Tambour Embroidery Progress

 Projects, projects.  I have too many of them in the works....  Here is a tambour embroidered piece I just finished.  It is going to be sewn up into an evening bag later today.  This is the pattern I got out of an old art deco book of designs.  You can see it was intended to be very monochromatic.  I intended to follow the colors as exactly as possible.  But as it turned out I could not find a yellow I liked for the bottom curved part and it did not translate so well with so much pink all over.

Here is the piece, all laced up on the frame.  I work on a frame and not a hoop to maintain good strong tension on the silk organza fabric base.  Here you see the pattern all drawn out onto the fabric.  I used a soft white chalk dressmakers pencil that rubs off with a bit of water.  As the piece progressed, I had to go back over it with the pattern underneath and pencil on top to retrace parts of the design because my arm rubs the lightweight chalk off.  You can see the flower on the bottom right is buggered right now due to this and has not been blotted and retraced yet.  I used a basketweave stitch technique (with the tambour hook) that I just learned last month for the inside of the curve.  I love this stitch- it gives such dimension!

 Just for show and tell, I ordered a bunch of skeins of silk from Japan to use in tambour embroidery.  It is rather a crapshoot when receiving these orders-- some of the silk is too thick for using the hook but most of this was very fine and very usable.  Isn't it gorgeous?  They stitch up so beautifully and the sheen is amazing.

Another photo just for show and tell-- this is my wee work station.  My husband built this folding frame stand for me and it works perfectly in this little bedroom corner where I keep all my supplies.  The light is a clip-on Ott lamp and works extremely well in this dark corner.  You can see I keep alot of things right on my frame!  This is how I like to work.  The only thing I try to keep off the frame is my scissors although sometimes I forget.  Oops-- there they are on the fabric.  :-/  So far-- no accidents!  I worry more about my fabrics than myself, though!  Looking at this photo-- I have an array of threads that I used for this project.  On the upper left of the frame is a box of Sulky rayon threads and Sulky metallic threads.  On the right are bags of very fine art silks- really a fake silk as they are Rayon but they look like silk and it is almost impossible to tell the difference on the finished piece.  Some of the bags hold real silk, too.  I use several tambour hooks but mostly I prefered to use a size 70 on this piece.  And my pencils and pattern are there.  I have a habit of having to have a pencil clamped in my mouth while I am working on something.  Nerves, I guess!  If I don't have one to chomp on, I end up biting the inside of my cheek.  Weird, I know!

Ok, I am getting somewhere with this.  The original pattern called for small stem petals and I drew them on but frogged them out after I finished one.  It just looked weird, so they got rubbed out and just the larger stems remain.  The green is Sulky 40 rayon thread.  The pink is silk from Japan.  The periwinkle blue in the basketweave is Sajou embroidery thread from France- one strand.  And the bugle beads are a gorgeous blue/grey color I bought in Paris last year.

Basketweave in metallic thread on one flower.  :-)

Heading down the home stretch, putting different colors of silk dupioni fabric underneath to see how the colors look against it.  So much planning and pondering goes into every piece I make.  

Taking a break with my sweetheart in Williamsburg!  We enjoyed a rare day out without throngs of tourists last week.

Our dog Buddy was captivated by the horses & carriage!

Home and back to work.  The flowers are completed and I am using a point terre, or pulled stitch, to set the bugle beads in a 90 degree angle from the flower tops.  Also added another top curved line of bugle beads underneath, above the pink silks.

Finito!  Ta-da! Today I have my outer fabric, interfacings and silk lining all cut out and ready to sew up into a bag.  Stay tuned for the finished bag! For all you Valentines out there, have a happy day of love! <3

bumble bee rooster & other wip updates

A few months ago I got this little rug hook kit from Lori Brechlin's shop in Amherst.  I'm sorry to not give credit to the designer but typically enough, I can't find the bag it came in or my receipt.   Anyway, got it home and finally took it out of the stash pile a few weeks ago.  Rug hooking is pretty new to me and I've never hooked on wool before, which this is, and my rug hook needle turned out to be one for fine rug hooking.  Another obstacle that made me put it back in the box for a while was the fact that there was no photo to guide me with colors.  The kit included wool strips that were wrapped in a bundle-- one for background, one for rooster, but there wasn't a photo for the finished rooster so I am guessing, and now, tossing colors I didn't like and using cut strips from my wool stash.  A new primitive rug hook I got at VA Rugfest a few weeks ago has made me pick up the project again but I am still stymied with color decisions.  Agh!  This shouldn't be hard, right?

Since my previous hook didn't do anything but pull the wool background and shred the wool strips, I switched to the rug punch.  So the outline and rooster head are made with punching but the strips were too wide for the punch so with an outline to guide me, I turned it over and am now hooking.  I've looked at a bunch of rooster photos online and thought yellow would look good in the tail.  Maybe not, as my husband proclaimed it the "bumble bee rooster".  What do I know, I've never lived on a farm.

But I really like how the head turned out, except for one strip that popped out on top.  Whoops.  And I like the green tail but the bumble bee yellow/black has to go.

Possibilities for colors are above.  More mixes of green for the tail?  Orange in the tail?  Orange breast?  Hmmm...  orange feet, maybe.   Going with the flow is not my strong suit...  Stay tuned on this one.

More up my alley- progress on the Lesage tambour piece.  I've gone crazy pants on this piece in the last day and it is almost done.  This is a side view looking down on my frame from where I sit.  All the chenille leaves are completed except for one (you can kind of see it on the far right, the one that still needs stitched) and all goldwork & tube beads are finito.  The end is in sight in a day or two on this piece and then it's coming off the frame and something else is going in.  I'm anxious for my "Ta-da!!" moment here.  It has many tiny parts that needed stitched, and is fairly equal measure tambour and straight embroidery, plus I had the challenge of finding a suitable metallic gold thread that is a different brand that what I got in Paris, after I ran out of the Parisian metallic gold.  That thread I have to order and shipping is 23 euros, just for shipping!  So a wait is in order and after a city-wide search for the perfect color match and durability test, I found it in the most unexpected thread-- Coats & Clark.  Inexpensive and perfect and super strong.   With this thread, I finished up the stems and one gold leaf.  I can't tell the difference, so I am excited to have discovered this.  They had a number of metallic colors, too, at Joann Fabric.

Back to the rooster, though.  I really want to get this one finished.