Thursday, January 31, 2008

thursday = embroidery

I got this design in a lot from eBay when I first started embroidering and used it to practice my stitches.


I also thought I'd share this wall hanging I made as a gift for newborn twin girls. The image is from a children’s book and is from the story of Snow White & Rose Red I believe {I’m too lazy to go hunt down the book right now, sorry}. Its not very big, I think something like 12” by 6”.


I was inspired by all the great redwork I see out there in blogland and thought that it could be a nice alternative for a girl’s room, especially one being decorated by a graphic designer who was avoiding pink as much as possible.

I was so happy with the way this turned out and I have plans for at least 3 more in the near future, also based on fairy tales. Though, while I’m going to stick with all one color for the embroidery, I don't think I'll do red this time. But I will stick with the natural linen for the fabric since I love the subtle quality it brings to the piece. Maybe brown or light cream floss?

I did a similar combo of embroidery & fabric for my sister, although I kept it to one fabric pattern. Similar yet different...


I’m itching to get started on them but I need to finish an embroidery experiment first – I might be ready to share it tomorrow but we’ll have to see because all of sudden its gotten late!

Oh - I just found out the guy's making crepes for dessert tonight so I'm going to go help make dinner so I get an extra helping of Nutella in mine! Good night...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the Redwork!! It is beautiful!

kristin said...

i did a redwork from a Lois Lenski illustration and thought THAT was a ;ot of work...this just amazes me! well done!! and i look forward to seeing the future projects as well.

Claire said...

I love the redwork - you don't see it over here in the UK, only when it's been imported over in mass produced twee bits for the home. Snow white and Rose red was one of my favourite stories as a child. Yours has a very Rackham feel to it - who was it that did the original illustration? I studied History of Art for my degree and wanted to do my dissertation on children's illustartions, but wasn'tdeemed to be a suitable topic....

bettyninja said...

I scanned in some of my embrodiery and hate the way it looks now. I will have to touch up mine too. Yours always look so nice. Any tips? Do you use Photoshop to touch up? Your redwork came out really nice. I love the fabrics on the side there. great touch

gina said...

hi betttyninja! I touch-up my embroidery transfer scans in photoshop. I change the mode to greyscale {I could scan in black & white actually, I'm just kind of lazy about changing the settings} and then use levels to darken the black and lighten the white. The Chef I had to redraw though because even after the photoshop adjustments it wasn't very good. I drew over it on another layer using the paintbrush tool to keep it as close as possible to the original. I use a wacom tablet with a stylus pen so its almost like drawing on a piece of paper. I hope that makes sense. Unless you were asking about the scan of the embroidered chef...in which case I will say I don't like the way he looks {no adjustments} but I didn't have time to take a photo!

bettyninja said...

oops I forgot to say thanks sooner! This is really helpful!