It's always nice to have certitude. While I was working on the flowers on this crewel embroidery project, knotting away with French knot fillings on each petal, it suddenly struck me that maybe I should be considering a different stitch. Maybe the French knots weren't the way to go. Maybe I should consider long and short stitch.

Fortunately, this design has two of the exact same flowers on it. So rather than pick out stitches on the flower I was almost finished with, try long and short stitch, not like it, rip it out, and put the French knots back in (oooooh, just writing all that was painful!), I just jumped over the other flower and gave long and short stitch a try.



It has potential. Each petal, though, would need something textured along the outside rim, to make the individual petals stand out. I could have started with buttonhole stitch, like I did with the petals on the French knot flowers, and then worked long and short stitch from there, I suppose.



My thought was that, if I kept the inside of the petal very dark, then the next layer of petals (starting on their outside rim with the lightest thread) would really stand out.

And they might have. But the first petal didn't grab me. I went ahead with the French knots with a bit more certitude.



There's something about the buttonhole stitch that looks a little rough. The ruffling of the second layer makes it look messy - and the variation in stitch placement doesn't help. This "messiness" is more aggravated, though, by the contrast in colors - the very light outer edge of the petals really stands out against the dark.



Seeing the piece from a different angle changes it slightly. I like it ok, I guess.



I didn't spend much time stitching on Saturday (which makes it highly unlikely that I will meet my January 31st deadline and have this finished today). This is as far as I got. The stamens are worked in a very padded satin stitch - three layers of thread there, building on top of each other.

Today, I'll finish those little round blobs of wool, and then hopefully make some headway on the second flower. I'll re-adjust my deadline to Wednesday.

For further posts on this crewel embroidery project, feel free to visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body
The Beginnings of the Rooster's Tail
French Knots on the Wattle
Adding the First Blue Feather using a Raised Backstitch
The Rooster Tail, Finished for Now
The Wing - Three Attempts
Adjusting the Tail Feathers One More Time
The Rooster's Head, Neck, and Comb
The First Flower Attempt Comes Out
New Colors for the Flowers
Lots of Knots

Labels: crewel work, Embroidery Projects, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.

The rooster wing gave me some cause for concern. Should I embroider it in colors, like I did with the tail? Should it match the rest of the body? Should I do something completely different with it - introducing a new set of colors, for example? Oh, so many possibilities, and when I started out on them, I found out that most of them really stunk. Winging it on the wing was probably the worst idea I've had on this piece so far.

The last time I showed you this crewel project, you could see the red scalloped line I had embroidered in chain stitch, using Bella Lusso wool, across the scallops on the wing.



Well, it didn't take much to convince me that the red scalloped line wasn't going to work.



So I picked it out. The Bella Lusso merino wool goes in great! It's a beautiful thread to stitch with - very fine, very soft, very smooth. Coming out, it leaves shreds, but these wipe off easily.

Once I picked out the red, I got it into my head that I would work the wing in colors matching the tail. The top section, I decided to fill with a lattice design, like so:



I wasn't really liking it much, but I plugged on. I filled the open parts of the lattice area:



Green French knots alternate with blue cross stitches in the open areas between the lattice lines. The outline is worked again in chain stitch, using D'Aubusson in the brick red - the same stuff used on the large center tail feather.

This colorful lattice design left the base of the wing questionable: more color? which colors? Argh. I continued with the same color scheme, and came up with this:



Using the same greens and pinks found in the tail, I embroidered these stripes down the wing, following the design, in buttonhole stitch.

(Don't worry, it gets worse!)



Between the colored striped, I worked a blue stem stitch. Well, what the heck? If we're going with a colored wing, it might as well be Really Colored.

I didn't like it. I didn't like it At All. For one thing, the wing looks as if it were stitched somewhere else, cut out, and stuck on a piece that it doesn't really fit on. It just looked too bizarre and busy for me.



On this project, I have discovered that picking out can sometimes be highly pleasurable. For one thing, there's the building anticipation of trying something different in the same space. For another, there's the sheer relief in removing something I really don't like!



Quite a bit of picking later... from the back.



Another fine testament to the Legacy Linen Twill!! It holds up incredibly well. We're back at the drawing board.



I decided color on the wing just wasn't going to hack it. So, taking the two primary shades of the rooster's body, and adding a creamy white, I explored a new idea. Above, you can see the split stitch line that's going to form the base of some long and short stitch shading.



The wing needed to stand out a bit from the side of the bird, so to that end, I padded the long and short stitching space completely with the same creamy white. Here, I'm working with Appleton wool.



Then I began the first of three layers of long and short stitch, with the lightest shade on the top.



And there's the top of the wing. My mother says it looks like a pillow stuck on the side of the rooster. Thanks, Mom.



Then I worked long and short stitch shading down the stripes of the wings, in the same colors, from light to dark down the wing. I separated the lines on the wing with a darker gold altogether.



Finally, I went back and added some fly stitches on the stripes. Now, don't be alarmed. Please don't be alarmed. It's not over yet.



I also finished the long feathers underneath the wing, in the colors you see above. These may yet change.

The wing, however, is going to stay more or less like it is. I have an idea for the top part, which I may or may not implement.

But overall, the wing isn't changing. It's not!! But guess what? The body.... the body is changing! Oh, boy.

We shall see where it takes us.

Any comments? Questions? Suggestions? Let me know by leaving a comment below. And please don't tell me to give it up! I'm not ready to throw the towel in on this guy just yet. He'll be right ----- eventually....

Maybe.....

For further posts on this project, feel free to visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body
The Beginnings of the Rooster's Tail
French Knots on the Wattle
Adding the First Blue Feather using a Raised Backstitch
The Rooster Tail, Finished for Now

Labels: crewel work, Embroidery Projects, embroidery tips and tricks, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.

When picking my way through an embroidery design, there comes a point when I like to move on from one area and all it "finished" for now. Returning to it later, I may have a fresher perspective, and I may change some things (or not, depending on how the rest of the design comes together). A bit down the road, I'll pick out the dark red satin stitching on the large middle feather of my crewel rooster project, and re-embroider it. But for now, I'm calling the tail finished, so I can move on to other parts of the design.

I've been mentioning for a while while working on this crewel project that the lower tail feather would be removed. I didn't like the abrupt shade changing on that feather, which you can see in yesterday's post on adding the first blue feather. But I did like the use of the pink, believe it or not. I like the shade of the middle tone of pink.



The first task - to get rid of the previous stitching. When I cut out an area of stitching like this, using either a very sharp seam ripper or my smallest embroidery scissors, I put the cutting blade (whichever one it is) parallel to the fabric, and run it right underneath the stitches, slicing them open and being careful not to jab the fabric. I do this on the front and on the back, and then I pick the stitches out with tweezers.

Once the stitches were out, this is what I put in. Now, don't cringe.



I satin stitched the lower half in the mid-tone pink (which is Heathway wool) and then chain stitched in three shades of Heathway green on top of that, from dark to light. Heathway and satin stitching.... More on that later, but just briefly, it's a thread that works so nicely for satin stitching. It's really smooth!



So here's the tail so far. Now it's a matter of that one remaining feather, which I worked in blues.



The lower part is worked in basket stitch, the upper part in fly stitch.



(Ignore the red scallops on the wing! They came out already!)

For now, I'm calling the tail done. I will likely go back to it and address two things: the middle dark red satin stitching, which I'm pretty sure is going to go completely, and there is a chance that the pink is going to come out again. I don't mind it a lot - it's not as bad as it was - but I'm not 100% satisfied with it. I've got a couple different ideas bubbling about in my brain.

But for now, I need to move away from the tail! Any comments, questions, suggestions are always welcome!

For further posts on this project, feel free to visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body
The Beginnings of the Rooster's Tail
French Knots on the Wattle
Adding the First Blue Feather using a Raised Backstitch

Labels: crewel work, Embroidery Projects, embroidery tips and tricks, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.

  Working on the crewel rooster project is actually really fun, despite the oscillating ideas along the way that prompt me to tear out and replace a lot of the embroidery. Well, here's a stage in the project where I didn't take anything out!

The tail has been the best part of this crewel embroidery project, because it opens up a lot of possibilities for variety in stitches and color and thread. So the tail has been great fun to embroider! There are elements that need to come out as yet, but we'll get to that later.



Resting on the top of the largest tail feather is a little feather that flips out behind the large one. I stitched this in buttonhole stitch, in green, using Gumnut Poppies. I lined the top of the buttonhole stitching with stem stitch, to close in the feather.

(It's really hard to call these things feathers. They don't look like feathers!)



Then I moved on to the large feather between the largest brick-red satin stitched feather and the green basket stitch feather, which I showed you the other day. I began the top of this middle feather with straight stitches evenly spaced, over which I intended to work a ribbed backstitch. This is the same concept as working a ribbed spider web wheel.



After working a dark blue line, I took a medium blue, and began backstitching over the bars - it's an "under-two-back-over-one" stitching rhythm that basically wraps each of the bars with a loop of the thread.

I worked one row of very dark blue, two rows of medium blue and one row of light blue in this manner over the bars.



And this is what I came out with.



There it is, from afar.



Then I worked the base of the feather in long and short stitch, lighter at the tip and darker towards the rooster. The difficulty was that I didn't have any shade between the medium and this very dark blue, to cut the transition and make it a bit smoother. Ah well, we work with what we have! And this actually doesn't bother me too much. I'm sure it will stay in.

Some things that will change, though, before the rooster is entirely finished: 1. The lowest feather on the tail - in the shades of pink - will be cut out and replaced, and I'm pretty sure the middle large brick-red satin stitched feather will be re-worked. I didn't pad that, and the threads in the middle of the feather at the widest part are starting to look discombobulated. I'm not satisfied with that, so eventually I'll re-stitch it and pad the satin stitches thoroughly.

Feel free to add your questions, comments, or suggestions below!

For further posts on this project, feel free to visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body
The Beginnings of the Rooster's Tail
French Knots on the Wattle

Labels: crewel work, Embroidery Projects, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.

  Thanks to Gill, freezing over there in the UK, I now know that the fleshy, bumpy stuff hanging from a rooster's chin is called a wattle. And I've over-French-knotted the wattle on this guy. I decided to fill in the wattle on the crewel rooster entirely in French knots in two colors of red.

Unlike the stitchin' and a-pickin' I did on the previous parts of the rooster, I've decided that whether or not you like this coagulation of French knots, they are staying. If you don't like them, feel free to say so! But I don't think you can twist my arm enough to pick out this many French knots!

(Ok, if you tell me it's downright horrible, and that my entire reputation as even a moderately knowledgeable stitcher will go whizzing down the drain if I don't remove them - I might remove them. But even then, at this point, I kind of doubt it!)



Besides, I am a great lover of the French Knot. I love the texture French knots give to embroidery. I love the way they just slip into their knotty circles as you stitch with them. I love French knots.



And I will admit that these are rather messy French knots, crowded and packed into their wattle-space like ... bumps on a wattle. But I still like them. And even if I've over-done it with the French knots, the mere fact that they are French knots makes me very happy with them.

Because I .... Love .... French .... Knots.

I briefly considered finishing the entire rooster in French knots.

Onto another subject: I do believe tomorrow I will break from the rooster momentarily (I can hear the collective sighs of relief reverberating all over the globe!) and Give Away another Trish Burr CD. So stay tuned for tomorrow's post!

For other posts on this crewel rooster project, please visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body
The Beginnings of the Rooster's Tail

Labels: crewel work, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.

  Roosters are weird. They have these flappy things that grow on their faces and heads. They have these coats of feathers that overlay their backs. They have floppy tails. Poofy, floppy tails. Actually, when you start looking closely at roosters (if you avoid the face, anyway!) they are rather attractive birds - and in fact, in many cases, they're downright gorgeous. Embroidering a rooster with no reference point has been a bit of a challenge, but on the bright side of the adventure, given the variety in rooster-kind, I figure I can pretty much do anything, as long as the general shape of the bird is there. So I set about to play with the tail after finishing the scalloped body. Let's look at the tail today. This is a tale of disaster, but again, it's all part of the journey!

Embroidering the tail on this rooster design should be fun. There's lots of scope here for variety in stitches and color.



Now, bear with me on this, ok?

I started at the tip of the largest feather on the tail - and the thread I'm using here is the D'Aubusson wool in a brick red, and Simply Wool by Gentle Arts in a peachy color and a greeny color.

The stitch is fly stitch, worked vertically from the outside tip of the tail.

As I worked into the tail feather, I thought it might be interesting to change colors, so I did. I also thought it might be interesting to change types of thread, so that I could see two different wools side-by-side in the same stitch, for the sake of comparing the look of the threads.



This striped bit towards the tip of the tale shows a notable difference between the two types of threads I'm using.



The D'Aubusson wool is a fine weight embroidery wool. Simply Wool by Gentle Arts is, too. But Simply Wool is slightly finer, and it has a lot more sheen to it. D'Aubusson wool looks more like wool, but Simply Wool looks like (and behaves like) a blend of wool and silk, though I know it isn't a blend. But it is smoother, and it does have a higher sheen.

As for the actual stripe thing going on here, I knew right off - as soon as I did it - that I didn't really like it. Somehow, it reminded me of a sock. A sock? A sock.



I digressed from the striped effect and decided to add some texture, using spiderweb stitch worked in this fan shape. Now it was starting to remind me of a ribbed sock. I was liking it less and less.

The ribbed spiderweb stitch, by the way, is difficult to work in a tiny space with this thread (Simply Wool). It was not pleasant stitching.



So I worked two opposite triangles in the spiderweb stitch, then picked up the dark red fly stitch again, then decided to change directions on that stitch and leave a diamond-shaped hole for another inset design area. You know, just to sort of spice the feather up and make it look really... really dumb. I didn't like where this was going at all - but don't worry! It gets worse!



Here's my close-up of the bumpy ribbed inset on the tail. You can see that it isn't exactly smooth and perfectly straight, as far as the spines are concerned. They're a bit wobbly, and, as I worked towards the tip of the triangle, I had to reduce the number of spines by wrapping more than one at a time. But, besides the stitching, another thing this photo above shows pretty clearly is the soft sheen of the Simply Wool thread.



Working my way around the curve of the feather, I kept going with the fly stitch in the D'Aubusson wool. As I took the curve, it became more and more difficult to compensate for the curve without moving my stitches apart and showing more of the fabric underneath. At this point, I was really not liking the tail at all.



I cut back the red and picked it out, leaving a slight border on the spiderweb triangles. Then I moved to the inside end of the feather, thinking it might help to work this stitch from this direction, and meet the area already stitched. I gave that theory about half an inch, and then resorted to this:



What a glorious picking mess! This is a good time to be thankful for those tweezers in your workbox!



This is also a good time to be thankful for a Really Good Fabric! You can see the fuzzies left from the wool - not a big deal. Take a scrap piece of cloth and, using gentle small circular motions, "wipe" the wool fuzzies off. But look at the fabric. I have put in a lot of stitching here - some of it rather tight stitching - and then picked it all out. In some places, I've done this twice. The fabric holds up really well. The holes close back up, and once you've rubbed the fuzzies away, you can't really tell you've had any stitching there. The fabric is Legacy Linen Twill, made specifically for hand embroidery. It's on sale during the month of January at Hedgehog Handworks, at a Really Good Price per yard - $58.80 (30% off retail) - and it's 62.5" wide. This is a fantastic price for Legacy Linen, and especially for linen twill, which is usually expensive. ** (see note below, please)

Ok..... Now what?



Now let's try some of those fun stitches, like feather stitch. After all, it's a feather.



And let's work a row of herringbone stitch underneath that.



And then let's cut all that out, too.



Let's forget the big feather and move down to the smaller one at the base of the tail.

This is stitched using fishbone stitch, in three colors of Heathway wool. The Heathway is soft and boingy, and it covers well and smoothly.



But by this time, I was tailed-out, and I must have lost my concentration somewhere along the feather. It wasn't until I actually looked at the photos that I found these two mistakes. I overlapped incorrectly, and ended up with these very noticeable jolts in the center line.

It doesn't matter so much. Why, you ask? Because deep down, I don't like the color changes on this. It's too stripey. More socks! I have a distinct feeling this is going to go.



Still, I left it for now, and then I moved back up to that large feather, which I satin stitched in the dark brick D'Aubusson wool.



This wool makes a nice satin stitch in small spaces. In larger spaces, it's definitely necessary to pad underneath the satin stitching to give the top threads some friction to keep them in place. The wool threads line up nicely for satin stitch, and, unlike the Heathway, which looses its twisted look in satin stitch, creating a very smooth surface, the D'Aubusson keeps its twist and looks very clean and neat in satin stitch. The light plays off the twists.



I like satin stitch in the D'Aubusson wool.



On the lower half of that large feather, I chain stitched in the straw-colored D'Aubusson, to fill the area. Then, on the two outside rows, I worked backstitch through the chain stitches, in the coral Simply Wool from Gentle Arts. I was determined to get the Simply Wool thread next to the D'Aubusson, so that the difference in weight could be seen better.



Above, you can see one row of the chain stitches backstitched with the Simply Wool in coral. The D'Aubusson is a fine thread, compared to Appleton and Heathway. But the Simply Wool is a wee bit finer - and you can see that it has more of a sheen to it.



And here you can see the two rows of backstitching in the chain stitch on the middle feather, and the top feather worked in green, Simply Wool by Gentle Arts, in a basket stitch.



Basket stitch looks a lot like a closed double-herringbone stitch (that is, double herringbone, worked close together so there isn't much space between the stitches). The difference is that you don't work two rows - it's all done in one forward movement of stitching. But more on that later!

The tail so far is half-way tolerable. I will leave the middle feather as it is. The lower feather is bugging me, and it will most likely go. The top feather in the green is likable, so I think I'll keep it!

One distinct difficulty in working only with threads from your stash is that you often get stuck with colors you wouldn't normally use in a given project (I'm having that problem with pinks right now), or you end up working without colors you normally would use (I'd love to have several shades of coral for this fellow). Still, it's fun to make do and see what comes of it!

Do you think the wing should be colorful? What would your approach be to the wing? Any ideas?

For more posts on this project, visit the following links:

Free Hand Embroidery Pattern for The Crewel Rooster
Setting up The Crewel Rooster Project
Choosing Threads for The Crewel Rooster - and the first flower
Crewel Design Books
Stem Stitch Filling on Flower Stems
Scalloped Feathers on the Rooster's Body

___________________________________

** Note: There's an explanation on the Hedgehog Handworks website for the change in price in Legacy Linen. There was an error in pricing, so it's been adjusted, and they are making up for the mistake by giving a 30% discount on the linen. Originally, the twill is $84 / yard. This makes more sense, actually. Legacy is the finest needlework linen in the world - I've never seen their specialty linen (like the dower quality linens or the ecclesiastical linen) less than $60 - $80 / yard, on sale. I feel kind of bad for the mistake - bad for Hedgehog, because it means they're taking a serious loss on those orders already placed, and it would not have been such a burden had I not over-publicized the sale! On the other hand, for those who have already ordered linen, consider yourself pretty darn lucky! The sale price now - $58.80 - is still a good price for Legacy Linen. It's a bargain. And I'm still planning on ordering some before the end of the month! Sorry for any disappointment or inconvenience caused by my blabbering!

Labels: crewel work, Embroidery Projects, embroidery tips and tricks, linen, needlework pictures, pictures, stitch along, wool

Click here to read the whole post & comments.