanted to use - it would have worked better with the olive green Trish suggested).

Chain stitch is a bugger to rip out, and I slipped with my ripper and took out a bit of the linen.
In the enlargement of the picture it might be visible. It's to the right of the stem near the bottom.

I 'Fray-Check'ed the area, let it dry and then 'Fray-Check'ed it again. That meant that the area I had to re-sew was stiff and sewable upon, and the area to the side wouldn't unravel anymore.

Edit :

Here's a photo I took of the embroidery, rather than using the scanner. It's a bit clearer and brighter.