Castle colouring-in 2

This is the piece of Ikea fabric (with holes where the members of the group have taken the bit that most appealed to them). It was a great idea of Alex’s to start the term with some simple stitching, to get us back into the swing of things. As I wrote last week, it was difficult to choose, as so many of the motifs are very appealing. I’m seeing more as I look at the photo!

But I’m very happy with my castle choice. I scanned last week’s work, so that I could cut it to make pattern pieces for the towers and castellated entrance in felt.

I decided to use different shades of blue……

……..for each pair of turrets and towers. This proved a bit tricky as I don’t have much blue in my stash. Some were only just big enough, but to make progess I wanted it immediately. I cut out the window areas as I wanted to use organza for them, and use reverse appliqué to attach them all down.

On my search for felt, I found this very sparkly sheer fabric that worked much better than the organza that I had in mind. It frays badly, so care is needed not to handle it too much.

I tacked a slightly bigger piece to the printed piece, then put the felt on top.

I used black perlé for the leaded window effect. I was thinking about blanket stitch to attach the felt, but it didn’t seem quite right. Alex suggested stab stitches. Perfect, and doing them in different sizes gives the appearance of brickwork.

I’ve done the stab stitches around the windows too.

It gives a slightly rounded padded effect which works well.

It’s fairly slow, but I have speeded up slightly now that I’ve got the hang of it.

The little turrets needed a bit of tweaking as I stitched. It’s a different, softer felt, which stretches more easily.

Nearly finished the second little turret.

I used the lightbox to transfer the sentry boxes and flags,……

….. and I’ll stitch them on to the background felt before stitching the whole piece down, as I don’t want them to sink in and look quilted.

I’ve put in the last tower. The question is…… will I finish it this week, before we start a new project next week?

Not black blackwork! (part 4)

I’ve finally got back to my castle after a break of several weeks, a simpler diaper to fill in the pillars with a paler blue thread. I needed a pattern that would still look right where the top part widened out, the diamond shape echoing the diagonal stitches on the towers.

Then for the door, a very simple diagonal line that gives the impression of planks of wood. The only problem was me reading the pattern! It appeared to have a space between each stitch but only one dot on the diagram, and I needed to go over two threads. It took me ages to sort it out with Sandra’s help. We were talking at cross purposes which didn’t help, but eventually I realised that it was basically a diagonal back stitch! I’ve used a single strand of floss in a dark blue, almost navy blue.

The windows were an even darker blue with three outlined cross stitches.

I then used a single strand of a beautiful variegated 21st-Century 4 stranded cotton in blue, turquoise, mauve and purple tones, in alternate rows of running stitch. It looks more subtle in reality. I’ll start the thread on the opposite side, to try and mirror-image the colour changes on the other windowed block. And I’ll probably use a variation of this diaper around the door section.

Windows to the soul

The theme for travelling book (pages) this month was ‘Windows’, so plenty of scope there. My second travelling book’s whole theme was ‘Stained glass windows’, and some wonderful work went into it, with lots of ideas for further development.

But no, what popped straight into my head were eyes, the windows to the soul. On several occasions I’ve tried to take some really close-up photos of eyes, without much success; particulary bad were the first selfies, trying to take my own eye.

I’ve tried the phone and the iPad, tried my own eyes, Colin’s, Miles’ and Lera’s, got Colin to try mine, all to no avail. Alex tried last week for me (better), but too many reflections – next door’s house and garage and the window frame.

Then I tried with the macro setting on the bridge camera, me taking Colin’s eye.

And Colin took mine, but far too many wrinkles. I’m not used to seeing myself so close-up.

However, once they were cropped I’d got something to work with.

So far, I’ve done my own eye, because there’s more variation in colours to play with.

I’d originally thought about doing silk shading, and doing several. Then I decided that one bigger iris would be better on the A5-size page. It’s 7cm (3 1/4 inches) in diameter, so it meant a lot of stitching and not a huge amount of time.

I thought it was a good idea to put some background colour in first. I started working with the soft cotton, really tight in a small frame, and dampened Derwent Inktense pencils, making radiating lines between the inner and outer circles, adding more and more colours.

I used a charcoal grey for the pupil, leaving a tiny bit of the white fabric showing.

Then I strengthened the colour around the outer edge of the iris.

I was really pleased with the finished result, but thought I’d better put some stitches in, from a selection of possible threads (but not the reds and corals, of course!).

I did straight stitches of varying lengths, echoing the pencil marks radiating outwards in three or four different shades of green and greeny blue.

Then I did varying length stitches around the outer and inner edge of the iris. The yellow is a subtly variegating slightly thicker thread with a few green stitches mingled.

I now need to stretch it over some mount-board, do some print-outs of photos of work in progress and a colour-chart of the pencils….. and today, so I’m not last minute again tomorrow morning!