Like Honey from the Rock

After two months of no free-motion embroidery, I finally risked a little stitching on Honey today. My hand was a little sore afterwards, so clearly I'll have to work on this fairly gently. The progress I've made is probably invisible, as it was more medium values that hopefully will give the impression of rough rock textures. I'm working from darks to lights, so I'm quite encouraged to have reached values that might be considered light.

A couple of people commented on Honey in ways that made me realise they didn't understand what I was doing. There aren't any appliqued shapes, just a collage of rock images, which are being created in stitch on a printed background. Here's a detail of the lower left corner. You can see the area that hasn't been stitched yet (it's a very light section)but the rest of the shapes are created by blending machine stitching, mostly free-motion straight stitch but some areas have free-motion zigzag stitching. This is why it's been so time-consuming! Every section has to be stitched in multiple colours.

A sad absence...

.. of photos anyway. My computer is being reconstructed as we speak and this rather elderly laptop doesn't have the graphics capability to allow upload of photos. So you'll have to wait a little while to see what I've been up to.

I've not been entirely idle, though. More stitching has been done on Like Honey from the Rock, though there is still a daunting amount of stitching to do. I'm putting the third (and final) borders onto the Secret Quilt, which I'll photograph for you after the 21st, the day of the great unveiling. You can see the fabrics for the challenge on Rooruu's blog. I had hoped to have it finished completely but I don't think I'll have it quilted in a fortnight. Well, we'll see.

The scarf motif I showed you before has been traced onto Romeo and one end has been pinned ready for stitch. I might start that this afternoon. I've also just begun a stitched piece for the DBDU monthly challenge, which is Dream Landscapes. I'm actually cheating a bit as it's one of the images I printed when I was doing the Forest postcard, but I printed it back them because I knew I would want to stitch it sometime soon. I haven't given a lot of thought to the Like Minded Threads challenges this month - there are a lot of deadlines this month! I'd really like to do something for them this month. As always, there's more ideas than time!

Back to the Honey

I finally had a bit of time over the weekend to get back to Like Honey from the Rock. I know I'd make heaps more progress if I just focused on one thing, but that isn't how it works around here! I stitched a lot of the lighter purple foreground, which is bringing the whole thing more towards purple, as I planned. I'm very happy with how it's going, though I have considerably widened the range of thread colours I own, in the course of making it!

I also did some drawing this morning. I wanted to experiment with drawing directly onto the computer. I really like how this turned out.

Of course I should have been doing something else. Sigh.

Progress on all fronts

I haven't had as much time in the workroom as I'd like but I have made progress on all three pieces in the last few days. Like Honey from the Rock has more of its purple added and I rectified a few areas where shadows weren't quite right. I still have a couple more places like that to fix, and a lot more stitching to add.

Like Honey from the Rock 18in x 12in

Rites of Passage is assembled, and I began stitching it today. I'm actually finding this one a bit of a challenge to get just the right colours. I want to brighten the colours, so the scene looks a little alien, but not so much that it stops looking like a real place.

Rites of Passage 6in x 6in

Mistrise has had wadding added and I've started stitching. This one will have a lot less intensive stitching than the other two, and it's quite hard to remember that I'm doing something a lot more like traditional machine quilting and a lot less like embroidery! I don't want to lose the ethereal effect in the clouds, so I don't want to have to stitch them heavily to balance heavy stitching on the hills. The stitching isn't that clear in the photograph - I've only done a little on the nearer hills so far.

Mistrise 18in x 12in

And just in case you thought I'd been slacking...

Here is Like Honey from the Rock. I haven't bothered to update it every day - how boring! But it's gradually getting where I want it to go.

The balance is way too yellow at present, but I still have a lot of purple to stitch.

Like Honey from the Rock

I've done more stitching on this piece today and it's starting to come together. I've added a quite intense purple red, which is starting to bring it more towards the purple end of the spectrum. It's interesting that it still looks so brown! Most of the colours to come are purples, moving towards pink.

Like Honey from the Rock

I finally started stitching this piece yesterday. On Monday, I attached a fairly lightweight cotton wadding with basting spray, and added soluble Vilene, to give it some substance for stitching. I attached the mineral images with basting spray too, instead of fusible webbing, to cut down the thickness but I think perhaps I was a little light with the spray as they don't seem very firmly attached, and I even had to touch up one section with a glue stick to make it hold.

By Tuesday night, I had added most of the darkest darks in the foreground and it looked like this:


Today I added some of the lighter darks and mediums. At this stage, it's still quite brown in the photo but the colours are quite purple and the medium values will be more purple again. I want the yellow of the veins in the rock to stand out vividly from the surrounding rock.

Happy 80th Auntie Pat!

No textile work today, because we were celebrating Auntie Pat's 80th birthday up in our beautiful Blue Mountains. I did take yet more photos of trees, which I'm interested in at present. Cousin Megan's garden has some beautiful blue gums and her neighbour has this spectacular red gum. (I won't bore you with the other tree pics!)

While I was painting yesterday, I decided to add a brown wash to Like Honey from the Rock, just on the section that was too light in tone. The painting browned it down quite a lot, which doesn't worry me, but it has also brought the tonal value closer to the other rocks. It will be partly covered by the mineral image, but I am happier that it won't be obviously lighter.

Like Honey from the Rock

This is how the background for this piece looks, stitched together. I haven't begun stitching on it yet, and you can see the noticeably lighter area I mentioned. I decided against a paint wash all over it, as I'd lose the lovely colours in the other rocks. I'm hoping once I've added stitch, the lightness will not be such an issue. If it is, I'll deal with it then!

Busy afternoon

Progress has been made on several fronts today, so I'm a happy camper!

I printed out the images for Like Honey from the Rock onto fabric and I printed out images for Forest onto fabric. For once, everything went smoothly, the printer didn't balk at printing on the thicker fabric-freezer paper combination and the prints are just as I expected. I also finished a drawing of Miner's Cottages in Broken Hill. It's not a good scan but I'll share it anyway. It deliberately has no background, as I plan to use it for a textile piece in the future.



I've had a little rethink of Where I Live, so I think I'll take another path with that one. Similar but different!

Like Honey from the Rock

Did I mention I work on several different things at once? This is another piece I'm working on at present. It's a collage of rock and mineral photographs I took at Broken Hill, the mining town where I grew up, when I was there in 2005. I was also inspired by seeing several of Antonia Valentine's pieces, including her work in Refabricating Difference, to resume playing with printed images. Thanks Toni!


Dimensions 16in x 22in

I envisage a collage of rock photos, with the mineral overlaid, as if they are oozing from the rock. The yellow colour is the unifying element, while the positioning of the overlays follows the shapes of the rocks. The individual elements of the background will be printed onto prepared muslin and pieced together. I have the images ready to print and the fabric sheets prepared for printing - just need to wait until this reaches the top of the list again. Then I can start to stitch!