Book Review Art and Embroidery of Jane Hall

Have any of you seen this book? It is called "The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall". This is a great book for inspiration - it's not your usual embroidery book. Jane Hall also uses paint, paper, cut silk, wire, etc. to achieve her effects. When she shows a piece, it may consist of 3 or 4 vertical planes, placed one in front of another to evoke a particular effect.

This book transforms you to a different world. It is a richly textured portrayal of a reverence for nature. It's one of the few embroidery books that is enjoyable to read, as well as peruse for pictures. Jane Hall can find solace in a single snowdrop; she is awed by the wonder of nature and it shows. Her work is layers upon layers of shimmering silks, chiffons, organza and ribbons.

She spends 2-3 months minimum on each of her pieces; the care she takes is evident. No detail is left unstudied, nor its influence on the mood of the completed piece. Even her chapter on materials is mouth-wateringly inspiring. Her fabric/thread design swatches are gorgeous! Although her creatures are more inspired by imagination than reality, sometimes you have to look twice to see which is which. Each of her pieces is shown in full and then in several detail shots, with descriptions of her working methods. In particular, she describes her methods for achieving depth from afar to up close.

There is a mood to her descriptions – awe, wonder, delight in nature and veneration.
It’s hard to believe anyone could improve upon nature, but Jane Hall’s work does.

More playing with needleweaving

I love texture and decided to get out some of my yarns to do some needlewoven bars (long ones!) for this landscape. My felting pad came in really handy; once I felted the background. I pinned the end of my loooong loop(s) down into the pad to prepare for the needle weaving. Ironically, I didn't use a needle for the weaving, since my yarn lengths were a yard long or more. At first I kept running out of yarn before finishing weaving the loop, but eventually I just doubled the yarn, like you would use a double thread in a needle, but without the needle. Then you have a loop at the end of your weaving yarn and if you run out, you can just loop another long length of yarn onto it, avoiding a knot, and keep on weaving.
So I had a bunch of bars coming out of the left side and some coming out of the right side. I hid the end of one bar under the curve of another. It was fun to intertwine (weave!) the bars to resemble hills, the ground, etc....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Playing with needleweaving

I've been playing more with needle-weaving as part of SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009 and I have so many ideas floating around in my head! Not enough time to try them all, but anyway, I thought the idea of a hand was a good one. It was hard to get good proportions - even though I used a picture as a guide (basted to the back), the fingers came out longer and fatter than I planned, but still, you can tell it's a hand. I didn't want to spend hours weaving the palm of the hand, so I used a thicker and lighter shade of blue for the weft portion of the palm.



I didn't secure the thumb and 2 of the fingers down, so that I could try making a peace sign. Peace out, man..... yes I was a hippie in the 70s....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Sun with Cloud Mask

Here is my needle-woven sun, complete with a cloud mask for those not so happy moods. The sun's face is felted, then padded before I sewed it down. I combined 3 or 4 threads and treated them as one to needle-weave the rays of the sun. Then I couched down some chenille to cover the edge of the felt sun. I added beads and wound some wire around a pencil for some extra rays.



Here is a close-up of one of the rays. At first I mixed yellows with some gold metallic fibers, but didn't like the way it looked, so I just stuck with different shades and textures of yellow fibers.



This shows how I created the felted cloud. I drew the cloud on a piece of paper, cut it out and set it aside. I pinned down the paper with the cloud cut-out to some grey felt on my felting pad. Then I placed 2 cut-outs of the eyes in the proper place and pinned them down. I used a single needle to felt wool roving around the outside curves of the cloud, around the eyes and in the middle. I was careful to pull the roving away from the paper eye areas so I would end up with the eye openings in the cloud. I know you can order cookie-cutter type forms for needle-felting, but they are really not necessary. With just a piece of paper, you can create any shape you want.

This was so much fun!

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Fabulous Embroidered Jacket

There is a fabulous all embroidered denim jacket on flickr - check it out here. Jacket

This must have taken ages to do!

Happy Stitching,

~Lin Moon

Book Review

Recently I bought this book "M. Joan Lintault: Connecting Quilts, Art & Textiles". She makes very interesting quilts and the thing I like most about most of them is that they have holes in them! She's made a quilt that has a latticework background, filled in near the edges with flowers and butterflies. Sometimes her quilts have sewing machine lace between the main images. Her machine lace is beautiful and sometimes has a very fluid, water-like quality. Her quilts are not usually square and are the kind you want to stare at for a long time, to see every detail. She never uses commercially printed fabric, instead she dyes it, stitches it, then paints it, achieving a fabulous depth of color and texture. This book is a wonder to wander through, with lots of great pictures, inspiration and thoughtful prose.

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Assisi panther

I've been working on this piece for SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009. In Assisi, the main motif is left unembroidered, but is surrounded by embroidery. I really like black, so decided upon this panther for my main motif. I had some challenges with stitching over the felted portions, like underneath the panther's body. The felted area stood up higher than the panther, yet needed to look like it was underneath/behind it. I had fun doing the fern on the right in the trellis stitch, and wished I had tried it sooner (as in last month's Stitch Explorer). I took the panther from a tapestry I have showing a tiger(see below).
This was really fun - I think I could improve on it, but will call it finished for now.....


Thanks Sharon, for another wonderful challenge idea.
Happy Stitching,
~Lin Moon