Embroidered Portraits by Jan Messent

Recently I saw a book called Embroidered Portraits: Ideas, Inspiration and Techniques by Jan Messent on Amazon. Amazon has a "Look Inside" for this book and the portraits are very nicely done. This got me thinking of the Marie Antoinette embroidery that I have been working  So I was going to buy the book but I already have so many books.  Instead I set myself a challenge to try embroidering a portrait using the knowledge I already had.  The first step was to find a portrait that was usable.  So I chose a picture by Picasso that I felt could be translated into embroidery.

 

 

Woman in a Mantilla, 1917 by Picasso.

 

The portrait I chose has a lot of small strokes that could be made out of french knots and small straight stitches in clusters.  The colors have been a problem. I have been having trouble matching the picture to DMC floss.  So I have tried my best with the colors that were on hand.  Finally to add to the complexity I didn't print out the picture or even outline it on the fabric.  I tried to imagine using paints and pastels while using a needle.  So to do justice to Picasso this project is my interpretation of his work.  Hopefully his ghost won't come to haunt me.

 

To start the embroidery I took a medium weight white fabric.  Next using the image I free hand cut felt that roughly matched the shapes of the head, ruffle, hair and comb.  This was probably my first mistake.  Though it does look nice the felt fluff tries to show between the stitches.  I read somewhere that using an iron-on interfacing on one side of the felt helps reduce the fluff.  But it has been my experience that it is much harder to get a needle through the interfaced felt.  So I just made more and smaller stitches catching the fluff to the surface.

 

 

Woman in a mantilla embroidery after 5 hours of work.

 

In the picture above you can see how I jumped around embroidering the picture.  After tacking down the felt I wanted to try different stitches just to make sure the stitches were giving the right feel to the embroidery.  I started with the neck doing long and short stitches but I am still unhappy with the sharp color changes.  This is something I still have to resolve but I have gone back in with small random stitches to help blend the lines.

 

 

Embroidery after 7 hours.

 

I worked on the face only when my eyes weren't tired and my hands were steady.  Even with care I still had to rework the left eye four times.  So after 14 hours most of the face is finished.  Or at least the fabric can't take any more stitching!

 

 

Embroidery after 14 hours of work.

Don't Know Where to Start

Here it is June 1st already!  A whole month without posting, I've just been feeling quiet lately.  Sort of a brain vacation.

Usually this time of year is full of working on the fair entries.  I signed up and then decided to drop out.  Usually I redo the entries thinking they aren't nice enough and end up ruining the projects.  So instead I'm leaving them alone!  That leaves me a whole month of working on something new.

The garden is full of tomato plants.  The trees have lots of hanging baskets of herbs.  The basil and catnip are hanging out of the way of snails and cats.  Lee bought a clematis for me and I started it growing on the wisteria. 

 

I've also been working on a small potted garden under the olive tree.  So far I have two miniature roses, two fuchsias, snapdragons, violets, peppermint, lilies, white potato vine, hollyhocks, narcissus, gladiola, and three orchids.  I only had two orchids but they needed to be split.  The one was so pot bound that all the wood chips had been consumed.  So with some ambition and a heavy knife I worked on seperating it into two plants.  Even with the roots curled they were over 30 inches long.  Needless to say $8,000 and an emergency MRI later I now have them separated.  Thank goodness I have insurance again.  Still the copay would have bought a lot of orchids.  So no more wrestling with huge orchids.  Yesterday I pulled out some irises to make a small herb garden.  Hit myself hard in the head with the unpointy end of a pitch fork.  Happy about that!  So now there are herbs closer to the kitchen.  Now to find homes for the displaced irises.  They are small, 18 inches tall, and a beautiful deep purple.  They even bloom twice a year with extra care.  They are prolific and all my friends are trying to get rid of extras from irises I gave them years ago!

 

Embroidering has been my main hobby lately.  Working on surface embroidering mostly and slowly working through the needle painting book.  Just like painting it takes time to get the hang of shading and highlights.  But I am getting tired of working small pieces.  So I am considering making embroidered quilt squares, just need to find some nice fabric.  My butterfly  making has gotten better.  Using finer wire and cotton and silk sewing threads together seems to be the best combination.  I made a butterfly to put on my name tag for EGA meetings. 

 

 

Stumpwork butterfly.

 

 

Butterfly closeup.

 

A friend found a great deal on real French bias silk ribbon. She got me four rolls for $24.00 and the rolls have 28 yards each and are 1 1/2 inches wide.  Also the YLI 4mm silk ribbon was on sale for 50 cents.  I've never had an abundance of silk ribbon to play with before.

 

 

French bias silk ribbon.

 

 

Green and pink striped silk ribbon.

 

The green and pink ribbon was a challenge to work into a flower.  At first I didn't think I could use the ribbon.  After looking at ribbon flower books I decided to tried making it into a carnation.

 

 

Silk ribbon carnation.

 

The ribbon works beautifully as a carnation making it's own calyx with it's green stripe.

 

The carnation looks so real it is hard not to sniff it.  The other ribbons will make lovely roses when

I get some time to work on them.

Currently I am working up samples for a beginners embroidery class.  Hopefully I will be able to help someone learn to embroider.

Cicel Mary Barker's Christmas Tree Fairy

 

Cicel Mary Barker's Christmas Tree Fairy.

Tonight after cheesecake and presents we came home and I started to rummage through the fabrics for something interesting and fun to do.  After days of needle weaving I needed to do something with fewer rules.  There in the fabrics were the Cicely Mary Barker's fairies.  The fairy I chose was the Christmas Tree Fairy.  So I got some fine white fabric for the backing and started stitching it to the fairy block.  The reason for a backing is that it adds strength to the project so that no tearing and holes are made while embroidering.  Using white I started taking large stitches from the center of the fairy block out to the edges.  After tacking in north, south, east and west directions I then tacked from the center in a diagonal direction.  Finally I tacked all the way around the edges of the fabric.  With that important step finished I worked on outlining the fairy's face, arms and legs using Gutermann black silk thread.  Taking very fine stitches and working in the black outline of the fairy this both accented the image and made it possible to trapunto the area later.  Then I spent some time looking at the book "Flower Fairies in Ribbon Embroidery and Stumpwork".  After all that work now comes the playing!  So many fibers and techniques!  But that is for later today, it is time to get some rest.

 

Full image of the Christmas Tree Fairy.