I wasn’t totally sure what to do for this month, this month has been mostly about spending time with the kids, as the first few weeks of the month were school holidays (now as we go towards the end of the month it’s all work, work, work). On the first day of the month we went to Longleat and I was particularly impressed with the parrots, so I decided to do a parrot to signify our trip away. I based the embroidery on one of the photos I took. I am not too impressed with it to be honest, I think it would have looked better if I had used thread painting (I have recently acquired a book on thread painting and although there are plenty of birds in it, no parrots and anyway I’ve been delaying using the book because I feel that before I try thread painting in any of my own designs, I really need to practise with one of the designs in the book first). Also there was a time factor, thread painting takes ages and to be honest there are other things I need / want to stitch right now. So this was an exercise in ‘getting’ the parrot with the minimum amount of lines possible and I think I got that. Maybe my dissatisfaction with this piece stems from in part the fact that I wanted to use a different technique with this and also I think because I’m still finding my own design feet, this piece looks like I did it, I am aware that my own pieces that I do are beginning to find their own style and I am not particularly sure I like that style yet . . . (And also (and because I’m being an embroidery grump right now) I don’t know if it’s the particular oval hoop I was using or it’s all oval hoops, but it was really difficult to get the fabric tight and so some of the stitches are so loose you can even see them in the photo!)
Related articles
- February Embroidery Journal (lacer.wordpress.com)
- And now for something completely different (lacer.wordpress.com)
- March Embroidery Journal Piece (lacer.wordpress.com)
