Mucha Needlepoint Progress

Sorry, I've been battling seasonal allergies, and getting ready for the Michigan Fiber Festival, so it's been thin on the Blog Post Front. Here's a shot of the latest needlepoint progress. It comes with a promise to start making actual posts again. Real soon now.

Sort of Wordless

I'll have a pretty big announcement maybe next week, plus the release of Cold Front (the 5th Tory Bauer Mystery) across all eBook platforms, so stand by...

In the meantime, here are some pretty pictures:

And progress on the Mucha Needlepoint...

...and more shilling for my son's Kickstarter Project. Please check it out- pledges as small as $1 are gladly accepted:

Click here for more info.

Wordless Mucha Progress

Needlepoint Bonanza

My friend Ann is a needlepoint expert. Unfortunately, her eyesight is deteriorating and she can no longer see well enough to do the needlework herself. So when she learned that I was giving needlepoint a whirl, she sent me this batch of amazing books!

It's like Christmas!

At the moment, I'm fascinated with representational projects, rather than textural. But I do love the look of Bargello, and I will be able to learn a lot about technique from this book, which appears to have been published in 1977 (first edition about 5 years earlier). This book has a few color interior pages but it's mostly black and white photos and graphs.

This one might really come in handy for me, given that I almost always prefer to design my own projects. It looks to be an excellent technique book, and there are lots and lots of color pages. A little updating of the colorways is all it needs.

The colors are really vibrant in the projects in this book. It's from the same era (early '70's) and just looking at the cool designs makes me want to try some Bargello.

There's no real info from Amazon on this book, which appears to have been privately produced in 1972.

But this actual photograph is glued to the title page, and though I would change the colors, it's actually quite pretty. Working it would give me a lot of practice in general Bargello techniques. I thumbed through the book, and it was literally hand written- the pages are copies of hand written notes and instructions, and hand drawn charts- they're all written and drawn quite well, and are totally legible, but you just don't see that kind of thing much these days.

See what I mean? Her handwriting is much neater than mine.

But though the Bargello books are fascinating, and I suspect I'll eventually give it a whirl, at the moment, I am far more interested in this book, which was published later than the others, in 1993.  I love love love tapestries and I especially love Medieval tapestries.

 Right now, I'm having a lot of fun with designs drawn on the canvas, but I'm a Chart Girl from way back, and some of these designs are really intriguing. This unicorn, for example.

 And these oranges.

And these flowering vines.

But the New Me finishes one project before starting another, so it'll be awhile before I have to decide.

Thanks Ann!

Wordless endings and beginnings, and a pretty shot of my pincushion just because

Further experimentation

Remember the Mucha transfer and the 14ct needlepoint mesh? I haven't started work on it yet because I'm not done with Arhelon, but I knew when I made the transfer that the image would be better served by using a smaller mesh, like, oh, say, an 18 count. Well, the 18ct canvas that I bought on eBay arrived today, and in the nature of further experimentation, I decided to make an identical transfer and iron it to the 18 ct just to see how it looked (the canvas isn't wasted if I don't use it, I can either use it with a charted design, or I can iron another image on the back side).

The first thing I found out is that printable t-shirt transfer sheets for dark fabric aren't the same as t-shirt transfer sheets for light fabric. For some reason, the image didn't transfer to the canvas at all. I mean, not even a spec. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I'm sure it was something. So mysterious.

I have more light transfer sheets coming, but I'm too impatient to wait, so I used the leftover piece from the first transfer, and ironed that on the 18 ct mesh. There was enough *ink* left to make a transfer. The design was very faint, of course, but still visible.

I positioned the plain paper printout of the image under the new printed mesh...

and used a sharpie to trace the most important outlines. 

 Here are both of the canvasses side by side- the 14ct (on the right) is prettier of course, because it has far more ink. But even at a distance, I can see that I'll get much more detail in the finished piece if I work the 18 ct (with embroidery floss most likely).

And even though the colors aren't perfectly transferred to the canvas, I can refer to the printout for help. I will probably do both faces though, just as a comparison, though I doubt I'll needlepoint both full images- there are far too many other designs I'd like to tackle.

But I'm not starting either one until I finish Arhelon. I'm over half done now. Woohoo!!!

Sometimes a notion...

So I was looking at my Arhelon needlepoint project. I realized that I'm almost half done with it (not counting the solid border), and I'm not tired of needlepointing yet (nor have I learned how to do the basketweave stitch). I've been looking around on eBay and Etsy for my next project, but have not found one that spoke to me the way this one did.

So, I reverted to form- I made my own. Not by charting, which would be no different from charting a cross stitch design, or a Fair Isle sweater... I just didn't want to follow a chart- I've learned that I like having the lines drawn for me, and the color choices at least suggested (if not set in stone).

And I didn't draw on the canvas either, even though I bought a large set of colored Sharpies at Sam's Club in Sioux Falls a couple of weeks ago, just for that purpose.

Instead, I found an image online that I like a lot.

This one- it's a Mucha print. Mucha's beautiful beautiful beautiful Art Nouveau art has recently been added to the public domain, so it's all copyright free now. I love this image, and I love the colors.

Then I enlarged it, and removed the solid border (I can work that without having it on the canvas, and there was no point in wasting ink). I used PicMonkey to *sharpen* the image and *posterize* it, thereby reducing the colors. And then I printed it out just to see how it looked. It looked just fine.

And then I flipped the image in Paint and printed the flipped image on a printable iron-on transfer sheet.

And then I cut a 16" x 16" piece of 14ct blank needlepoint (which I just happened to buy in Aberdeen a couple of days ago) and pressed it flat. I trimmed all excess paper from the printed transfer sheet and let it dry for 30 minutes (that was a loooong 30 minutes).

And then following the manufacturer instructions, and after lining the transfer up carefully along the canvas grid, I pressed it. I was absolutely thrilled when I peeled the transfer backing off (and I'm pretty sure there's still enough *ink* on the transfer sheet to make an interesting t-shirt... if I ever feel like using it).

See how beautifully it transferred? I chose this image in part because the face was in profile. I am certain that my current needlepoint skills would not do a full-on face justice. And in truth, this mesh is still too big for this design- if the craft store had had 18ct mesh on hand, I would have bought that. But it didn't, so I'll have to simplify the design as I stitch. And it's very likely that I'll have to do some surface embroidery for the Zodiac signs. But we'll see how that goes as I work on it.

The transfer *stuck* only to the mesh- there are very few holes that will have to be poked (which won't be an issue anyway), and this is a washable transfer, so the colors won't run when the finished piece is blocked.

I am totally thrilled with how it came out, and will absolutely make more canvasses this way (I have more transfer sheets and some 18ct mesh ordered and on the way). But The New Me does not start many projects, leaving most of them unfinished. I will touch neither needle nor thread to the Mucha until I finish Arhelon, which luckily  is coming along pretty darn quickly...