Meet Annabelle, my Autumn Songbird!

Annabelle, the Autumn Songbird
Adapted from a Free Vintage Transfer (Vogart)
Tester for the Blue Washable Marker and Lazy Daisy Stitches

I have been in love with the vintage embroidery pattern that inspired this beautiful bird - whose name was chosen because Annabelle is Gaelic for "Joy" - for YEARs now:

Three Birds in a Tree
# 10007 / Animals & Insects / Vogart at Needlecrafter.com

Although it doesn't appear to have been updated since 2016, Needlecrafter is one of the best sites online to find free vintage embroidery transfers, and it is home to the pattern that I used for my first-ever embroidery, Bluebirds of Happiness.

I wanted a tester to try the Blue Washable Pen I recently used for Sammy the Squirrel. I was interested to see if having the full Lazy Daisy outline marked would help make my stitches rounder. When I'm using a permanent transfer method - lead pencil, fine-tipped Sharpie marker or iron-on pencil - I usually only put dots in place of the bottom and top tips on each petal.

This is because I find it difficult to make my stitches perfectly match the lovely even teardrops of the pattern designs. But when you have a lot of Lazy Daisy stitches close together, all those dots can be a little confusing, especially since I usually have French Knot dots marked in the middle of the flowers too. It's like playing Connect the Dots - and sometimes it's frustrating to figure out where everything goes 😂

Please click the image to enlarge and save at full resolution

So I decided to focus only on one bird; this is my variation! I made some changes: altering the branch, adding another tail feather, changing the beak and adding extra French Knots and scattered Detached (Single) Lazy Daisies in the body for some extra colour. I also added another leg, because only one didn't look quite right!

You may notice the colours look a little familiar. That's because I loved the colour palette from my Lolli & Grace Autumn Leaf SAL so much that I just had to use it again! I made some minor substitutions in the original colourway and I kept those for this project. If you'd like to stitch your own Autumn Songbird, here is the Colour & Stitch Key:

Please click the image to enlarge and save at full resolution

The Blue Washable Marker (mine is the Unique Brand, from Walmart, that I used for Sammy the Squirrel) worked like magic again! A quick dip in a plastic container of cold water and Abracadabra! Shazam! Bibbety-bobbity-boo!!! A beautiful, joyful Songbird!

One teeny tiny minor quibble: my fabric choice was not the best. I have seen this pretty and unusual mustard yellow colour everywhere this Autumn, and when I found some fabric on the bargain wall, the same type of linen I used for The Joyful Jester, I was thrilled! That project was felt applique, so I've never actually embroidered on this fabric before. The loose weave means that it's easy to overstretch, and although I tried very hard not to do so, I distorted the fabric. Significantly.

I was SO proud of my Satin Stitch in this project, especially the Tail Feathers:

Smooth, right? This was the first layer I intended to use as padding but it worked out so well that I kept it to the single layer. The leaves were Satin Stitched inside as well. Out of the hoop, unfortunately, that fabric distortion means that all my painstakingly-stitched Satin Stitch went wavy and wonky 🙄 So it has to be stretched in a hoop or a frame.

Lesson learned!

Thankfully, my other major achievement - the Bullion Knot feet - emerged relatively unscathed 😊 Those teeny tiny toes are so cute!

Verdict: The Blue Washable Marker wins again! I'm so impressed with this embroidery transfer method. It really did help take the guess work out of my Lazy Daisies, although again the linen was not a good fabric choice. The nubby texture means that it was harder to mark the fabric and I had to go over most of the lines twice. Also, because I couldn't mark smoothly on the textured surface, I couldn't really get the teardrop shape of the Lazy Daisy stitches and they ended up more like straight lines LOL!

I really love the flexibility this marker gives you - you can change elements, as I did with this project when I reshaped the beak, you can add or omit parts of the pattern. Not having to stick to the pattern lines gives you so much stitching freedom!

And my Lazy Daisy stitches do look a little rounder than normal, which is a definite plus since mine usually turn out kind of skinny. In all likelihood, this had nothing at all to do with the marker and just happened because I was paying extra attention to them, but I'll take all the help I can get 😄

I'm so pleased with how Annabelle turned out, and I think she's lovely. A little songbird to sing a happy, joyful tune on these golden late Autumn afternoons while the leaves fall, reminding us that Spring will come again once Winter has its turn 🍂🕊🍁

Adventures in Embroidery II

Hello Stitchy Friends!

So sorry I haven't been around for the last week or so. I've just been having one of those times where a lot of little things - which wouldn't be so hard to deal with on their own - have all piled up one on top of the other and become A Major Headache. Would you believe that I haven't put a single stitch in anything lately? *Sighs*

However, I'm happy to be back today, sharing the long-promised test piece done for my Bluebirds of Happiness, which was done as a test piece for my current WIP, Twilight Angel. Whew! Sounds silly, I know, but it really did help to do this little experiment. Honestly, when I was working on the Bluebirds, I never intended to use French knots for the middle of the flowers. Although it turned out, remarkably!, that I did so, I never ever would have added them if I hadn't done this little piece first, which I'll call Bluebirds Test Piece for obvious reasons.

Here's a overview of the project:

As you can see, I worked with the same blue cotton and floss colours from the Bluebirds of Happiness. In fact, all of the flowers, excepting the three in the bottom left-hand corner (which were the result of my trying to make flowers free-hand), are from the Bluebirds pattern; I cut a snippet, of the three flowers on the end of the right-hand branch, from my transfer, and ironed it randomly onto the fabric, to give me a stitching guideline. Re-using part of the original transfer worked well, although the lines did get fainter with each pressing.

Then I put the fabric into a small hoop (I used a 6" inch) and worked all the pink lazy daisies and the green leaves. I really wanted to see how the flowers would look using a certain type of center, and so I went crazy trying different things that came into my mind. I really do recommend using a hoop - I think it's what made the whole miracle of finally defeating my long-time stitchy foe the French knot possible. You need two hands free to work this stitch, and so trying to hold the fabric in your hands at the same time is all but impossible if you're not an octopus!

Here are some closeups of the flowers:

Top Left

Flower 1 - Satin Stitch, 3 strands of floss
Flower 2 - Seed Stitch, 3 strands of floss
Flower 3 - Padded Satin Stitch, 3 strands of floss

Top Right

Flowers 4, 5 and 6 - French Knots, 1 loop, 3 strands of floss
(I did three of these the same because I couldn't believe that the first one worked, lol)
Flower 7 - French Knots - center knot 2 loops, rest 1 loop, 3 strands of floss

Bottom Right

Flower 8 - French Knots, four (quarter?) loops, 3 strands of floss
Flower 9 - French Knots, triple loops, 3 strands of floss
Flower 10 - Seed Beads, attached with 1 strand of floss
Flower 11 - French Knot, five (quintuple?) loops, 3 strands of floss

Bottom Left

Flower 12 - Seed Bead, attached with 1 strand of floss
Flower 13 - Seed Beads, attached with 1 strand of floss
Flower 14 - Seed Bead Center, attached with 1 strand of floss, surrounded by multiple French Knots, double loop, 1 strand of floss

The seed beads I used are just random ones I had lying around in my bead stash, colour-core transparents (part of a multiple colour-core assortment)  that I picked soley because the yellow core happened to perfectly matched my thread :)

I found the way that the French knots change shape and texture depending on the amound of loops made to be very interesting. I think a lot of it is also the size of the needle that you use. I forgot to mention it in my last post, but for embroidery, you need embroidery needles - sharps, which are what we think of a 'regular' needles. Trying to use a tapestry needle, with its dull point, is not easy!

From the lovely comments on my last post, I have deduced that I am not the only stitcher waging war against the French knot, and so I'm working on trying to do a little picture thing that will explain how I managed these. I've seen so many different takes on the technique through the years, but the one I tried (off the top of my head!) actually worked, and so I'm sticking with it, whether it's proper or not.

Besides the French knots, I really like the effect of the Seed Stitch (Flower #2) and the fluffy effect of the loose French knots done multiple times with only one strand (Flower #14). I think that the latter would look very neat, without the bead in the center, for flowers with a lot of seeds or stamens in the middle. The raised texture is really cool, and I could see adapting it to other things - like animal fur - as well!

Here's a view of the front and back:

I'm still not used to all this carried thread on the back, and this one is really messy, because I honestly did not try to be neat, in case I wanted to take anything out.

So there you have - the test piece for a test piece ;)

This whole embroidery thing is rapidly becoming addicting - it works up so fast! - and I think there might be more such stitchy experiments in the near future!

Adventures in Embroidery!

Hot on the heels of my last Stitchy Adventure, in Couching, I somehow got in into my head that I should try embroidery! Now, cross-stitch is, in fact, a type of embroidery. But for all the years I've been cross-stitching, I have had a love/hate relationship with "real" embroidery. As in, I love the look of it but hate to work it.

And on what is my irrational hatred based, you may ask? On a misbegotten, never-finished, free-form embroidery done in the hand (this was before I started using hoops) and discarded after much frustration, never to see the light of day again.

I got as far as some sort of line stitch (whip maybe) and French knots. I didn't even make it to the lazy daisy stage! French knots. So innocent looking, all pretty and round and nestled neatly together in the centers of flowers. And yet so very evil.

Oh, I tried to be patient with them! I have never been one to give up easily, and this was no exception. I made knot after knot in that scrap of fabric, and all of them ended up lopsided, or funny looking, or pulled too tightly (so tightly that I had holes in the fabric) or too loosely (so that they flopped over, never to rise again). And trying to wrap the thread around the needle? I don't even want to go there. And so, at the tender age of (if I remember correctly) eight, I acquired my first Stitchy Foe.

And what a Foe! All these years, the French knot has plagued me! I never ever embroidered again, but it kept invading my stitchery, appearing in patterns I loved and just had to stitch, as flower centers and dots over alphabets, as eyes of creatures and persons alike; in borders, in backgrounds, in figures all over, the French knot surfaced cunningly in elements I could not leave out of the design!

It would not leave me alone, and so I waged war. Yes, I took to slyly substituting seed beads where ever a knot occured, and when that didn't work, I would cross-stitch a filling, or some other clever disguise. But it irked me. Oh, how the damnable, wretched French knot irked me!!! I despaired of ever stitching crewel work, the French knot's favourite stitchy style. And for every work I fashioned a substitution for that I was pleased with, there was one I was secretly not proud of, as I thought the French knot would have been better, despite its demonic, hellish nature.

Therefore, when I bravely embarked on this Stitchy Adventure, I did so with great deal of anticipatory dread. As I mentioned in my last post, the gold loop-de-loops on my Twilight Angel's skirt are lazy daisies. And that's all the instructions said. No diagrams, no helpful tips. Since I had found my couching test piece so helpful, I decided that I would do a lazy daisy test piece too. And so, I set about finding a hand embroidery pattern with a lot of lazy daisy stitches in it, and I hit the jackpot!

It turns out that there are a lot (and I mean a very great many) intrepid stitchers out there scanning in and posting vintage embroidery patterns. Some of them, admittedly, are very cutesy (e.g. bonnet-wearing beribboned kittens curled up in flowered baskets), and others are just plain strange (e.g. the animated, dancing foodstuffs - tomatoes with legs and arms and eyes, waltzing with the cutlery).

I decided on a simple pattern of two bluebirds on a flowering branch, from NeedleCrafter.com, a really neat site with a large design library that appears to be on hiatus for the time being. Why bluebirds? Well, I have a thing for bluebirds of happiness. I don't why, I just do. And so, I present Bluebirds of Happiness:

And what to my incredulous eyes should appear...

...but multiple French knots, tied so neatly its weird ;)

How did I conquer my dreaded Stitchy Foe and make those French knots so neat? Weeellllll. I did a test piece for the test piece. No, really. I actually did. And was totally glad of it. I'm going to put up tons of pictures in the next post as proof!

You may have noticed that there are no in-progress pictures of this work. This is because I was absolutely convinced that I, noted embroidery diaster creator, was going to mess it up irrevocably at some point. And I was afraid to jinx myself!

Now, on to what I did and where and with what:

The fabric is 100% cotton in a dark sky blue; since I wanted the branch to look like it was in the sky, that was a no-brainer. I choose all my floss colours to compliment it.

All stitches were worked with three strands of floss; all colour numbers are DMC.

~ The Bluebirds were worked in Stem Stitch with 798 (DK Delft Blue).
~ The Beaks and Toes were worked in Satin Stitch in 720 (DK Orange Spice)
~ The Branches were worked in Couching using 801 (DK Coffee Brown).
~ The Flowers were worked in Lazy Daisy Stitch using 961 (DK Dusty Rose).
~ The Flower Centers were worked in French Knots using 743 (MD Yellow).
~ The Leaveswere worked in Lazy Daisy Stitch using 909 (V DK Emerald Green).

The eyes of the Bluebirds were done in Satin Stitch using the blue (798).

I omitted the wavy lines on the breasts of the Bluebirds.

What impressed me most about hand embroidery is how fast it works up! I couldn't quite believe that I had the whole thing done in two days (and would have had it done in less time except I kept picking out my lazy daisies: it's very easy to pull them too tight and you have to keep your tensions a little loose to get them round - the very tight ones on the skirt of my Twilight Angel were done that way based on the model).

After I got over my initial trepidation, I actually found the stitching - especially the lazy daisies - very fun, which was entirely unexpected! I also like the way that the long surface stitching in embroidery leaves sections of the floss free so that the lovely sheen of DMC shows in the stitched elements. This is not something we often see as cross-stitchers, since our floss is tightly worked in the fabric. It's pretty!

Here's a picture of the back, and I warn you - it's messy! I was very dubious about this, but my Stitchy Guru Mother has informed me that since embroidery carries its threads from small element to element (e.g. from flower to flower) there will necessarily be more strands on the back. We cross-stitchers are used to closely darning everything and carrying only when strictly necessary, so it was a bit strange:

Honestly, I had a bit of of a hard time at first, especially turning corners with the stem stitch, and my lazy daisies could be a lot neater - I found it difficult to get them to met exactly at the end. And my satin stitch needs a lot of practice - while it seems like the easiest stitch from reading the stitch diagrams, I actually found it the hardest to work in the whole piece, as getting the strands to lie flat and working with the angle is very challenging! Overall, though, I'm quite pleased with it.

I really like this bit of doing test pieces that can stand as projects on their own. It's fun, and useful to try out the techniques, and you have an actual work at the end instead of random scraps of fabric! This is something I can see doing more of. And, despite all my previous feelings to the contrary, I can actually see trying embroidery again. At least simple designs like this (and this and this).

And the French knots? We are happily (on my part) locked in a stalemate for now ;)

(I couldn't resist, LOL!)