Little progress

Well it's been nearly two weeks since I put needle to fabric and longer than that since the last post. I tend not to post on a regular basis anyway because the embroidery takes so long to do. However not putting needle to fabric is most unlike me, I'm almost obsessive about my stitching (the only part of my life that I am am obsessive about), and I feel quite sad if I'm not able to stitch.

The last two weeks however have been a different story, I contracted an inner ear infection and have spent the best part of the last two weeks unable to stand upright or see straight (and we won't go into the nausea side of things!). It was horrid, I'm on the mend now and am able to stand upright and read (for a couple of hours anyway) but I'm still staying away from the stitching. My fingers are itching to get back, but the dizziness is still with me a bit so anything I do will probably have to come out again so it's not worth it.

Over the last couple of days I finally got round to looking at all the recent emails that had come in and saw I had a number about comments left on my blog. Thank you to all who left comments, if I could have read them last week they'd have really cheered me up, but never mind they made my day when I did read them.

Before I was felled by the ear infection I decided I needed a break from Treasure Ship and went back to Spring Kimono. I started work on the Valerian flowers, I've seen these worked in slightly different ways - they always seem to be worked in flat silk with knots on the top, but the grid isn't always worked. I decided that I would put the grid on these even though they are very small. The space between the lines of the grid is 2mm.

Next I worked knots over the top.

Then I stitched the stems and grasses and put in the grid in the bend of the tree trunk with twisted gold thread. I decided to remove some other elements of the design, the design covers quite a small area and I decided it looked too fussy with all the other bits in.

I also had a re-think about the tree. Originally I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a weeping cherry or willow tree - the original design I adapted this from was only a line drawing so had no colour to guide me. I decided that I'd make it a cherry and had started putting in small pink blossoms, but the more I did the more it didn't seem to work. I'm not a gardener and don't know much about plants, but I did a search on Valerian and discovered that it's flowering season is July - September, long after cherry blossom season.

So out came the pink, I changed the tree back to a willow in my head, and in went some nice green leaves. This worked much better and I'm very happy with the design now. I should be able to finish it over next weekend as only the leaves and a little bit of the edging are left to be completed (the horizontal blob on the right sleeve is a stray piece of thread).

I'm very happy with how this has come out and it has given me some good ideas for stitching more using the same format. I'll try and show the colours better in the next post about this piece. I'll certainly be doing some more to sell in my Etsy shop, hopefully they'll sell well and will help to support my Japanese embroidery habit!!

100 hours

As regular readers will know we Japanese embroiderers spend a huge amount of time working on a single piece. Although I've tracked the time spent on my pieces by noting when they were started and finished this was only a rough guide (started in September finished in December, kind of thing), I've never kept track of exactly how many hours I spend on each piece, until now ... and here we have the result of 100 hours of stitching.

Actually it's 111.75 - but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it does it?

This design is adapted from the famous Konbuin fukusa, I'll do a post about them over on the other blog. Quick picture of the original below.

Treasure Ship

I wrote in an earlier post about a Perfect Stitching Day, well the last week has been the opposite!!

Japanese embroidery demands a great deal of practice and patience, and even after almost five years of practice and patience there are times when my stitching isn't as good as I would like it to be. My fellow student Carol-Ann has written about the routine she goes through before she starts to stitch, well I go through a similar routine, it helps to settle my mind and prepare me for a number of hours of strict concentration.
At the JEC and Kurenai-kai both students and professional stitchers start their stitching day with a few minutes of meditation. In the last week I'm not sure that even this would have helped settle me into the right frame of mind for stitching, and even though I did a little work on the Beginning of Spring it was just rubbish and out it all came again (I'm not simply talking about stitching which wasn't perfect but stitching that was just horrid).

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that everything has settled down again and I'm back to stitching Treasure Ship. The photo below is of the edge of the ship, the edge is formed from padding cotton which is twisted and then couched tightly down and covered with flat silk worked in a diagonal layer.

The vertical lines are temporary holding, they hold the twisted thread in place while stitching is worked over the top.

For the thick lines along the length of the ship more padding is worked. This is the same thickness as the padding round the edge but instead of being twisted and then couched is it couched so it it much flatter. Once the padding was in I removed the temporary holding and then covered the padding with flat orange silk in a diagonal stitch.

To finish the ship diagonal lines are worked on each plank, still have some more to go on here, but I feel I've done enough for now, so I'm not going to push it.

And last, a quick picture of what I've done so far. It's starting to take shape and I've really enjoyed working the ship section. It was nice easy stitching, using simple techniques (although I did have to put a call into my sensei for a bit of help, thanks Margaret), and it's eased me back into the routine of stitching after a week away.

I've got a few days holiday this week, so am planning to spend them working on more of treasure ship, now I'm back on form I'm sure there will be more posts later this week.

I've not been completely idle for the last week - have made some more jackets and posted them on my Etsy shop - http://www.nejiribana.etsy.com/

The Beginning of Spring

Well, Bamboo Circle has gone off to the framer, and I have started a small design for some light relief for when I want a break from Treasure Ship. I've called it The Beginning of Spring.

I have a book of kimono designs from Tashio 7 (1919) from which I've taken this design. All the designs in the book follow the same format, a few are coloured but most aren't, and of course one of the few I don't have a photo of is the one I'm working on!!

The simple and clear layout of the designs make them perfect for turning into embroidery designs, I quite fancy the idea of making 3 or 4 and displaying them all in a row.

I've spent some time figuring out the best way to transfer these designs onto the silk fabric. For this design I've used a product called Tracedown, which is much like the waxed paper used in dressmaking. It seems to work ok, but is already starting to fade, so I'll have to use one of the air soluble pens to top the design up.

My first task was to choose colours, being on black I know they'll wash out so I choose nice bright colours. A nice pink for the cherries, bright blue, yellow, and greens for the flower and grasses along the skirt of the kimono.
I simplified the original design a bit as this piece is a bit of an experiment, and I didn't want to get bogged down in too much delicate work (will save that for the next one).

I also left this design it's original size, a little larger than A5, in retrospect I think maybe I should have sized it up a bit, but never mind I think it'll work ok. A number of the designs in the book include kanji, I'm guessing that they have something to do with the type of kimono that can be ordered using that particular design, but not reading kanji I really don't know. Anyway, this one does so I decided to leave it in.

First I stitched the kanji using a flat silk, then I stitched some branches of the weeping cherry, also in flat silk. Actually on the original I can't decide if it's a weeping cherry or a willow tree, the flowers/leaves are just little lines so it could be either. I decided to make it a cherry just before all the blossoms come out, so there are only buds on the branches.
I've worked the buds with what we call a blister stitch, it gives a nice 3D effect on a very small motif.

For a bit of bling(!) I'm working the outer line of the kimono with a line of imitation gold thread.

Bamboo Circle - completed

Well my #1 gold arrived, thank you Sensei, and Bamboo Circle is finished. Hooray :-)

I am so pleased with how this piece has turned out. I'd avoided doing some of the earlier phases on metallic fabric because after hearing various people talk about how difficult it was to stitch on I was worried that I wouldn't be able to manage it. But after finishing phase 8, about to start 9, and with 10 (the graduation piece) in sight, I thought it was really time to be brave and bite the bullet. Besides, stitching on metallic is part of the JEC curriculum so I needed to have a go.

There were a number of designs on metallic to choose from, and I thought that, since I was a bit hesitant about the metallic to start with, the best idea would be to choose a design I really liked.
That way it would give me an incentive to carry on if I started to struggle with the metallic.

So Bamboo Circle it was, I love the simplicity of this design, and the colours are just wonderful, the photographs here really don't do it justice. The surface of the fabric is a lovely soft mottled gold colour, which is also difficult to show in photos as light just bounces off it.

After worrying about working on metallic, I have to say it turned out not to be as difficult as I thought. I did worry about having to take stitching out because once holes have been made in the gold it may not be possible to disguise them. On the few sections where I did have to take stitching out it was possible to cover the holes left by the first line of stitching as I'd stitched inside the lines of the pattern.
It is also physically harder to stitch on metallic rather than plain silk simply because it takes more pressure to push the needle through the fabric, but it's easy enough to take a break and do something else for a while to give your fingers a rest.

Stitching this piece has helped me get over a big hurdle on my journey along the path of nuido, and I am really going to enjoy living with this piece on my wall. I may even decide to stitch one of the other flower circles on gold to keep it company.

The design is part of a series of 10 flower circles which were designed for students of the late Master Saito. You can see the Pine Circle on our Japanese Embroidery Gallery, go to the advanced pieces gallery, it's the second row of pictures. If you have access to the Kurenai-Kai Japanese Embroidery Series books, you can see the all 10 flower circles in book 4.

Making beautiful mistakes

One of the sayings we have in our school of Japanese embroidery is "The hands are the exit of the spirit", this saying was coined by the late Master Saito and it has always spoken to me deeply.
I was never great at creating/drawing/writing beautiful things but always felt that there was some kind of creativity in here somewhere. Now, having discovered Japanese embroidery, I feel that my hands have an outlet to express the spirit that is inside this fairly plain, 40 something exterior.

I am absolutely the worst critic of my own work (and myself!), but I've just been reading a post over on SweetPersimmon, a blog about Tea Ceremony and related thoughts that I visit regularly, which fits in beautifully with my philosophy of Japanese embroidery, and which I think I ought to expand to life in general.

There are two lines in particular which I feel fit with the quote above and which I'd like to share here - "Making mistakes are other opportunities for learning and growing." and "If you are going to make a mistake, make it beautifully."

I think I should fill a whole pad of sticky notes with these sayings and the one from Master Saito and stick them all over the house and office. I'll certainly write them in my notebook and think about them when I'm fretting over one or other piece of stitching (or life in general). The full post is called 'It's not about perfection' and you can read it here, I think you'll enjoy it.

Well, this post didn't end up quite the way I'd intended, but that's part of the fun of blogging isn't it?

Plum blossoms in the snow

Yesterday as I sat and stitched it was snowing quite hard, and although it didn't last very long, it was very pretty. I was working on the plum blossoms on treasure ship, which unlike the snow haven't faded away, but have grown and settled and are now here forever.

The petals are padded with a mix of padding cotton and self padding. The section with the tiny little dots is where I've started of finished off the thread, these little dots will be covered by real gold thread which will form the handle of the broom (the yellow silk).

Here are all the blossoms completed. This photo gives a better idea of the shape of the broom.

These plum blossoms don't have stamens and pollen in this design. So all that was needed to finish this section was to put in the plum branches which were worked in a twisted 2-1 thread.