Sunday, January 28, 2007

Embroidery: TAST Cretan Stitch Background

Laura Lea asked me if I marked my leaves first on my Cretan leaves picture posted on Flickr

Well I started by doing the 2 large leaves freehand, but I was not happy with the outcome. So I sketched (in pencil) a stem on the back then added leaves as per the sketch here.

I then found that I could not see through the fabric, so I then went around the outline in black biro and on holding it up to the light I could then see the outline. The use of pencil or biro is not ideal as some of this could come through to the front with the stitches. If you look closely on the final version you will see that at the top I started to do a cretan stitch for the stem and after I unpicked it, as well as pin holes marks were left!

As yet I have not investigated fabric markers but if anyone out there has experience of these and could recommend one or two that would be appreciated.

Below is the back so that you can see where I stitched.
(click on either images to see detail)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your Cretan piece is absolutely stunning -- I think I left a comment about it on your flickr site to say much the same thing!

I use a water-soluble marker to draw on fabric--it's made by Collins, but as I am in the U.S. I don't know if it's available in UK. The reason I use water-soluble instead of the variety that vanishes on its own is that I was told that the vanishing sort can with time "bleach" your fabric. Who knows if this is true? At any rate, the water-soluble variety works very well for me.

Hope that helps.

MaryB said...

Elizabeth, many thanks for your help. I have been out today and bought both types and will experiment. What I will do is use the washable and see how I get on with it and with the vanishing I will put some onto a sample of different fabrics and place these next to a window and leave it for a few months or more!

Anonymous said...

Now that is a wise and creative response! And probably one of those markers will suit you better than the Biro. Not that your work suffers for it--I really am enjoying your blog, and I'm glad you're going to be studying more deeply later this year.