Kantha design progress

While recuperating from my knee operation I have been working on the Kantha design I began in the Barbara Mullan Embroiderers' Guild workshop in June.  In my last post on the topic I had a design on paper. I transferred the centre motif and the four large corner motifs to the fabric using a combination of sketching and tracing. I worked these before adding the other motifs.

The central motif is from a marine photograph of a star-fish-like creature.
Two corners have crabs.

The other two corners have octopuses. In between, jellyfish swim around and a variety of shell fish nestle.

For the smaller shells and the jellyfish I sketched the basic shape with pencil then improvised with thread.













Once I had the basic design stitched, I began the process of background stitching. I began with the piece in a hoop to maintain tension in the running stitch, but soon abandoned it as too slow. It is much more efficient to work the running stitch with a scooping, rather than a stabbing, technique and the mantra from my class last year at the RSN was 'never scoop in a hoop'!

Without the hoop I progressed more quickly. I worked a swirling circle around the central motif - a current taking the jellyfish around in a whirlpool and washing other creatures off to the edges.






















This process took several days of stitching. When it was finished I did a little bit of padding to give dimension to a few of the creatures. I was a bit ambitious with scallop shell, distorting the fabric - creating the need to block the finished piece.

I was able to successfully block it overnight. I am pleased with this result. I've decided to make this into a very large floor-cushion. I've ordered some dark green batik with which to back the cushion and mount a border. The border embroidery and construction will be my next post.

Back to Basics: Project 4

I have had quite a bit of time to think about my 4th Back to Basics Project. Since  last posting about Back to Basics my hussif has been assessed (successful!) and displayed. I have also done quite a bit of thinking about the next Project which is a library bag with an embroidery design and a construction element. The design has to be based around, or incorporate, the student's initial. It requires sturdy, plain fabric for the outside and a patterned fabric lining.


I wanted to keep the bag (which, since I read almost everything electronically, I will not use for library books) within the same colour and design range of my earlier Back to Basics projects. I also wanted to use fabric from my stash.

I came up with some khaki drill and a Japanese cotton floral.



Gay Sanderson, who runs the Back to Basics course, had pointed out to me that my Project 3 embroidery design incorporated stitches that looked very like the J of my initial - so I had been working on this. It led me to think about J curves and for a while I toyed with the idea of a pulled back curtain - but in the end I was drawn to extending the floral design of the husif.


This took me to framing the husif design with trees, incorporating upside-down J curves in the branches. I was also keen to make them Australian trees - so ended up with a flowering gum and a wattle tree. These also give me scope to use a range of stitches, since texture is also a criterion for this project.





One of my fellow students, Mary, kindly gave me some of her large graph paper so I cut it to fit the embroidery space on my bag and scaled up the drawing.
I'm planning to incorporate quite a range of stitches, and I've managed to get some of those elusive shisha mirrors from Barbara Mullan to include this time.

My first embroidery step, however, will be to get the outlines of the framing tree branches in place. I will miss the July meeting of the group next week because of my knee reconstruction (which, incidentally, has gone well - home tomorrow) but I'm happy to take my time on this one. It is such an enjoyable group to belong to that I'm in no hurry to complete the full 5 projects that comprise the course!

Kantha design workshop

Another great Embroiderers' Guild Workshop on Sunday - the first of three by Barbara Mullan to design and execute a piece of Kantha.




I can only do the first workshop of the three as my knee replacement will interfere with the other two!

Sunday's workshop was on design.


We explored Barbara's many examples, considered design principles and the basics of Kantha then played with shapes, frameworks and motifs.

It was a hugely enjoyable day. We shared our ideas, consulted with Barbara, drew, rubbed out, cut out, pasted.

I had arrived, as requested with several ideas. I had a folder of drawings and photos I have collected with the intention of 'doing something with them' one day. These included some marine postcards I had bought on eBay years ago (while looking for Australian embroidery kits!) and a few children's drawings for which I have embroidery ideas.  I tried a few ideas and settled in the end for a design based around marine creatures.

One of Barbara's many helpful suggestions was to cut out our drawings and re-arrange them rather than keep drawing or tracing them. It saved me a great deal of time.


I have been a shell collector since I was about eight years old and my Uncle Sid gave me a shoebox full of shells (and their long-dead marine inhabitants) he had collected while serving in Papua New Guinea in WWII. One of my fellow students had brought along a book of shells. I was able to use the postcards, some examples from the book of shells and my memory of my own collection to sketch out a design.





We had discussed fabric with Barbara. I was keen to use some of the unused wool I had bought for the Gilaf workshop - or some of the wool left from my recent jacket project. I'm still keen to do that but decided the marine environment needed something a bit larger and more layered.  A piece of cotton fabric I had bought from the Embroiderers' Guild beckoned.The Guild over-dyes and sells thread. The thread is laid out to dry on pieces of cotton fabric that absorbs colour from the thread. The Guild then sells the coloured fabric. This is one of those pieces.

As you may be able to see, it has a stripe woven into the original white fabric. This is not what I would have chosen but the colours of this piece seem appropriate to the marine design so I'm going with it. I backed it with light interfacing and then a piece of the same fabric undyed - another purchase from a Guild trading table!

The fabric piece is 52 cm x 42 cm so I worked my design to fit it. This gives me plenty of space to use the background running stitch that is characteristic of Kantha - effectively quilting the three layers together.

I have taken the design to the border of the cloth and intend to add an external embroidered border. I'm hoping to make this into a large floor cushion.

I have a knitting project to finish before I can start on this - but will get the design on to the fabric in the next few days. This may prove to be my knee replacement hospitalisation project!

In the meantime, my fortunate fellow students will work up and execute their designs in two further workshops. At some time there will be an opportunity to see their work. If I get a chance I'll post some photos. It's been another great learning opportunity - what a Guild is all about.