JE May 2018 Report

Hi everyone :)

Even if I shouldn't have had time to stitch in April, because of school... guess what happened !

I did some nice things in the last month, and I had my group meeting. This time, almost everything went well. I got a little bit frustrated on my orange chrysanthemum at some point, but now it's over. No «hours of angry removing» this time. 

This is my progress since my last report and everything I worked on last month. 

• Paperbag

Foundation is done ! 

Last pic is «light test». It's to make sure there are no holes or empty spaces in our foundation. It's done by putting a lamp under the fabric. I suppose everything is okay for me, but in cas something is incorrect, I still have a part of twisted thread ready.

• Blue Iris

Flower is done ! 

It was a little bit hard. I think there is too much space in the middle of my right outter petal, but it's okay for me. I will leave it like this. More about the process here -> Blue Iris Progress

• Orange crysanthemum

Almost done ! 

Bigger petal on foreground has to be done first. Then you work clockwise, and counterclockwise. I feel the right part looks better than the left part. I've got better at this. The biggest petals took me almost 1 hour each to stitch, including self padding. I am a VERY slow stitcher. It take me a lot of time to decide where i will put my next stitches.  

The only thing, i feel my thread is not twisted tight enough for the first petal and those going to the left.  Or maybe i am looking at my piece too close. I suppose time will tell me what is the best. Alors, I am not too satisfied with my smallest petal in the back. Maybe i'll redo it in the end. Maybe not. 

I need to finish with random size layers in the middle and japanese knots all around. At the end. I hate knots.

More about the process on another post :) 

• Blue chrysanthemum

I had a flat blue thread from my iris that i didn't want to throw away. I decided to stitch to not lose it. I began my blue chrysanthemum, with flat silk and no padding. 

Actually, following the Japanese Embroidery rules, i should do the Purple Chrysanthemum on the left before the blue on the right, because the latter is in background compared to the other. But since this petal is notre overlapped by the purple ones, I decided I wont lose my precious (and expansive!) silk. 

For now I won't work on this flower until the purple is done. 

• Yellow Valerian

I wasn't ready to go back to pinks. I decided to work on my yellow flower. It's made with flat weft foundation. I have to make sure all my stitches are parallel. 

In this picture, I see the difference between my day 2 of formation, where I had so much difficulty to stitch parallel, and now. Lots of improvement needed, but very satisfied with my progress from the begining.

Nancy made a light test for me. My first stitches on the top have some spaces between them, I will have to add some more libes to cover it. 
I will put lattice on the flower at the end. And some knots to finish. Someday. Did i said i hate knots? 


So now here is what it looks like, Before /After

I am very glad with my progress so far. It is so satisfying to complete elements. 

23 hours in this since february :)

Next thing : 
Working on my valerians this month... and maybe pinks !

I look forward to put the layers on the Paperbag on next group meeting in end of May.

JE Blue Iris Flower is done !! :)

Grad students first problem : I should have been writing. Instead, i've been doing some useful/productive/fun procrastination!!

Blue Iris Flower is done !  

The left outter petal was quite a challenge

 

The tip of this petal was very hard to do. Because of the inclination of the petal, it was not exactly like the center one. It took me 3 or 4 time to do the left part. I am satisfied with this result, since it's the best i could do.  

And some other pictures. It was very sunny this week in Montreal.. but still freezing/snowing/icy wathever. It should be called «second winter», not spring.  

Et voila !!

The right inner petal was very hard too : because it's part under the right outter petal, you have to guess where to land your next stitches to create something balanced. I was not satisfied with my first result, and had to remove 3 times my stitches. I feel what is there is not the best it's possible to achieve, but it's the best i could do at my level of embroidery beginner.

I learned great thing with this iris, i feel my eye knows better where my stitches and my needle should go to create what i want. 

Also, while having a very hard time, this crossed my mind  : «If it's easy, then you are learning it wrong. »

I felt like a ghost was looking above me, and telling me to perseverate.  I can assure this thought didn't came from me. I am a little bit of a lazy person who loves when everything is easy. I would never ever think of something like this ! 


Next thing : 
I have a group meeting on the last week of April. Maybe i will work on my pinks or the orange chrysanthemum. I was supposed to be working on top layers of paperbag, but my friend Dima won't be here, and I don't want Nancy to give two times the same instructions. I hope to have some improvements to show after this meeting !

A little bit about my group :
In Montreal, there is a group of ladies from the Embroidery Guild who follow the JEC cursus. I think we are about 10 people working on different phases. Nancy is the lady who organize the group meeting at her house. She received the Phase X formation but she doesn't teach. She is giving us advice when needed about our stitching since she is the most advanced. She is precious help for me and Dima... and everybody I think. On our monthly group meeting, she sometimes don't even have time to stitch because there is always someone calling her for help and suggestions :)

If you are in Montreal and interested to see Japanese Embroidery or even take courses, the group sometimes receive teacher from other places! Next time will maybe be next spring (2019) depending on the group progress on their projects.

April 2018 JE Report

Hi ! I hope you had a great time in March. 
Between studies and other things, I had a group meeting for Japanese Embroidery at the beginning of the month, and unfortunately i had to remove a lot of work. 

When i came to the meeting, it looked like this :

Where to begin ... 

First : Byebye Pinks. All of it.  As I understand, Japanese Embroidery has very strict rules, but you can do some variation of your own when you are more skilled. My pinks were not done the traditional way, I was very unhappy with how it looked (not the same as it should be), and a fellow stitcher suggested to remove it if not satisfied.

So i did it. I cut everything :( It was so sad at first, but i am okay with my decision. It's for the best.

Second : Byebye paper bag. Well, not all the stitches, but 75% of what i did. Problem is, I left a big space in the middle for cords. After discussions with other stitchers, stitching the cords on top of the bag is part of the exercise, and meant to be hard, because there will be a lot of surimposition in other phases. This one is just a practice.
So I did it, i removed the thread. Almost. All. Of. It. 
Catastrophe !!!

It was like this.

Then like this ( I want to cry ) .

Then throw away this unusable ORT's (SO MUCH THREAD... i am actually crying )

Fortunately, i could re-use a part of those threads, this time stitching the good direction : from left to right. (I was stitching the wrong way). So here is what a complete day of stitching looked like : a day of unstitching. Not a single new thread was added to my work. I was SO sad. The only time I had to sitch in one month was to remove ALL of the past work. 

I felt very crappy for some days. I was in mid semester time, had a lot of papers to submit for my Master then, and I was impatiently waiting for my stitching day to relax. Well...it never happened. I did what i had to do, then put my work in my case until i could find courage to redo everything. After 3 weeks, when i found time between my studies, I felt urge to stitch, so i put my frame on the stand, and went back to work. 
I could add a little 5 hours of stitching, so here is what it looks like as today.

I had to remove a little part on the middle, but it will be very fast to stitch. 

The big problem is, with this mistake of not doing the paperbag the good way at first, i had to throw away so much thread... now i don't have much left :

Eeeek ! I love to live dangerously.

Our next group meeting is at the end of April. I was given a goal, if possible : finish the paperbag (while finishing my Master courses :/ ). Since i still have brown to put on it, and so little left, I want to wait for the group discussion to not mess up more things and risking to not have enough if i still do mistakes. I will wait, and work on something else Knowing my friend Dima won't be here in April, I will probably be working on something else, and wait for her to comeback in May, so we could do this together. She also had to redo her paperbag and is also short on thread.
I suppose the best for me would be to finish the iris and chrysanthemum... ans those removed pinks.


Oh, and a i did had a little bit of green on a long leaf, but my little finger is telling me will have to remove it when the littles seeds on top will be stitched

Should i remove or not ? To be continued....

Then, this is what it looked like at the end. 

Well... almost. I didn't took a picture of the paperbag finished. Without the pinks, my embroidery looks so empty :(

Next month is another month. Things should go better by then. Never give up.

Happy stitching :)

Japanese Embroidery Class Phase 1 - Day 4

Day 4, the last day of my formations of Phase I of Japanese embroidery. I was very reluctant to go to my last day. With the failures I lived the day before, i was not sure anymore on my capacities to do Japanese Embroidery. I told myself I had been waiting for this class for so long + it cost me a lot of money for the course and furnitures + all my things were there... so i got out of bed and went to class.

Good thing is, the last day went better than i thought it would. We worked on 'easier' things 

The first thing was finishing the outline of the paperbag, and put guidelines to follow the weft of fabric.

That part was way easier than what i did before. You twist the thread, and stitch inside de outline, while making sure to go parallel every time, following the guidelines.

Another part of the day was stitching the long iris leaves. This one is a little bit tricky, since you have to follow the movement of the leave. I have problem with where to land my next stitch when the forms is moving. 

It's not perfect, but im okay with my work

Finally, the last part was about the pink flower. They have to be worked in short and long stitch. In this orang, i will put white and gold thread. It will look great. :)

(I say this, but i had to remove everything... )

So this was the end of the four day adventure. That last day went better than the others. When i got used to silk thread, i was able to not snag it everywhere, twisting the thread became easier. 

This is what it looked like at the end of the formation

Even if it was hard, I got a lot of fun. I am able to blog about it because after 6 month my interest on Japanese embroidery is still very high. Even with the difficulties i face, i manage to continue.

One of the fellow stitcher is having a monthly meeting at her home, so everybody could have a full day of working on their different pieces ( A gift from the sky, knowing i dont really have time with school, i could never be able to find time to stitch ! ). Plus, having a group helps when you have questions or incertitudes.

From now, I will post a monthly report of my work, what I did, what went good and bad. When Carol-Ann Conway from Threads Across The Web ans Susan from Plays With Needle were still doing Japanese embroidery, I got a lot of pleasure reading their blog about their struggles. Knowing they had great times and also difficult helps me when I struggle on something, since i am very fan of their stitchings ( They do it so good ! ). 

If you have the opportunity to try Japanese embroidery, i encourage you to go for it :) And I hope you will get as much pleasure as i have to stitch with silk and learn this beautiful art.

Japanese Embroidery Class Phase 1 - Day 2

The second day of my class was about flat silk. We practiced twisted silk the day before.

This one is a little bit harder. if at first you don't need to do anything to your thread, just take it and put a knot at the end, you have to be a little bit more precocious with it.

Flat silk thread is so hard to work with, one false movement and it snags. Also, you have to use the tekobari (big long stroking needle) to stroke the silk to make sure it lays perfectly flat. Tekobari also enhance the silk to make it shiny. Then, you can't remove your thread too many time. Silk does not support to be removed and becomes ugly after some times. 

It's kinda scary how you have to be careful !!! 

We worked on 3 things for the second day

• Blue pistil in the middle of iris is made of flat silk. You have to put one layer of perpendicular padding of silk thread under, and follow the movement. So... I tried to. 

• Second was Yellow Valerian. This one is worked on weft flat silk. It means we have to follow the line if the fabric and put all the stitches parallel. White silk is used as guidelines.

• Last thing of the day was the orange chrysanthemum. This one has special movement. Each petal has to be inclined in some sort of position from the very center of the flower. At 30˚ exactly, but didn't know this at the moment... This is why they look like very different, one is note at good angle. 
• They are made from twisted silk, and self padded, like the iris petals.

A question may be asked : why do i began with some petals particularly? Because there is a rule in Japanese Embroidery that the front item have to be stitched before the background. In those 3 pictures, i stitched those items because they were ont the foreground. 

In the chrysanthemum, you have to begin with the bigger petal in front of the other, and then do the others. The one on the left is my first one. The last will be the two little in the back. 

So this what it looked like at the end of day 2

At the moment I was so glad with my work. Looking at it now, 6 months later i see all my mistakes because i've learned so much with practice. I am still very satisfied with how much i improved to this day.

Japanese Embroidery Class Phase 1 - Day 1

Day 1. 9am

I'am so excited. I have been waiting for this day for so long.  I will finally learn all the secrets of Japanese embroidery. The teachers gave us an inspirational speech for our first, about seeking perfection but not be overwhelm by it. She said the journey was more important than the goal, and we should not seek perfection at any price at the beginning, it will come with time and practice.

This my work place, ready to begin

Our first lesson is learning to twist the silk. With 4 brands of flat silk, we have to make twisted threads. Easier said than done. The teacher told me i could twist the silk a little bit more tight. 

For all the morning, we practiced twisting thread. 

In the afternoon, we began to work on the blue iris. It is worked on twisted thread, and we follow the movement of the flower.

First, we have to make padding with the blue thread on perpendicular, then stitch on top of it. 

Teacher was really impressed since i've never did any embroidery other than cross stitch when you only have to put X's in pre-made holes. Following the movement of the flower was quite hard but i was satisfied with my progress for this day