Himotaba - Update

 It's nearing the end of the month and I figure I should post something besides the TUSAL report. 

Since last posting Himotaba, a lot has happened. I'd been trying to stitch on Eternal Grace, but was really struggling. I decided to put her on hold and concentrate on completing the cords, as that would have been the correct order. I brought my piece to Margaret for extra guidance and we went through it cord by cord. 

I learned a better way to taper cord padding, so it and the stitching over it came out and was redone. This tapering technique will be useful for goldwork and English whitework.

Made an excellent attempt at the imitation wicker effect, realized that I used the wrong gold. I meant to use the white gold, so it had to come out.

Made multiple attempts at the single central braid in both twisted and flat silk. I knew exactly what needed to be done but could not get it to work. I finally had to sit down and just do it as best as I could. Whatever I did will just have to be good enough. 

I guess it worked because I got a "looks good" from Margaret and was finally able to move on. I guess I just needed to loosen up. Funnily enough, the double central braid was so much easier to do than the single central braid.

The wicker effect (in wheat) was also re-stitched. Margaret's method gives a nicer "raised" effect. The last bit I did this weekend was restart the single central braid with the flat silk. Again, it's not perfect but at least it looks pretty.

At this point, the only cords that haven't been re-touched are the imitation wicker in flat silk, rein effect and double central braid in twisted silk. We have a class in less than two weeks, I need to at least re-attempt the double central braid in twisted silk to get some feedback. The twist in that one is a little tricky.

Himotaba - Class

Now that my prep work is done and my colors were "selected", it's finally time to start stitching. Here's a drawing showing where I plan to have each color.

There are eight cords in this piece:

1. Double central braid in flat silk
2. Imitation wicker in twisted silk
3. Single central braid in twisted silk (2-color transition)
4. (real) Wicker in flat silk
5. Single central braid in flat silk
6. Imitation wicker in flat silk
7. Rein effect in twisted silk over couched gold
8. Double central braid in twisted silk transitioning into metal thread

As this is a study piece, it contains one of every type of cord. However, you'll notice some cords are repeated. This is so we can experience stitching the cord using both a flat and twisted thread. Not only will the effect look different, but the stitching process will feel different. 

The cords are stitched using the same foreground to background rule we always follow, ensuring we can leave a one point open space. This means the first cord to be stitched is cord #2, called imitation wicker. Since it's twisted thread, the stitching goes really fast. The slow part is those lambda's that go on top. We're meant to stitch it using gold thread, but for the purpose of learning the steps and right angles we used orange couching silk.

The second cord to stitch is another twisted thread, the single central braid (cord #3). This one isn't new, it's the same braid that is found on Hiogi. It looks so pretty in pink!

Once we got to the third and fourth cord, I decided I needed some bling. I mixed in some gold (minus the core) with the wheat and red cord. It gives off just the hint of sparkle between the sugas. Cord #4 gave me some trouble as I needed to stitch backwards and the angle was just so awkward. Cord #5 is another single central braid but with flat silk. That gold gives it almost a brushed paint look that is just perfect.

We skipped over cord #6 as it's the same technique as cord #2 but with flat silk. Instead we covered the last two cords. The rein effect (cord #7) is stitched over a foundation of couched gold using twisted thread. The idea is to make seven stitches and then skip seven stitches worth of space before starting the next stripe. Angle and spacing is very important, as always. The last cord #8 is a double central braid. It's the same cord as the very first one done in flat, but our teacher wanted to make sure we did the twisted version to ensure we understood the tightness of the twist. Although I'm a tight stitcher, it seems I'm not a tight twister. I had to do a few attempts before I got the right tension.

After class, I attempted the flat silk version at home. It has it's own complications, getting the silk nice and flat, and shiny.

I sadly had to put my piece aside. The picture below is from November 20 when I last worked on it. I only had one reel of silk per color, most of them opened reels. By the time I got to where I was, my pink was gone and I was almost out of red.

My stitching mojo has been in limbo since then. Luckily, I just received my order from the Japanese Embroidery Center. Right on time too as the holidays are coming up and I'll be starting my annual two weeks stitching retreat. I'm going to mainly spend my time on Himotaba and hopefully Eternal Grace as well. I also need to start planning next year's objectives. I usually start a new piece on January 1st but I have no idea what I want to pull from my stash. I'll have a look through my horde.

Himotaba - Color Palette

If you've been following along for a while, you know color is my weak point. This piece was actually supposed to be treated as an etude and I wasn't planning on spending too much time thinking of color. Just use whatever is suggested by the JEC and be done with it. Here are where the problems start, there are two versions of Himotaba: a standard one and an extended version.

I don't know about you but I find that stubby tassel really ugly, so I went with the extended version. More stitching to do but it will be worth it as the design feels more balanced. You'll notice that the extended version doesn't have a colored image even, thought they do have a suggested list of silks for it. I looked at the colors and it looked nice enough. Many of the colors are even used in Hiogi and my version of Eternal Grace, so I figured why not. Until I received the silks.

Although the colors look nice individually, once you put them together... my biggest issue is that orange. It's way too light, considering it's used for three cords. Place it next to the green and it becomes muddy. Then started my nightmare of having to pick colors

As you can see from the animation, I went through several iterations. Using my tablet to color the cords really helped me out in trying to visualize how it would look. There were a few conditions I needed to follow when picking colors:

• I needed two contrasting colors to make a transition (3rd cord from the top), usually from dark to light
• I needed another color transition, this time silk to metal (last cord)
• the rein effect cord (2nd to last cord) is usually done in red over a foundation of couched gold. This could also be a foundation of couched silver and a different color would then be selected
• this was a recommendation from my teacher: don't use too many colors as it will make the piece too busy. The original has five silk colors, plus gold. It's best not to go over that and in fact it would actually look nicer with less colors and instead use different shades.

In my first iteration I took the main colors from Hiogi that I liked: red, pink, white, green, blue and purple. In the end, the only colors that survived is the red and pink which I had used in the pink cloud and cherry blossom on Hiogi.

I was initially going to also use the same white, but it was a little too bright for the piece. I swapped it for a creamy/pinky white. I wanted green in there and after a lot of back and fourth, decided to use the same greens as my Grace's kimono.

So I finally had my color palette, with the original as a backup. However, I wouldn't know until I actually started stitching whether the colors would go well together or not. It will depend on whether the silk is flat or twisted, am I combining it with metal thread, what cord will it be used for, what color will be next to it... It would just have to be a trial and error.

And for proof, on the second day of class, I realized that I will be missing a color. I needed one more for one of the cords. Since I was clearly going for a floral theme, one of my friends recommended a wheat that just happened to be lying around that day (a few of us brought our entire stash of silks to make the process easier).

As all this happened over a month ago, I can confirm that the colors did play nicely together. I'll show you in the next post.

November TUSAL

 

It feels like I just posted one of these. Not much has happened since my last post. I did start a new bead embroidery piece or was supposed to. I prepared the fabric on a frame in time for the prep class but sadly realized I couldn't attend the first day of class because it landed on the same night as the office Christmas party. So I've had to push back my official start to February. Here's a sneak peek at the project

The piece is called Arabian Nights and is from Margaret Lee's book the Art of bead embroidery. I've loved this piece for years but sadly the fabric is no longer available. Luckily Margaret had a few pieces leftover. I did get a little bit of stitching from the prep session but I'll hold off sharing as I haven't heard back from the teacher if she was happy with it or not. The zippered case on the left is where my bead piece will end up when it's done being stitched. I'm excited to try a new finishing method.

Himotaba - Prep Work

You've seen a peek of this in a previous post, here's the official post introducing my next Japanese embroidery phase. As you know I switched things around starting Eternal Grace (phase 6) before cords (phase 5). The class was held with November but before I arrived to class, I had a few things that needed to be done first.

I realize now that I don't have many pictures of the process, but it's really a lot of the same thing. It's basically outlining all cords using Japanese running stitch. They need to be outlined to make sure that they are 7mm thick all the way through. This is required as sometimes the framing will distort the design line. Stitches are between 4mm and 6mm long, but when you can't go around a curve you switch to a line of held thread. Time consuming but super easy and zen.

One of the cords is called "rein effect", it's made up of twisted silk thread stitched over a base of couched metallic thread. I stitched mine with gold but it can also be done with silver to coordinate with your color palette.

Two of the cords are called "double central braid" and require padding, but they need to be outlined with metal thread (again the color used should coordinate with your palette). I actually outlined mine with Japanese running stitch using white couching silk first and then added the gold outline. The gold will peek between the stitches and give off a pretty effect.

Looks like a lot of work and although you need to have some sort of pre-work ready for class, you only need enough to get your cords started. Because let's be realistic, we'll barely get a few inches stitched on each cord during the four days of class.

While I was doing all this pre-work my mind was thinking about colors, more on that in a later post.

Switching Things Around

The temporary holding stitches are back in Grace. The last time they were in, I jumped into short stitch holding. However, the correct next step would have been to put in the superimposed work. As I was redoing thigs, I figured I'd follow the correct process.

The instructions say to use shell powder for the transfer, but I went with the paper transfer method. It hasn't failed me yet.

For now, I only transferred the lines for the folds and the outlines for squares that decorate the bottom of the kimono. These outlines are held down with tiny couching stitches which will then be covered in either gold or silver colored thread with a metallic thread.

I've put in three silver squares so far and they're quite shiny. They're meant to emulate gold and silver leaf.

This Saturday is our monthly Japanese embroidery stitching day. I'm hoping to put in the remaining squares and cover the outline with a green twisted thread.

Mr. Frog Came to Visit

This weekend I had a visit from Mr. Frog. I'd been working hard on Grace for the last two weeks and made great progress. I put in the short stitch holding on the kimono and was getting the majority of the foundation done.

I had some doubts but thought I was doing well, until I sent a progress picture to my teacher. See, I put in all the short stitch holding on the green foundation but there were a few areas that didn't look quite right to me. I figured maybe it was because of where I put in my temporary holding stitch.

You'll have to click on the image to get a bigger picture but you can clearly see my short stitch holding. These should sink into the foundation and become invisible. After discussing it, it was decided that I should take it out and see if it was doable without damaging the foundation.

The frogging happened from the back. I was never so grateful of how picky (and anal) I am with my stitching. Because I put in my stitching consistently going from left to right, it was very easy for my to remove all the stitches (including knots).

Since I was there, I decided to also take out the short stitch holding on the upper part of the body. Being a picky person, I knew I'd end up redoing it anyways as I wasn't a 100% satisfied of it either. It took all day but I'm happy to say my foundation is still good and I'll be able to make a second attempt. We had a nice group discussion on how I can do a better job, and here's a few things we decided:

• my temporary holding stitches will be put in 5mm apart (I initially had them at 8mm)
• short stitch holdings will be 1cm in length. I initially had them at 8mm but I think the stitches were too short, making them more angled than they should be
• there will be at most 3 columns of temporary holding stitches on the narrow part of the kimono

At the end of the day, I had enough time to start the temporary holding stitch.

Since Mr. Frog was visiting, I decided to extend his stay for one more day to work on the Contrast Color Wheel. Remember that weird green? It turns out the color was right but it was in the wrong section. After reaching out to Jen Goodwin, we quickly realized I had an extra green.

I really should have listened to my instincts. The lighter green looked nothing like what it should in the image but I figured maybe it was lighting. This meant I needed to remove all the light green as well as the darker green.

The unpicking although not fun was painless as the back of my work was neat. I could remove some areas without disturbing what needed to stay in.

I spent all of Sunday unpicking, with a little bit of time at the end for some stitching.

So after a whole weekend of unpicking, I was quite happy to see the back of Mr. Frog and I hope I won't get another visit for a long while.

Japanese Embroidery Phase 6 - Class

Our Japanese embroidery class was held last week. We were a mix of advance and phase 1 students. In order to use the time wisely, phase 1 students started on the Wednesday in order to frame their pieces and learn the basics of handling the flat silk. The advance students (there were two of us) came on Thursday and the class went on for four days. It was very exciting to pack up my embroidery things the night before. I forgot how much stuff we cart around.

On the first day of class, we looked at short stitch holding. As I've done my homework, I could jump right in. Short stitch holding is one of those techniques that is super Zen. It takes a long time to cover the foundation and it requires you to be in a very relaxed frame of mind as you want loose stitches. You don't want to pull too tight or it will show up on your foundation. Especially on that smooth flat silk, you want it to disappear. I struggled at the beginning, but it got better as I went along.

The same technique was used on the obi, but in this case we are covering a foundation of twisted thread. We also have areas where the dark and light colors meet. For those areas, the thread used is a combination of both. The goal is to blur the area where they share a hole.

At the end of the day, I have no visible update. Which is the whole point of the technique!

Second day of class, we started work on the face. In Japanese embroidery, we stitch foreground to background. So I could only go so far on the face before I had to stop.

I had a bit of collar and two little leaves to put in first. I loved stitching the collar, it's such a pretty color. But those leaves, especially the bottom one really gave me some trouble. I knocked out the top one and kept struggling with the angle of the second. Until my friend came to me and said: "Dima, is that the right color green? I don't remember using that shade. It doesn't go with the green of the kimono". It wasn't funny at the time, but it helped break the ice. I proceeded to remove both leaves and was able to get through it.

With that the rest of the face could be put in. The foundation is done in a really soft twist and it's the softest thing you'll ever touch (even thought I shouldn't be stroking it lol)

This is where you can start seeing some visible progress. 

On day three, Grace got hair.

We took a break in the middle of the day to have a special talk. We decided, in order to inspire and encourage the phase 1 students, we would hold a mini exhibition. Not everyone brought pieces, and some of our stitching group did not attend, but between four stitchers we were able to contribute 18 different designs. It was lovely to see them all together. I originally took a video, but somehow lost the footage, so you're missing the third table in the picture below.

Having had a lovely show and tell, we went back to our stitching. With my foundation in place, I needed to put in temporary holding stitches. I really struggled with getting the curves just right. I think I was starting to tire at this point, as my brain was no longer processing the concept of "temporary". It doesn't have to be perfect as it will be taken out later.

Finally we come to the last day. I considered starting work on the inner garment of the kimono, but I decided I wanted to finish the face. I spent half the day putting in the short stitch holding. You can barely see it in the picture below, and I'm so happy with it.

Once it's in, I can take out the temporary holding stitch. This is where the panic set in and I finally understood what they meant by temporary. When I pulled out the white thread, I noticed there were little nubs sticking out destroying my pretty foundation. Those were the stitches that held the long white thread in place. I lost my mind (in my defense I was tired and fasting, not a great combination), until my teacher calmed me down and showed me how easily they can be taken out from the back.

By then I was really glad it was the last day. I was quite happy to pack up everything and go home. I'm happy with my stopping point. I met the objectives I set myself and even got more done than my teacher did when she took the class herself. However, I don't want to look at this piece for at least two weeks. Which worked out as our next monthly meeting was being held on April 23.