Tag Archives: typography

art + design, Inspirations

Zim and Zou

Special font created for Easter (‘Pâques’ = French) by the duo Zim and Zou for the BNP. Delighted by the fun and evidence of real play in these letters, so different from their virtuosity in paper, which is the medium I know them for.

One sentence, the very last in their brief description of the project, says it all: “The font was handmade with plasticine.” So here’s what you can really do with ordinary modelling plasticine. No? Okay, so here’s what creative geniuses like  Zim and Zou can do with ordinary modelling plasticine, then!

via Zim and Zou on Behance.net

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embroidery and textiles, TAST 2012

Kantha see I’m busy? Week 10 ✂ Running Stitch (TAST)

Tast Week 10: Running Stitch

Week 10′s stitch on Take A Stitch Tuesday is Running Stitch…

Possibly the simplest stitch of them all, and yet…who, among embroiderers, is not indebted to this stitch? From basting, easing, and smocking to outlining, gathering, filling, quilting, and pattern darning, running stitch can do it all.

And does it quickly! Please *ahem* note that for once I am not posting my TAST2012 sample at the last possible moment. This piece took the good part of a day to do (it was the pattern darning that slowed me down, and I was plenty distracted) but that’s not too bad,when you count how long some of the others took me.

 This first bit of my sample shows some pattern darning. A simple line of stitches worked over counted threads, (evenweave fabric, using a single thread and a tapestry needle) was built up into a band so even that it almost looks woven. There was going to be a whole field of this darning, but after four repeats of the pattern I got bored (heh heh) so I tore the strip from its mother fabric, and mixed it with other torn pieces of fabric for a patchwork, instead.

Tast Week 10: Running Stitch

My favorite use of running stitch is in the Indian and West Bengal embroidery called kantha. In the best examples of this technique, the entire cloth is covered with running stitches, often used to fill in shapes of animals, plants, and people. The effect of so many running stitches is a subtle, delightful crinkling or rippling in the fabric, and a contrast between puffed-up and stitched down areas that resemble quilting. Kantha embroidery is both decorative, and serves to hold all the pieces of a patchwork down, and if several layers are used, is also a quilting stitch to hold all the layers of a blanket (or somesuch) together, at the same time.

I work this dense running stitch quite a lot. Here it is on a patchwork-covered journal…
book 913 with hand-embroidered kantha quilting

and on a simple felt journal
puff (no. 908)

BUT I am digressing…this here is a detail of my running stitches for the TAST sample. The shimmery pink organza is particularly effective when it is puckered up by the running stitches, letting the light play on its crinkled surface.

I didn’t do anything special to hold the pieces of fabric down—like bond them to the ground fabric, or spray them with adhesive—except some very large basting stitches (removed afterwards) running both vertically and horizontally across all the loose pieces. The edges were left torn or cut. As I worked the running stitches—first vertically then horizontally, forming crosses—I tried to catch and hold down the raw edges of the pieces. Don’t know if I would dare to launder such a thing, but for a static embroidery sample, the kantha seems to do the job of securing everything well enough.

Tast Week 10: Running Stitch

The text is very crude on this one, I didn’t think it would turn out so ordinary. I’ve used running stitch for the letters, which I then whipped with the same color. Kinda ‘meh’. I tried to set the word off better by running a few lines of tiny white running stitches around it. Maybe I should have filled the entire word-shape with white running stitches. But it’s colorful, and pretty, has a rich texture, and I like it a lot, anyway!
Tast Week 10: Running Stitch

I love running stitch…it’s so simple, and versatile, and it instantly gives a design that earthy, “made by hand” feeling.

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This small embroidery sample is for the Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge. The idea was to combine my love of embroidery with my love of typography.

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amazing people, blogs and sites, craftiness, Inspirations, travel

Inspired! By 0 the 1′s Muse of The Week

Kat’s gorgeous blog, 0 the 1, has really taken off in the past year…she’s made a score of changes to the art, design and layout of the pages, has added regular ‘feature’ type entries, and—as always—slathers the whole thing with scrumptious photographs that have been given what I am really starting to think of as Kat’s signature “Elegant & Quirky” post-processing treatment: dreamy veils of layered colours, mosaics and intriguing juxtapositions, curly elements tucked into the corners, vintage graphics.

The result is a coherent and harmonious blog about being creative, starting a family, making a simple, self-sustaining, joy-filled life, and taking that life for long walks around (sigh!) Italy. She did a guest post about the city of Turin for Poppytalk that was so visually stunning, I ached with unconyeved excitement, a restless giddiness, and wanderlust for weeks.

In her most recent Muse of The Week post, Kat put together a short documentary about Stefania Giuliani, a book maker and typographer with a studio/laboratory called Librare. Librare is in the historical center of the city of Ancona, a seaport on the Adriatic. The sight of two medieval rooms full of Stefania’s gorgeous artist’s books, photographs, and trays full of metal type sorts, makes me jealous as heck! But also I feel so inspired to be able to glimpse into this warm, inviting creative space, and doubly lucky to have an adventurous and artistic friend like Kat, who took the time to put together this inspiring video and generously share it.

Salamat, Kat!

P.S. I sent Kat a mail art booklet—postcards, swatches of fabric, a cd, a bit of embroidery, a bit of everything, really!—some time ago, and here she’s done a post of the thing…including an animation where a smaller booklet of embroidery and writing slips out of a pocket in the bigger booklet. I was going to do my own post on the mail art I sent her, but this sort of leaves me (happily) deflated…I wouldn’t do anything as cool, so better just send you over to read her post on the matter!

animated GIF by Katerina Bona Vora of 0 the 1 (zerotheone)

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embroidery and textiles, TAST 2012

Week 9 ✂ Couched and laid threads (TAST)

I have missed about 5 weeks of the TAST challenge…at this rate I may never catch up! But I’m pushing, this late Sunday afternoon, to upload my stitch sample for the current week. Week 9′s stitch on Take A Stitch Tuesday is Couching.

It’s not completely done, but I’ll be damned if I am going to miss yet another week’s stitch! Not after I nearly lost my mind today, working this diabolical Turkish basket-weave couching with Japanese gold thread. Five tries, and I really thought it would do my head in! It’s harder than I thought it would be…I’d never tried couching metal thread before.

couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

(Incidentally, the pink-couched black cord is a prime example of Baluchi work…sort of on the opposite end to the skill of the Turkish emboroiderers, Baluchi women do a very coarse couching, using big, visible stitches in contrasting colors.)

Jacobean couching, below, along with satin couching, long and short couching, and thorn stitch couching…
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

Bayeux Stitch (a.k.a. Algerian, or Italian couching)

couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

and, to the right of it, a spiral of single metal thread couching, worked in Japanese gold #4, and again in Kreinik metallic pale pink.
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

This started out as zig-zag or to-and-fro couching of a length of mohair yarn…but the resulting puffball was such an unruly little thing that I tried to pull it in with a trellis reminiscent of jacobean couching.
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

Bokhara couching…
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

And a very exciting (to me, at least) couching technique employed by Japanese embroiderers: a foundation of laid threads are couched down securely using the same color thread ( I have used a dark purple, to show the stitches) and further embroidery is worked over this foundation. Embroidery over embroidery is probably the one thing that really sets Japanese embroidery (nuido) apart from the rest of the world’s.
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

Okay, the more experienced among you will call my bluff right away…no couching involved here, not really. I ran out of ideas and steam…laid the threads one way, and then started to fool around with needle-weaving in the other direction. Pretty textured effect and pattern, yes, but not couching. ;)
couching stitches— for TAST 2012 (detail)

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UPDATE 10 March 2012:

Okay, it’s done! I just filled in the remaining circle, and continued the laid and couched line that spirals around the design.

In the circle below, I tried my hand at making patterns with the couching thread…this reminds me of friendship bracelet patterns. Bordering the circle is a black cotton yarn couched using blanket stitch, then I snuck in a couple of bullion stitches, and when that didn’t thrill me I shifted to a wrapped couching technique (three wraps, one couching stitch, three wraps, and so on).

I also turned the tables on goldwork by couching the cotton yarn down using Jap gold…

couched and laid3

Over on the other side, just a length of bead couching, to round the bunch of techniques off.

couched and laid1

If you know of a couching technique that I missed, please let me know! I found this sample a great learning and discovery process, as I’ve never really given couching much thought before. Definitely a family of techniques that I will enjoy adding to my repertoire of working stitches. I’ve replaced the bottom photo with one of the finished sample:

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This small embroidery sample is for the Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge. The idea was to combine my love of embroidery with my love of typography.

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embroidery and textiles, TAST 2012

Week 3 ✂ Feather stitch (TAST)

Feather TAST - 04

Week 3′s theme was the Feather stitch.

I started by painting the fabric with a thin wash of acrylics,

feather underpainting

I was genuinely curious about this stitch…I don’t use it often, as I associate its open, sort of mesh-like appearance with crazy patchwork seam decoration.

I like dense stitches, and I wanted to see if I could get some solid meat out of this stitch…use it as a filling for shapes, and how well it would depict those shapes. Of course it worked fine…that’ll teach me to judge a stitch by the way it looks in stitch dictionaries—which are, of course, open and simple for instruction’s sake.

It’s quite a versatile stitch, when you work it close and play with its rays. I’ve actually managed to cram 9 different stitches into this sample…

the regular Feather stitch, followed by wide and dense Cretan stitch…

…Slanted Feather stitch, and 2-needle Feather stitch (I made this one up for myself, which is not to say it hasn’t been done before, I’ve just never seen it),

…long-and-short feather stitch…

I attempted (and bungled) a kind of French knot+Feather stitch…forget this one…not all experiments work!

…Spanish Knotted Feather stitch, and Ribbed-For-Her-Pleasure feather stitch… :D I was getting well and truly sick of the feather stitch at this point, hah!

Then, under the name, I worked Chained feather stitch,

and Türkmen stitch.

Feather Map TAST - 02

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This small embroidery sample is for the Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge. The idea was to combine my love of embroidery with my love of typography.

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Inspirations, uber embroiderers

über embroiderers: Takashi Iwasaki

I’m trying to keep up a sort of regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!

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Japanese-Canadian Takashi Iwasaki‘s reputation as an embroiderer has been established for nearly a decade, and his luminously colored Expressionist-style embroideries will be familiar to most stitching enthusiasts. But that’s no reason not to swoon, once again, all over the gallery of his textile works.

I never tire of looking at his embroidery…the imagination and exuberance in each one, color and form hanging in perfect balance, and executed so meticulously. His work fires the mind and fattens the heart.

On his website, he makes this brief statement:

Most of my recent works (after 2009) are either visual recording of my daily life or visualization of my imaginary worlds or landscapes that no one would see unless otherwise depicted; whereas my earlier works have been mostly focused on their formal qualities.

Those recent works may appear to be abstract on the surface, however, most shapes and colors have meanings and origins that are very significant to me in the way I feel them, therefore they are very representational and are reflection of my state of mind.

Things that I feel are never the same in the next moment because I keep changing. Capturing moments and sharing my visions with others have been my recent obsession and pleasure.

November 2011

Minotogetenti by Takashi Iwasaki

Eiseiearkazaris

Htomplumebutaiysl

His drawings, collages and paintings are every bit as wonderful as his embroideries. On a rainy morning like today’s, it is pure bliss to sit with a full mug of hot coffee, and just slowly savour each of the many, many works in his online gallery…a hearty breakfast for the soul.

< Takashi Iwasaki’s website. >

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

—Rumi (transl. by Coleman Barks)

Good morning!

uber embroiderers: Jazmin Berakha
uber embroiderers: Jazmin Berakha
über embroiderers: Tilleke Schwarz
über embroiderers: Tilleke Schwarz
über embroiderers: Maricor/Maricar
über embroiderers: Maricor/Maricar
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Inspirations, uber embroiderers

über embroiderers: Maricor/Maricar

I’m starting a regular ‘feature’ on über embroiderers on The Smallest Forest: These are the big kids, the crème de la crème, the leet of needle and thread…that runts like me long to play with, but will never even exist in the same universe with. *stabs herself with a #24 chenille* Oh, crewel world!

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Thought you might want to see where my  inspiration to mix stitch and typography comes from.

You’ve probably seen the amazing work of Maricor/Maricar before…I’ve had pictures of their tactile pieces posted on my Pinterest for a while, always meaning to write a blog post about them. Remembered to do that tonight, after seeing their latest embroidery for The Land of Nod’s catalogue.  In case you haven’t seen these pieces before, prepare to be ravished by the amazing colors, the handmade typography, and the immaculately neat and detailed workmanship! The first time I saw their piece Macho Distrust, I wanted to give up embroidery altogether (I know, I know, I said that about Jillian Tamaki, and Tilleke Schwarz, AND Jazmin Berakha)…they’re so good, the designs are so beautiful, and I so envy that they do this sort of thing for a living!

Back from some time (from what I gather) spent in London, Maricor/Maricar is a Sydney-based “studio that creates bespoke hand crafted visuals for print and motion”.

Their website is here, and their blog is here.

Go! Go lay your freshly severed, salty-warm and still-beating hearts on their front doorstep in humble offering…mind you don’t jostle mine, when you do.

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embroidery and textiles, stuff i've made, TAST 2012

Week 2 ✂ Blanket (Buttonhole) stitch (TAST)

blanket (aka buttonhole) stitch—TAST week 2

Week 2′s stitch—buttonhole (aka blanket, which I chose because it’s a shorter word, and incorporates the letter ‘K’)—went very quickly for me, thanks to lessons learned from Week 1′s awkward Fly stitch.

For one thing, I like this landscape format of the page much better than the portrait format; it allows the typography to expand and fill more of the page, without a lot of space at the top and bottom.

blanket (aka buttonhole) stitch—TAST week 2

Also, I messied-up the ‘page’ before stitching—using watered-down acrylic paints and ordinary wax crayons—and doing so took away that “faced with a blank page” nervousness: confronted by a pristine white surface, my creativity tends to go into an overly-cautious, formal mode. I concentrate so heavily on every little mark I make on such a clean sheet, that I usually don’t have any fun.

And this time I made sure to have fun. Used the hot colours that I love, kept designs abstract, used different threads, made random marks…on the whole, I didn’t take this week’s sample too seriously, and am much happier with the results.

It helped that this is one of my favorite stitches. The use of buttonhole can impart a rustic, almost naive look to hand embroidery. Something to do, perhaps, with its associations with woolen blankets, homemade velveteen rabbits and bedroom slippers, and kids’ summer camp leatherwork projects.

Personally, I love using this stitch for its enclosed or bordered field of thick stripes.

blanket (aka buttonhole) stitch—TAST week 2

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This small embroidery sample is for the Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge. The idea was to combine my love of embroidery with my love of typography.

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