Jizee6687's Weblog

I had done a few long stitch kits by anchor. While browsing the net I found some pictures done in various needlepoint stitches.
These websites are full of them-

ANG

Needlepoint canvas

Rainbow gallery

I too wanted to try some, but starting with a new venture chose satin stitch as the base.
. I bought this book-1000 great quilt blocks, leading me to chose from the block designs .
the square frames were from IKEA, after measuring the size of the square, I chose two block designs. Then the canvas was marked with pencil.
These frames were meant to decorate my husband’s office room, later when he changed the office they came home. The pictures on my next posts.till then enjoy browsing these wonderful links.

This is the last piece in this set of four roses.
This is a big single rose with two buds. the design was taken again from the same set of books, this time from a cushion design.
The book had a flower bouquet design for a cushion, I took the rose and the buds were lifted from other smaller bouquets. then they were all put together to form this particular frame.

pink rose-4

All the four frames together-

roses in cross stitch

With this I complete this set.
This was the first time I worked with evenweave aida cloth, earlier works were done in matti cloth bought in India, where the weave is rectangular. That made the patterns ablong instead of square . Any pattern will look compressed or elongated depending on how we use the matti. However much we work, there was always a sense of dissatisfaction, when the work was complete.
I literally drooled over the aida cloth when I first saw it here. I sometimes use them on my tunics too.

This whole thing started, with the idea of having one picture with red roses.
The pattern was chosen from the small cross stitch book, a border pattern.
It was a wide border, the roses were quite impressive, I chose two roses and a bud from that, and then customized them to suit this frame.
As seen in the picture, I wanted real dark red rose!

3. red roses

The patterns were really small, a strain for the eyes.I used a graph paper to draw individually whichever colour thread I was working on at that time. This meant extra time to draw each and every colour on graph, but cross stitching was swift.
The routine was-
Choose the colour, match it with the symbol, draw that symbols alone on graph, then do the cross stitching,then again start with the next colour.
The last one is pink rose.

The second frame , the roses are done in varying shades of peach.
This is a big rose with two small buds.
The big rose pattern was taken from a flower bouquet .the book had this bouquet pattern for a cushion cover and the buds were chosen from other small rose patterns.
It was interesting to work the placement of the roses within the frame.

rose frame-2 peach

Here also I tried[unsuccessfully, ofcourse!] fixing a medium red colour paper around the work.the next one is a red rose.

This frame is with two medium size roses with bud. The roses are yellow.
Actually this pattern was used for the second time, when I initially bought the book, this pattern fascinated me so much that I did it on a tunic with waste canvas. But I can’t say it made me happy of the result. Why did I make medium blue roses? Iam  still wondering!
This pattern is done in aida cloth.
When the piece was inserted to the frame, I added a yellow paper for the outline too.
Not a bright idea definitely!

rose frame-1 yellow

Three more roses !

I made these roses in 2004, when we first came to this house.
The idea started with finding four wooden frames. I liked them so much, that wanted to do some flowers as a set.
I had a few cross stitch designs books from India. These were very small books which had cross stitch designs taken from other big cross stitch pattern books. the book size -10’ / 8’. The patterns were quite small too.
After going through these books, I had a desire of doing some roses. From all the rose patterns I chose four.
The choice was for two big roses with buds for two frames, and two medium roses for the other two.
Then I decided to do the patterns in four different colour schemes. The interesting part was choosing the dark to light shades of the same colour, to synchronise with the actual patterns. The details of the frames from the next post

I have developed a reaction to the summer sun, a viral infection with unknown cause, is manifested as  an allergy – lots of irritation on my eyes, ears and neck.Very inconveneint  too. 

 now getting on with my post-
I was thinking of ideas to use embroidery, crochet and tatting on doilies.
Then an idea of making a oval doily interested me.
The idea-
To embroider in cross stitch, create a new design, to use red colour.
The aida cloth was perfect for it.
The design , I mix and matched some of my own cross stitch patterns,Used the font from a cross stitch book. I had heard that some stitch diploma students tried presenting other people’s work , to get their certificate, to avert their interest, I embroidered the year also.
Later I decided not leave my projects with strangers.
I was still an internet novice in 2005 . Inspiration was minimal. The finished doily-

cross stitch doily- oval

I am still thinking of attaching a border- made with lace or crocheted or tatted. after 6 years, That is yet to happen!

I had a block printed material in medium beige colour.I also bought a same combination on duppatta too. For this , a maroon tunic was bought and designed, then the tunic was given away, may be, because, it became too tight!
I found this double colour-peach and beige- fabric. This tunic, being the second choice, needed to be simple.
I had some dark brown [wooden]beads. After the tunic was sewn, I did a row of cross stitches in maroon and brown. Then the beads were attached to the space in between. Small straight stitches were worked , spurting away from the beads.

peach tunic with wooden beads

I wore this for some years , then the pants were discarded, the duppatta waited to be made into a tunic!

Actually,This tunic is the last of the series, these pictures were hidden some other place!
I had two dupattas-1. red , block printed in black.2. An ikat weave-in black,red and white combination.
They were bought on two different occasions, couldn’t resist both.
I wore a plain black salwar set, and another red salwar set –to go with the duppatas.
An idea came- to have a white salwar, embellished with embroidery in red on black cloth[ this cloth to be attached to the salwar as yoke and sleeves]
I wanted full sleeves for the tunic[salwar] with 8 inch embroidery, and a small yoke.
One inch border patterns were chosen. Later another idea came, to attach a red fabric in between with black embroidery on it.
Embroidery-kutchwork, herringbone filling , variations of a few line stitches-chain, fly, chained feather, stem.
The pattern for the sleeves was drawn on graph and the pattern for yoke was drawn on blank paper.
The top half of the sleeves-

red kutch on black detail-1

The bottom half-

red kutch on black

The yoke-

redkutch on black-yoke

Wearing full sleeves with embroidery is not ideal for hot cities like Muscat or Chennai, still I try to wear this set as often as possible. Ironically, I don’t wear those duppattas for this set, it is too heavy!. I wear it with black, red or white plain chiffon duppatta!

This is the last one in this series old kutchwork projects.
I had a plain orange Bengal cotton saree with zari border.For this, I co-ordinated with plain green blouse.
Few similar shades of orange , light green and red thread were chosen for the kutchwork embroidery on sleeves.
The pattern was two kutchwork borders intercepted by single row of kutchwork.
A wide motif was done in the centre- a few common motifs added together.
The mirror image of the two borders are added at the bottom.
The whole pattern was drawn on inch graph paper.
Along with kutchwork, rows of chain stitches were also done.

Green& orange kutch- blouse

The top-

green&orange kutch-top

the centre-

green&orange kutch-motif

The bottom-

green&orange kutch- bottom

This was a big project for me,earlier, I just did small motifs are borders- these pieces I don’t have them with me
. The unavailability of kutchwork designs and ignorance of the sources led me to design my own kutchwork patterns. I did not even have similar samples to compare them with.
I am so happy to share with you all these projects . It brought back so many memories-
While designing, transferring,embroidering,sewing[tailor] and wearing them.
After writing so many posts on kutchwork, Iam itching to do kutchwork now!