Aida is a Four-Letter Word

Three Penny Opera

Hardanger on aida 3ft. X 12"

painted with varnish and gold with cotton and gold threads

I have worked on many grounds in my stitching life and have even worked puntos in aria (stitches in air) For doing pure, beautiful embroidery there is nothing like linen. High quality linen has a sheen to it and a hand to it that is unequaled in any other ground. The "count" of evenweave fabric is how many threads per inch. So the higher the number, the smaller the holes. I prefer working on 28 to 32 count, but have happily worked on 48 count. There are tinier counts, however 48 is my personal upper limit. Glenshee is my favorite linen to work on, but I can rarely get my hands on that brand.

Evenweave cotton is pretty good to work on too. Egyptian cotton which is long staple is very soft and luxurious. It is an excellent ground. I like to work on cotton sometimes because the threads are rounds while the linen threads tend to be flatter. I truly like Hardanger done on cotton. The cotton gives it a slightly crisper look. These cottons I am talking about are the tabby weaves and look very much like evenweave linen.

Derwentwater

Hardanger on hand-dyed cotton with cotton threads

14" X 20", I dyed this in an exhaust bath of blue indigo

Hardanger is classically done on hardanger fabric which is a double tabby. Hardanger comes in a couple of sizes, but the most familiar is 22-count. Classic Hardanger done on this looks tremendous, a hand in a custom-made glove. I like the highest quality of the hardanger fabrics. In this case price is an indication of quality. Hardanger weave and count is also available in linen for a wonderful look. But unless I am going to actually use the item I stitch, the cotton is just fine with me. You might have noticed that I use Hardanger/hardanger in two ways. The name of the embroidery from Norway is capitalized (according to EGA) while the name of the fabric it is done on is in small case.

Coleus 1

Hardanger on hardanger cloth, 16" X 20"

This was painted with Dye-Na-Flow before the stitching was done.

Aida is another type of fabric to do embroidery on and it is also the cheapest of the fabrics. It is a complex evenweave that looks like a waffle. I do not like this fabric at all. Using linen or cotton, an embroiderer generally does stitch over two threads. So a cross-stitch would be done over two threads diagonally in one direction and over two threads diagonally across in the other. With aida, a stitcher stitches over the waffle. One cannot make half stitches or quarter stitches. Aida cannot be cut nicely for Hardanger. In Hardanger embroidery, after stabilizing the ground with the kloster units, the fabric is cut away in a pattern to reveal a grid to stitch upon further. There is no possibility of this with aida. However, having said this, one of my best pieces of American-style, non-traditional Hardanger is done on aida. It was one of those things where I was greatly inspired to do a piece of Hardanger and I needed to start Right Then. The only piece of fabric in my stash that was the right color was a large block of aida that someone had given me to do some demonstrating on. So I used it. It turned out very nicely. This piece of Hardanger and one piece of cross-stitch are the only things I have done in aida. I do not like it and do not recommend it to any one but very beginning stitchers.

Another ground I have used very often and with which I am very pleased is perforated paper. This is archival stuff that normally comes in 9" X 12" pieces (though I have seen larger and smaller). It is fourteen count and comes in various colors. I like to get the white or off-white and then color it as I please. It is easy to do and the customizing can be extraordinarily beautiful. Perforated paper has been around at least a hundred and fifty years, so we know it lasts. The museums in Salt Lake City are full of paper samplers done in the late 1860s and later. Many pieces of mine can be seen in other posts in this blog.


I have worked on exotic grounds too, like window screening, paper I have perforated myself, ribbons, a steel grid. And with all of the above, from linen to cotton to paper to the exotics, I am just talking about counted work. Surface work or free surface design work can be done on these things, plus a wide variety of other things.


And the "stitches in air"--that is lace. When needlelace is done, it is done over threads. The threads are covered by more threads in buttonhole stitch, It just looks like stitches in air. Again it is the strong thread that binds us.

Watermelon, Turquoise, and Slate

12 Part Color Wheel

This color wheel I drew for a paper I wrote a couple of years ago, done in colored pencil. The "mask" or pointers point to a tetrad color combination. The colors here are at full saturation for colored pencils.

In the last post I talked about hue, saturation, and value as aspects of color. Hue is the name of the color, for instance red, blue, or yellow. In English we have only eleven color names. All the rest of the colors are descriptions of the nine. So we have red, blue, yellow, green, orange, violet, pink, brown, and gray, white, and black. So watermelon red is a description of a particular pinky-red. Turquoise blue is a tag telling us where the blue mineral was mined and named. Purple describes the dye that is extracted from a certain eastern Mediterranean mollusk. Gray, black, and white are not considered hues at all, but merely darks and lights that can be used with any hue. In a sense, though, they are also "color" words.

Saturation is how much color or pigment is in a hue. The hues of the familiar twelve-part color wheel are supposed to always be at maximum saturation. Other words used also for saturation are intensity and chroma. So a color of low saturation would be slate blue, that is, a blue with a lot of gray added. The blueness of slate blue is less vivid or less intense than the full blue of the color on the color wheel.

Pastels are colors that are less intense. Pastel crayons are pure pigments that are bound together with gum or some other adhesive. These crayons have a beautiful light translucence to them. We think of pastels as tints of hues. Tints are hue with white added, so by definition tints have less chroma than the full hue. So now think of value that we talked about in the previous post. Value is how light or dark a color is. So a pastel color, for instance baby pink, is a red hue (after all, pink is red with a lot of white added), of low saturation, and a light value. So we have described the color!

Using only pastels in an article of embroidery, say a baby sampler, can be a problem. Light, delicate colors do seem just right for a baby, but if only light, delicate colors are used, then from a distance our sampler looks like gray-pink mud. For a sampler that people can actually see from five feet away, darks as well as lights should be used.

I do a lot of manipulating of photographs on my computer. One of the things I can do is to "super saturate" a photo. This mean that light can be packed in so that our normal color wheel hues, the ones that are supposed to be at full saturation already, are really bright. I have noticed that a couple TV shows shoot all their scenes in super-saturated mode. I see this most in CSI Miami (a show that I am not fond of, but not because of the super-saturation). Saturation is fun to play with in light on the computer, but as we stitch

"Merci Beaucoup"

4.5" X 6"

This is the original saturation of colors.

with our threads, it is almost impossible to achieve. And I am sure that I wouldn't like to see a lot of my stuff super-saturated anyway. After a while it has a decidedly artificial look to it.

"Merci Beaucoup"

4.5" X 6"

A small sampler done on perforated paper with Impressions threads.

This image has been artificially super-saturated

The Bees Reprise

The Bee Sampler (completed)

The wings are still light gray.

There are thirteen types of flowers that the bees are tending to.

For various reasons I am again looking at color in order to write about it and presumably teach it further down the line. And again I am struck by the power of value in any color composition.

Value is how light or dark a color is. For instance with the color blue, baby blue has a light value and navy blue has a very dark value. Easy enough.

In color theory, any color can be described by naming iits three of attributes. Hue is the name of the color it is, red, blue, orange, etc. Saturation is the amount of pigment in any color, or how colorful a color is. Lipstick red is more saturated than baby pink. Other words for saturation are intensity and chroma. And value, of course is how light or dark the color is. So lipstick red is red with high saturation and a medium value, being neither very dark or very light.

I have heard it said that the untrained human eye can see only four values in a composition at a time--the lightest, the darkest, and two middle values. If this is true, and I have no reason to disbelieve it, then we as artists, designers, and stitchers must get the values right in order to show the composition at its best.

In an earlier post I put up an embroidery of bees. My sister, Albie Merrill, suggested that the bees wings were not dark enough and she was right. I was not seeing the design because of my emotional involvement in it. I was still "seeing" what was in my mind it should look like, not what it really looked like. Look at the two bee embroideries next to one another and see the difference value makes. I changed from a light gray thread to a black thread to outline the bees's wings.

PJ's Bees

The upper example has the restitched wings, from light gray to black outlining.

The lower example shows the original gray. Of course this no longer exists except in electrons.

My friend Rita Curry-Pittman noticed that I had the same light gray wings on the now-completed sampler. She told me to change that as soon as I could. I have not yet gotten around to it, but here is the (almost) completed sampler that I showed just in the beginning phase in an earlier post.

So I guess I have two points to make in this post. One is that value has to be carefully considered in each composition. If something in the composition is a little off, it may be that a value is wonky and needs amending. Value is a powerful force within design. The other is that most artists need a cooling off period from their artwork in order to see it unemotionally. My cooling off period can be as long as a couple of months. If I have the time, I like to put a completed picture away for a period of time. When I bring it out again I can look at it with new eyes.

Bob, Bob, and Mike

Last evening as Mike and I were driving home from a meal out, I asked him to give me some ideas for blog topics. He thought for a moment or two and remarked that it might be good to talk about stitching as a metaphor for life. Actually, it is a good topic, just not something I care to deal with this morning. But what I did get out of our short conversation (we went on to talk about the marvelous sunset and the lavender skies) was that he was again willing to help me out in this long needlework odyssey that I embarked on thirty-odd years ago.

This year I have been lucky enough to spend time among stitchers from all across America. I taught in California and I attended the EGA national seminar in Louisville. Because of those two events, I met two men who, like Mike, were always ready to help out. One is Bob Gomola, husband of Marsha Papay Gomola a national teacher. Bob is a member of EGA and, as far as I know, he does not stitch. But he is the support group for Marsha in her endeavors and he is the jack-of-all-trades for helping out in general. The other is Bob Dam, husband of Carol Dam, the current president of EGA. Bob seems to be the official photographer for EGA. He made his presence known at the national seminar and practically lived at headquarters. Bob is also a member of EGA

Study in Scarlet (detail)

Blackwork that is not black

This is a sampler on the methods of shading in blackwork.

My own husband has cooked, carried, entertained, babysat, and went on directed vacations helping me with my EGA-related stuff. And now I have him doing the hard work--thinking. He even good-naturedly takes ribbing about being Mr. Shirley Kay. One evening several years ago in Denver we were hosting a dinner party for some non-EGA people. I overheard him in the sitting room explaining to a friend about blackwork, what it was, and why this particular piece of blackwork was not stitched in black. I had no idea that he had absorbed enough of what I did to explain all this! I was so pleased. He is my greatest supporter.

So today on my mother-in-law's 83rd birthday, I want to celebrate her oldest child's life within EGA. And Bob G's and Bob D's. Thanks, guys, for making the path smooth and taking pictures along the way.

Mantra, Soror, and Validation

Why do we stitch? Why do we sit down and stitch rather than do something else with our time? This is a theme that I have thought about and written about for decades. This question is an essential one for those of us who help guide the direction of our various guild chapters.

People do it for the sheet pleasure of stitching. This is the underlying truth of it. Sheer pleasure. The monotony of the stitching which becomes prayer, mantra, and meditiation. That is certainly why I do it, but not the only reason I do it. For most people this is enough--the pleasure.

For some people, the passing on of hand skills through the generations is the keynote to their doing it. To pass this knowledge from mother to daughter is a wonderful, satisfying thing. My own great-grandmother, Mary Ardella Ingalsbe was a tatter. Three of her four daughters were tatters. My grandmother, Dell's oldest child, did not do tatting as far as I know. But my great-aunts, Leona, Evelyn, and Charlotte left me a mound of tatted lace and four old shuttles. My mother also did not tat. I learned how when I was in college from a wonderful lady who lived next door to my parents. I am happy to have those generational skills.



Other people love to embroider just to fill the time. It is something "busy" they can do with their hands while watching TV or traveling or listening to sermons. All well and good. I personally cannot watch TV and stitch. I have to pay too much attention to the work. I can listen to music or book tapes. And I rarely have a small enough or simple emough project to sit on a plane and do. But I see other people do it all the time.

I know some people who do it because they can do it. Most stitching is not hard to do, but it takes a little practice even for the easiest cross-stitch. Some people who think they have no other skills, say to draw or do woodworking or crossword puzzles, are pleased to be able to stitch. I fall into this category too. It is easy for me to do and therefore I do it. It took me years to learn how to draw well enough that I am satisfied, but I was able to stitch fairly well from the first time I picked up a #20 tapestry needle.



But there are other more complex reasons to stitch. I stitch to express myself. As an artist I must communicate with others how I feel, how I see, how I imagine things to be. I like to simplify things to their essential elements and show the world those elements through my own perceptions. I am an artist and my main medium of expression is through embroidery and fiber.



There are people who stitch in order to explore insides themselves and inside their relationships with others. My BFF Ann Erdmann and I recntly completed two books that we both worked on. The two books are duplicates, but not identical. We each made five pages, that is, decorating the front and back of 4" X 6" cards. We made two of each card. So our books have ten pages in them, half done by Ann and half by me. The book is a celebration of our friendship. Some of the pages are wholly stitched and some are partially stitched, some are painted and beaded, some have manipulated photos on them. Those two books are true collages in fiber mixed media. The book is called Soror Amica Aeterna, or, for the Latin impaired, Sister Friend Eternal.



I stitch, I produce work, and then I exhibit the work and ultimately, hopefully, sell the work. This gives me the most satisfaction in life. It is through these actions that I feel validated as an artist and as a person.



So, why do you stitch? For any of these reasons? For all of them? For a different reason entirely? Let me know!

The Art of Embroidery and Prospectors

At seminar I was asked by someone I was acquainted with how we foster creativity and original work within our chapter and region. It seems that in this person's chapter original work was not really done nor was it much valued. What was valued was pure technique. The chapter couldn't understand what was so great about the 19th EGA Exhibit or the Fiber Forum Exhibit both shown at the seminar.

I guess that Sandia Mountains Chapter has been lucky to have several artists who were members through the years. Rocky Mountain Region is also lucky for the same reason. When I joined the Guild in 1977, I joined a chapter that had two or three people doing original work. This was just before regions were set up, but the chapter was in Collingswood, NJ. I didn't know any better and so I did original work right from the first. It must be just luck that a chapter gets a mix of originality and technique. But it is rare to have someone join a chapter who does original work right off. We have Rita Curry-Pittman who joined a year and a half ago, so are lucky.

How do we foster originality? In Sandia Mountains Chapter we have an interest group called The Art of Embroidery. We study skills that are not strictly speaking part of embroidery, but are part of design and part of mixed media. It is a small group but we are active and have results from our studies. For instance, tomorrow A of E meets here at the house in the morning. We are going to have a lesson in sketching. We are also planning the rest of the stitching year (from September through May) at this meeting. This year we will study sketching and layering, a part of mixed media design.

The region as a whole also encourages originality two ways. First it has a program called Prospectors. at each region seminar. Prospectors is an exhibit of original work in which there is no jurying, no judging, and no prizes. it is simply a forum for people to show their works in a safe, non-threatening way. The only rules are that it has to be original or an original adaptation, it cannot be a teaching piece, and it cannot have been shown before at Prospectors. It is a way for emerging artists to get their work shown and maybe get some feedback on it. This particular program has been going on about two decades and so is a success just for longevity. The second way is giving a cash prize for the Rocky Mountain Region Award in the National Exhibits. Winning the awardis a great honor, but the money prize along with it really encourages people to enter the exhobot. Only eight of the thirteen regions offer a prize.

I do not mean to imply that there is a dichotomy between original work and great-technique. A true artist in embroidery both does original work and has great skills. It takes study and practice--surely a main theme throughout these blog posts.

Samplers

In the judging class at the recent EGA national seminar in Louisville, one of the things discussed was whether a sampler could be original. Interesting question. Many of the samplers we see are definitely derivative. Given the structure of a sampler, it might be hard to break out with a new look. A lot of the problems with samplers is that they do not look fresh or interesting. It's just the same old stuff.

I personally think that a sampler can be original and fresh with delights for the eye. I have uploaded two of my personal samplers (i.e. non-teaching samplers) to demonstrate this. This first one I finished just the day before yesterday--it barely has had time to cool off from the hot needle. Recently I have been working in a small series of bees pictures with a drawing, PJ's Bees, an embroidery, and now a sampler, PJ's Bees Sampler. This series will continue on into a star book which will be a sampler unto itself. And as a matter of fact, PJ's Bees Sampler is a study for the coming star book bee sampler.

PJ's Bees Sampler

thirteen flower stitches on perforated paper with Impressions silk/wool

A sampler has usually bands or spots. This sampler has both bands of flowers and spots of flowers, but also the bee and honeycomb motif to unify it further. Though the scan has cut off the very top of the sampler, I am sure you can see that with the bright colors and the buzzing bees, it is fun to look at.

A Personal Sampler in Blackwork

sewing thread and metallic on linen

The second sampler I did sometime in later 1990s and so far it is unnamed. It is a blackwork sampler with the lower part done in compartments. The upper part I sewed on some Battemberg tape which I allowed to gently curl. Then I did simple patterns inside the curls. Like a lot of sampler it also has words on, this time a quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The threads I used were mostly machine sewing cotton in three or four colors with some gold metallic. Not all the patterns are original with me, but the majority of them are. When I show this personal sampler, people invariably stop to examine it closely. it is the type of needlework that requires a closer look.

I like samplers and I love working samplers. They are most satisfying type of embroidery that I do. And I believe that I do original work within the genre of sampler, even using the old band and spot format.