White Horse: completed

I said last time that there wasn't much left to do, and I've done it!

Firstly, I needed to finish the embroidery itself, with the final back leg:

It doesn't show up too well in the photo, but the stitching follows the shape of the horse's back end and curves round through 90 degrees, so that the stitch direction is downwards for the rest of the leg:

And that's all the stitching done!

There was still more to do to finish the piece, however, with pinning and damp stretching first:

(this photo shows the real colours better than any of the others, for some reason, so I'm glad you've finally got to see something close to what it really looks like).

The finished item was always intended to be a disc; cutting a neat circle of card is beyond me, I'm afraid, so I used a ready-made one: a cake board!  I stuck a circle of felt to this, both to soften it a bit and to hide the shiny silver foil it came covered with:

I trimmed and laced the back:

Then covered the lacing with darker green silk dupion, also backed with felt:

And here's the final piece: White Horse

I've already handed this over to the client (I wanted her to see it first, before writing this post, which is why there's been a slight delay), and I'm happy to say that she's pleased with it.  I hope she can enjoy it for many years to come!

New Etsy shop!

I've finally done something I've been meaning to do for ages, and set up a shop on Etsy.

And here it is: Ruth O'Leary Textile Art

I must admit that the initial stock is a bit random; I've had a major tidy out of trial pieces, items made for exhibitions and the like, and have listed them for sale.  They cover a range of techniques, from free machine embroidery:

Appliquéd leather:

Goldwork:

Split stitch landscapes:

And even smocking:

I intend adding to it as I go along, but in the mean time, have a look around!

White Horse: half a horse

Time to fill in the horse's body, or at least half of it. Starting with the head and legs:

The stitching follows the shape of the horse, to help give it shape.

The face looks a bit odd like that, but looks better with the neck filled in:

And then the front leg:

And the main body:

Not much left to do now.

White Horse: finishing the knot and starting the horse

Some good progress to show you today, so without further ado, here's the knot finished:

And with the knot done, it's time to start the horse. The horse itself will be white, of course, but there's a little bit of colour for the hooves and eyes:

I'm still using Madeira stranded cotton, with no. 2114 (a dark brown) for the eye and 2208 (a gold) for the hooves.  I've also done the mane here, in 2403.  I'm going to use three shades on the body, and that's the one in the middle.

I'm not aiming for a particularly naturalistic effect here, but I still want a little bit of shading to give depth.  As the outline is gold metallic, I chose an ecru, 2404, as the darkest shade and added a line of that on the horse's underside, at the top of the rear legs, and under the chin:

I then used one strand of that and one of 2403 for the next line:

Two of 2403:

And then a line with one strand of 2403 and one of 2402:

This - 2402 - is the final colour.  The rest of the horse will be done using that.

White Horse: a lot more knot

A lot of progress to show you today.  Another quarter of the knot:

And another quarter after that:

Very nearly finished the knotwork now...

White Horse: more of the knot

I'm making good progress now, and have done quite a bit more of the knot.  

It has a definite start-finish point as the horse's tail, so I started there and followed the line:

It falls into four quarters; the tail starts half way through one of them, but after that I could do a full one:

It's really starting to look like it ought now, isn't it.

The plain knot is quicker to do than the inner loop (no fiddly leaves), so hopefully I should be able to get on with the rest pretty quickly.