Dijanne Cevaal: Figure 2, King.

The second of my Dijanne Cevaal Medieval figures has been hugely enjoyable to work on. The figure was printed onto a brown hand-dyed cotton and I decided to work it in a predominantly red palette with gold highlights. I used a range of red silks for the body of his cloak and an Embroiderers' Guild overdyed red-gold stranded cotton on the piece folded over his arm.

I had originally intended to insert shisha mirrors in the circles decorating his cloak, and what looks rather like a sporran, but thought better of it when I remembered my collection of operculum (or cats' eyes.  I have collected these since I was a child and a much-loved uncle gave me a jar of them that he had collected in New Guinea during World War II. These are not from my Uncle's collection, but from a collection I bought at an Antique Fair a few years ago. I attached them using a metallic gold thread and the simplest shisha attachment method.

I treated the cloak a bit like a sampler, working each section, as far as possible, with a different Kantha stitch.

The pouch, or sporran challenged me, until I remembered a tanned cane toad skin I had bought a couple of years ago from Alison Cole. Cane toads are an introduced invasive species causing considerable damage to Australian wildlife and tanning their leathery skin seems a fitting response.

I'm pleased to have found a use for mine!







It seemed to me that the King should also have some fur on his cloak, so made it from Madeira stranded silk and Giordes Knots.

The scroll that he is holding in his hands I worked in a black running stitch, in Kantha style, using black stranded cotton.



I used the same stitch for his beard, but found a Madeira synthetic with a bit of sparkle that worked well. I beaded the crown in gold, jewelled with some coral pieces. A couple of dark purple crystal beads give his eyes a bit of regal flash.





The batik background fabric is quite spectacular with a greeny-gold lifting the red. To link it together, I used a variegated green and gold machine thread to quilt the background and some green over-dyed Embroiderers' Guild stranded thread to work a border that links it to the panel.












I think these panels are improving as I go along, and get braver at experimenting with embellishment.

Dijanne Cevaal figure1

I have four large woven Ottoman pouffes in my lounge room. They are lovely, and good for storage and as footstools but I don't use them much and they take up room. When full of fabric (as one is) or packed tight with polystyrene balls they are also useful as tables, or at a pinch, to sit on. They are not much use for relaxing. I thought I might replace at least two of them with large cushions that can go on the floor. 

After the success of my Kantha cushion, I remembered some Dijanne Cevaal panels I had bought at last year's Adelaide Craft Fair. I loved the panels, but hadn't thought of a practical thing to do with them. One of the panels looked quite good on the second batik fabric I had bought as backup when purchasing for the Kantha piece. I thought it would be good to have a couple more large cushions, so I backed the panel with wadding and old sheeting and got to work.                      

Because the panel was so vibrant in colour I thought it needed to be matched with rich and vibrant threads, as well, perhaps, as a few beads. I found some vibrant blue beads left over from some Christmas angels and added them to the crown. I outlined the crown in a dull gold silk.

I dug out all the rich blue, purple and gold silk threads I had, bought a few more and began to improvise.



I worked the halo in running stitch in Kantha style with a slightly stronger gold. I wanted it to be subtle rather than shiny. I used a yellower gold silk for the necklace.

The hair I worked in a strong brown (partly because the print was quite strong and dark here) in Bokhara stitch.

The face presented a challenge. I don't much like the lips, and will probably change them.

The cape (coat?) I wanted in blue and purple. I settled for a strong darkish blue and a range of purple/mauves for the decorative effect - using the striped design a bit like a sampler.






I had envisaged a needle-lace jerkin in gold to pick up on the halo. I agonised  over this but couldn't decide without actually doing it so went ahead

While I like the needle-lace effect, it did not look like chain mail. I probably can't get that effect without using a metallic, which I didn't want to do. The effect ended up rather more modern than I intended.

I worked the background quilting in a variegated machine thread slightly darker than the fabric, working around and around the outline.

Once I had added the batik  border around the panel, I thought it needed a transition, so I worked a Kantha border in the blue and purple silks of the clothing.






Here is the finished cushion, resting on the pouffes!

In the meantime, I had backed all my other Dijanne Cevaal medieval pieces, prepared them for stitching, and ordered more batik from Chrissy at Batik Fabrics Online. 

It was exciting when the fabric arrived, laying the out to see how well I had done, choosing from a website. I think I did quite well - and have given myself some really interesting work to do over the coming months!

Kantha design construction and finish

When I last posted I had ordered some batik as background and backing to make a large cushion with my Kantha design. I chose a colour called Jungle Green from Batik Fabrics Online.

When it arrived I cut borders for the four sides of the Kantha, lined them with old sheet, and attached them. 

I then marked out a space to embroider a Kantha border around the edge of the Kantha and stitched four rows of spaced running stitch with the intention of applying two or three rows of wavy weaving.

I decided, however, that my running stitch lines were too far apart, so had to insert rows between. That was easier said than done, as the rows had been deliberately off-set to achieve the effect I wanted from the weaving. I managed to achieve a half=offset that worked if I exercised care .

To complete the edge I managed to find a little Kantha border arrow-head design that worked with my final row and the new spacing.

By now I was very anxious to finish my cushion, but I decided the bordered piece needed to be blocked again.

Here is the finished masterpiece. The photos do not show the size, which is a European pillow size - roughly 70cm square ( a bit of a change from pincushions!). I'm wanting it to be a comfortable cushion for sitting on the floor.

The shells don't show up in the photos, but I think they add to the effect without getting in the way of comfort.
I'm pretty pleased with this one.

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.

70th Bag: 2nd side

Fig.1

The weather was a little cooler when I began the second side of the 70th birthday bag, so I tried to give the figures slightly warmer clothes - long sleeves, boots and more leggings. I was also more generous in using specialist threads - I didn't need to ration them as much on the home stretch.

I also tried out a few Kantha stitches - such as the laced running stitch in the Fig.1 jerkin and in the yellow leggings, the 'marching ants' in the blue trousers and the blue top of Figure 2. 

Fig 2

I used quite a bit of variegated thread in perle 5, or even 3. It gives a lovely dense coverage.                            
The greatest challenge is hair - getting variety as well as texture and colour. Bullion knots and French knots proved very useful.

One disadvantage of using the black and white print fabric is that I get only white faces and need to find other ways of showing complexion and ethnicity. The medium is not subtle enough to shade skin tone.

I tried to include a few headscarves but found it unexpectedly more difficult to get the effect I wanted than I expected. At least one of my attempts ended up looking more like hair than a headscarf!

I incorporated quite a few Kantha stitches.

The best coverage came from rows of stem stitch. I managed also to use some gold thread.

Variegated thread worked a treat. One of my grand-daughters had given me some amazing hanks for Christmas which I incorporated.



It was quite easy to vary the embroidery of the four repeated shapes to get quite a variety of figures and shapes.

My Julia Gillard pieces gave more scope for incorporating different stances and activities, but this allowed for a surprising variety in a different way.

Here are the two sides - 70 figures - finished. The un-embroidered lower rows allow for the bottom of the bag.

My next post, hopefully while recovering from my knee reconstruction tomorrow,  will show construction and finish!