Teen Angst
5″ Diameter
Stitches: straight, cross, long-arm cross, satin, back
Materials: unbleached muslin, cotton DMC 6 strand embroidery floss, wooden hoop painted with acrylic paints

I love the Phat Quarter group on Flickr.  The range of work is really amazing, and the swaps — well they really challenge me.  The theme for the most recent swap was “movies.”   The past couple of swaps I’ve stayed well within my comfort-zone, design wise. The themes still let me do work that was spiritually focused, and make something appropriate for the swap. Here’s an example and here’s another example.

Yes, I could have done something from “The Ten Commandments” or something, but “Heathers” was the first movie that popped into my head and so I went with it. Thankfully, my swap partner’s favorite movies seemed to fit well with this choice.

I searched for lots of images from the film and found one of the dream sequence with Veronica’s (Winona Ryder) head sticking out of the grass and two croquet balls on either side of her. It was such a great image, I used it as the basis for the design. When I decided on the “My teen-angst bullshit now has a body count,” I switched out the balls used in the original photo for the ones that represent the two Heathers who die in the film.

I painted the hoop blue, which is Veronica’s color in the film. I also backed it with special fabric (other photo) that I thought worked well with the image.

Of course, I just realized that I spelled “angst” wrong in the piece.   Not only is the position of that word my least favorite thing in the execution, but there’s a typo.  D’oh!

Dimensions: 2.5″ x3.5″
Fabric: Muslin
Flosses: silk, cotton, rayon
Stitches: stem, satin, whipped running, detached blanket, blanket, straight, painting

I made this ACEO as part of the Phat Quarter “Comics” swap. The requirement was that the piece have images and text. I thought, being a bit of a comic book geek that I’d find some iconic image in one my comic books and just embroider that. I blogged about the process earlier, and you can see my original sketch on the post.

I couldn’t find anything I liked.

Then I started thinking I could do something interesting that was more inline with my normal “embroidered prayers” artwork. During morning prayers one morning, I had an idea. One of my morning prayers includes this bit of text:

The water conceived and gave birth to darkness
The fire conceived and gave birth to light
The wind conceived and gave birth to wisdom
The fire conceived and gave birth to light
(Adapted from the Talmud by R’Jill Hammer, from the Kohenet Siddur)

Needless to say, that’s what inspired this piece. If you read my main blog, you know I’ve been working a lot with the elements lately — so this was a great chance to begin exploring them through my art.

Generally I’m very particular about my stitches, but this time I was focused on getting the sketched look I had in my actual sketch.  The feel that came through in the sketch and especially the final design just really worked for me.  I really liked all the shading and texture of it.   I decided to experiment with a more “thread painting” technique, although in this case I would say “thread sketching.”  Thread painting tends to have a polish and perfection to it that I wasn’t looking for here.   For the floss I used a variety of choices.  Much of it variegated Kreinik silks that I’ve had forever, but never enough left to do a large piece.  Since this is a very small piece it gave me a chance to use it all again. Where ever I had a silk I could use I opted for that.  The rest is done in DMC cotton floss, and a little bit of sparkly DMC rayon silver for the wind.

The most difficult design element to work out was the fire.  While we weren’t required to use the ACEO format, I thought it would be a good challenge for me.  My preference for sometime has been round pieces that I hoop frame.  I’m very comfortable there.  A rectangular design would push me to try something new. All the types of fire I tried to draw, just weren’t working.  I even tried several different layouts.  Finally I had the idea of the lightening bolt as the fire!  That seemed to work out well, and I’m pretty happy with it.  I was able to bring the traditional fire colors in with the word “light” using a great variegated red silk floss.

The edging is what I’m least happy with.  You never finish a piece with technique you haven’t practiced!  I have so many pieces that sit in a drawer for months, if not years, because I’m afraid to screw them up in the finishing.  Here I took a risk, since it wasn’t a piece that amounted to months of work.  Just a one month from concept to finish (per the swap rules).  Needless to say, I did manage to screw up the edging — but I think the overall effect is fine.  It’s a mostly detached blanket stitch, which I chose to give a solid “frame.”

I always like to see the back of things like this, so here is the back of this piece.

Mizrach Sunrise, Cropped Detail

Size: 9″x12″, not including tassels
Stitch: chain, twisted chain, net stitch
Materials: Linen, DMC perle cotton

According to my blog, I started this piece somewhere around February 2008. The artwork was finished at least 6 months ago, but it sat in a drawer waiting for me to be motivated/inspired to do the “finishing” work. I’m a notorious procrastinator about doing finishing work. Usually it’s fear related. I’m so afraid of making a mistake and ruining a piece that’s taken months of work to complete.

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6″ Diameter Wall Decor / Hanging

Fabric is simple muslin that I printed a page of an old Sears catalog on.  I love the old catalog and thought  it could be fun to play with on fabric.  For some reason, I really loved the corset images.

I decided to embroider an old fashioned light bulb on it.  Shedding a little light on things?

The whole thing is securely framed in a 6″ wooden hoop that has been wrapped in copper wire.

Listed in my Etsy shop if you’re interested — and more to come!

Technorati Tags: steampunk, embroidery, hand stitched, artwork, fiber art

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