I’m trying to really challenge myself and take some risks.  This piece is definitely doing that.  I’m usually very shy with color., but I’m forcing myself to embrace it here.  I’m also breaking out of neat lines, although it’s hard to tell from this shot.  A core part of the design is that a portion of the final piece will be framed in a round hoop and the rest will “explode” or more likely just escape from the hoop.  It my head, this looks really awesome!

After about 2 weeks of work, I’ve realized that I went in a wrong direction and had to pull out about  2-4 hours worth of stitching.  I’m back down to what you see in the photo.  BUT…I feel like the new direction will be a good one and make the piece more impactful.

I was going to do the whole thing in chain stitch and continue to explore the style of tambour stitch, but no more.  This is probably the end of the chain stitch on this piece.  There might be a little more, but next come the knots!  I think I’m going to move into french and colonial knots and then a new stitch for me: Turkey Stitch (also known as ghiordes knots).

I hope to have some progress to show soon.  I’ll mostly be updating the Work in Progress over on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: fiber art, embroidery, chain stitch, tambour stitch, original designs

Size: 5″ Diameter
Materials: Muslin, Metallic floss, glass, pewter, leather, wood hoop
Stitches: Satin Stitch and Straight Stitch
Private Collection

This piece was made as a gift for a friend who is a gifted henna artist, and regularly practices her craft on me. She’s not Jewish, so I didn’t want to give her a hamsa. I asked her if her tradition had an amulet/luck charm like the hamsa, and she told me about the cimaruta. The design is based on the one I found on a Stregheria website, which is the foundation my friend’s spiritual path.

Traditional cimaruta are made from silver, so I used metallic silver floss for the majority of the design. It’s a floss that is “antique silver” so it has a mix of black and silver. the final result, before the charms were added, reminded me of a silver gelatin print.

The traditional items embedded in a cimaruta didn’t speak to my friend, so I chose things for her that I thought would be protective and relevant. From left to right: algiz rune of protection, yoga practice, evil eye ward, henna’d hand, cat. The small image in the bottom right corner is my signature cipher: a pomegranate with the Hebrew letter Kuf in the center for my name Ketzirah.

Technorati Tags: amulets, amulet design, cimaruta, embroidery, fiber art, hand-stitched