I wrote several weeks ago about a workshop I took with Beth Schnellenberger on "extreme embroidery" -- her name for small, densely stitched pieces. The one I started in her workshop got sold the first week it was on display at Pyro Gallery.
Desert Eye
I liked the eye motif and decided to start a new piece to continue the series. Last week I took it to Pyro and it's now in the members' gallery. It's mounted the same was as Desert Eye, on a 1 1/2-inch canvas that I painted black.
I learned some things between #1 and #2. Most important, that I wanted a black background instead of a white-background-colored-black-with-a-marker. I hadn't been happy with the edges of the original piece -- kind of wimpy purplish black -- and had to do remedial work with black paint, so I stitched onto black fabric this time instead of white.
I also realized while working on #1 that if you have high value contrast between background and thread, you have to do a whole lot more stitching to keep the fabric from peeking through! So for #2 I used dark colors for my background stitching, and the occasional spaces between stitches didn't look bad at all.
Instead of overcasting the edges of the fabric as I did in the first piece, I left an unstitched border by turning the edges over the felt backing and basting them in place before I started stitching. The basting stitches got covered by the heavy hand stitching
I've already sketched out two more pieces in this series and have started stitching on one of them. They make a nice tiny bundle, small enough to take along on a trip. I'll let you know how they progress.
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