New work

Still using black fabric. This time I wanted to merge my older, compact, solidly filled up, stitch-upon-stitch style with the new, black fabric, more texture oriented, looser collage style. No 3D stars or stitched-over objects in this one but I did collage in a few small pieces of fabric and it is stretched onto a frame. As usual a variety of embroidery techniques are used, but I took some of them further than I usually do: the pointillism, most of which is made with metallic thread, is a mix of colored dots - some areas with a total multi-color mix, and others made up of different hues yet still keeping a single tone. There are a few small sections where the pointillism is on plain, un-colored fabric. The three-dimensionally rendered parts are rendered, I hope, with more realism than I have yet achieved. I make much use of the smokey monofilament thread which is becoming one of my favorite flosses. I'm finding that French knots are a good solution to fill in areas when I have a loss of ideas.

This took longer than expected and I had to leave out some images that I wanted, otherwise I would be working on it indefinitely.

New work

Still continuing to work on black fabric. The center image was taken from an old anatomy diagram, but I changed parts of it to resemble an African mask and I did some more improvisational changing. In the end it turned out looking like some kind of 'un-dead' monster or something.
I used multi-colored metallic thread with transparent monofilament thread layered on top in an attempt to create the look and feel of skin tissue. I also used some cotton multicolored thread that I hand-dyed. I will post about that sometime soon.

The line images surrounding the 'head' I made by laying down a bright red/pink/orangey thread and then stitching over it completely with black (though bits of slight fuzz from the laid thread is visible). This technique is similar to 'couching' but I covered the entire laid thread….. I think it's called a 'trailing stitch', I'm not sure. The black thread on top of black fabric makes an interesting texture.

I stitched the black fabric to black velvet and stretched the velvet onto stretcher bars.

Of course, the monofilament thread over the multicolor metallic as well as the black on black make a fun photography challenge. Seems I'm always making things that are hard to photograph, why stop now?

Pink Lizard with Egg

"The Lizard Egg which spawns the Polliwog which becomes the Pink Lizard that has been split into sections for educational purposes".

The lizard egg was taken directly from an illustration in the "Cabinet of Natural Curiosities" book, minus a lot of detail. I tried to get in as much detail as I could
though, it's so dense with stitches it's probably bulletproof.
The lizard is of my own design (if you want to call it a design). I have a small bag of leftover bits of thread. From that bag I took all that was pinkish and that became the skin. I wanted the lizard to look like something from a science book, with cross sections to display it's inner body parts. But the body sections came out crooked instead of lined up evenly, so it kind of loses the 'science book display' feel. Obviously my mind wandered from idea to execution. That probably reflects my life.
The egg and lizard were excised from the larger hoop and implanted onto a white shirt fabric. I did a 'loop stitch' thing all around the edges to make it look more 'finished'. Is there an actual name for that 'technique'? If there is feel free to let me know what its called.