Irises: Nature's Living Rainbows

Iris needlepoint by Annake

This has been a difficult time for Annake’s Garden, outdoors as well with staying indoors because of the pandemic. We have lost a beautiful 50-year old crab-apple tree. The late freezes have destroyed this year's daffodils and hyacinths and we are concerned about our fruit trees, grapevines, berries, rosebushes and other plants.  It is evident that we will not be able to work the Farmers' Markets the way we have done for the past several years. The art and craft shows will likely be canceled. Annake's Garden will definitely be starting over and much of that cannot be done until as late as this time next year. That is why I am so looking forward to the irises. They warm my heart.

Irises, which my mother used to call "poor man's orchids", are my favorite flowers. I would rather have an iris in a vase than an orchid pinned on my shoulder any day. Even my favorite perfume is Iris Noir, or "Black Iris". We have three versions of ‘black' irises here in the garden, one of which is truly black. Some of our favorites will be used to illustrate this post.

Rainbow (Public Domain photo)

In Greek mythology, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow. Her name means rainbow. Her father was a minor sea god and her mother was a cloud nymph. Iris was the messenger of the gods. The rainbow was a bridge that she used to carry messages back and forth. She was portrayed as a pretty girl with golden wings, a messenger's rod (sometimes also winged), and winged slippers. She is sometimes shown with a pitcher, and was believed to refill the clouds with water from the sea. She was always shown as good and helpful. We use her name in the word "iridescent", meaning giving off rainbow reflections, like butterfly wings and hummingbird feathers  — and iris petals.

Iris needlepoint in progress

I use irises frequently in needle arts. Now I am going to show you several examples of irises in those arts, while demonstrating the use of various pattern-making techniques that you can use at home — and you can even design your own patterns. Let's start with a charted pattern, which will probably be the one most familiar to you. You can download it here.

This is a charted iris that can be done in counted cross-stitch on checked gingham, monks' cloth, or Aida cloth in any size you like. It can be done in tent stitch on plastic canvas, conventional needlepoint canvas, quickpoint canvas or rug canvas. If you think of each square as a patchwork square, it could become a quilt. If each square were a ceramic tile, you could make a back-splash for a kitchen or bathroom sink..It is designed to be done as a bi-colored iris, but can also be done in a solid color. In fact, it can be done in any colors you like — even imaginary ones.  If you are doing a bi-colored iris, the standards should be in a light color, the falls in a dark color, the beards in yellow or orange and the stem, of course, in green.

Irises, latch hooked wall hanging

There are some things to remember when you work from a charted pattern. Each square on the chart represents a single stitch. Count the squares horizontally very carefully. The white squares on the pattern represent the background color. if you are going to use one. Do the same thing with the vertical rows. Make sure your canvas or fabric is going to be big enough for the finished picture, plus some space for turning over to hem or turning under around a cardboard spacer for framing, turning under for backing a rug, etc.  It is much better to have to trim off some fabric when you have finished the pattern than to find out at the last minute that you don't have enough background for all your work.

The next possible problem is that of losing your place in the pattern and working the wrong row.  There are a couple of simple techniques and devices to help you with this problem. It is certainly important to keep track of the line in the chart that corresponds with the line of stitches you are working, as well as to keep an accurate count of the number of stitches you have completed. Otherwise, your finished project may not look very much like the chart! It is a good idea to keep the chart on a flat surface where it is easy to see all of it from your working position. I use a clipboard to hold mine in place. I keep a pencil with it. If I'm interrupted or have to be away from my work for any length of time, I make a small pencil mark by my last completed stitch.

If you are primarily losing the horizontal line in the chart and are not concerned with losing count of your stitches, the simplest solution is to place a 12-inch ruler with its top edge just under the chart line you are following. If you need to add weight to the ruler to keep it in place, glue a couple of coins to the underneath side of the ruler, near the ends.

For an easy-to-make tool to mark both the horizontal and the vertical lines of your chart, cut two pieces of stiff cardboard about 2 inches (5 cm) wide and 6 inches (15 cm) long. Staple or glue them together so that they form an L-shape. Place the L on the chart so that the bottom part of the L is directly below the horizontal line of the chart that you are following, and the upright part of the L is just behind the first stitch you are going to count. Mentally remind yourself to move the upright part of the L every 5 or 10 stitches you complete. This takes some practice, but will soon become automatic. Slide the bottom of the L up (if you are working from the bottom of the chart) or down (if you are working from the top) one space at the end of every completed row of stitches.

Tracing pattern on canvas

The next type of pattern is one that you can make for yourself. Draw or trace your pattern on lightweight white paper. Tape it, design side toward you, on a sunny windowpane. Tape you canvas or a thin white fabric on the pane so that it overlaps the drawing.  Trace the design. Carefully re-trace the design onto the canvas or fabric. I use pencil on fabric because it will wash out. If you like, you can color the design lightly later with permanent markers that will not run. A semi-transparent fabric like organdy is excellent for this. Even if you don't embroider the design, you can trim the fabric away from the edges of the hoop and hang it in a sunny window. We call those "Window Wonders".

I use permanent marker on canvas because the stitches will cover it, as you can see in the picture on the right.

I carefully wipe off any excess ink, as you can see me doing in the photo on the left.





The kind of needlework I am going to do on this pattern I call "stained-glass stitchery". I'm going to pause here and show you the steps I used to work the pattern of an iris in this technique.

1) Stitched iris  2) Background 'panes' added  3) All sections backstitched in black

Sweatshirt with needlework

Working an iris design on a dark sweatshirt requires a different technique.  First I draw the parts of my design on tracing paper or a good grade of tissue paper. I pin the pattern in place on the sweatshirt, being careful not to pin the front and back of the shirt together. Then I thread an 18 inch piece of white yarn, floss, or crochet cotton into a sharp-pointed needles. Working from the inside of the sweatshirt, I back-stitch all around the lines in the drawing. You cans see that I have started doing that in the picture below, on the left. The completed design outline is in the middle picture.  When the complete design has been stitched, I pull the paper away gently. A pair of small tweezers is good to have to pick out any tiny pieces of paper caught in the stitches. The embroidery work is shown in progress in the picture on the right. Once all the embroidery has been done, filling in the sections of the design, you can snip out the pieces of white yarn.  Or you can simply work over them as you fill in the sections of the design.

There is another kind of pattern transfer — hot-iron transfer. However, it must be done with a special kind of pencil. With the shops likely to carry such a pencil closed and you readers at home, perhaps it is best to leave that one for another day.

Assisi-style iris on canvas

This iris pattern represents an embroidery style called Assisi embroidery. I did this in needlepoint on canvas for a quick demonstration, but if you are doing authentic Assisi embroidery, you would do the stitches in cross-stitch and leave the iris petals empty so that the background fabric shows through. What appears as background here, along with the features of the iris which are  given are done in cross-stitch. I later filled in the iris with additional needlepoint so it could be framed.

Finished iris needlepoint

Graphing a needle arts chart

If you want to make your own graph patterns like the one we started with at the beginning of this article, you will need quarter-inch graph paper, erasable colored pencils, a small pencil sharpener, a good eraser (kneadable ones are the best), plain paper to draw your design, and a hard surface to work on (a clipboard will do if you don't have table space). Curved outlines will need to be "square off". This is easiest to do with a counted cross-stitch design, so I would recommend that you start with one of those. You can use half cross-stitches, either upper left to lower right corners of the square or upper right to lower left corners. I like to back-stitch around the major parts of a cross-stitch design to make them stand out. If you are doing that on your pattern, indicate it with solid lines.

We are going to leave you with a collection of J.D.'s favorite iris photos.

Enjoy,

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Crewel Embroidery: More Stitch Families

Vintage crewel on white linen (Annake's collection)

In our Back to the Crewel World article, I gave you several examples of straight stitches and showed you how to embellish them with techniques like whipping and lacing. Now I am going to show you how to use those stitches to outline a simple shape. All of them can be used to follow curves as well as straight lines. They work best for this procedure if you keep the stitches as close to the same length as possible.  The leaf shape was outlined with backstitching in moss green.  The other stitches — in order from the outline inward —  are: running stitch (gold); double running stitch (gold/pale green); whipped running stitch (dark brown whipped with orange); double laced running stitch (orange laced with green);  and red Pekinese stitch, not couched, on a base of (orange/ gold) double running stitch. The little stem is done in satin stitch.

Leaf done in straight stitch variants

This little leaf design was inspired by a ceramic pin tray made for me by our roving photographer, J.J., who has done some delightful ceramic pieces. Inspiration can be found everywhere!

Ceramic leaf pin tray

As you can see, some of these stitches, like the laced ones and Pekinese,  are wider than others, and you need to keep this in mind as you decide which ones and how many of them you want to use to outline the shape you have in mind. It is a good idea to keep these stitches close to one another inside a shape, but not necessarily touching each other. We gave you a link to an article about the very versatile chain stitch, showing it with some of the same techniques. In case you missed it, here is a close-up of the basic chain stitch:

Chain stitch sample

followed by some of the chain stitch variations.

Chain stitch variations

The rows are as follows:
    1) plain chain stitch in medium blue:
    2) chain back-stitched with a smaller white yarn from link to link;
    3) chain with double-running stitch, alternating white and navy yarns link to link;
    4) entire chain whipped (overcast) with the white yarn;
    5) each side of the chain whipped with thin navy yarn, stitched one side at a time from center out;
    6) Pekinese stitch done in white through the entire chain;
    7) entire chain laced (threaded) with white yarn, with the loops then stitched down at the tops with white sewing thread;
    8) entire chain laced with white yarn, first from one end, then from the other (double-laced) and then couched (stitched down) with a contrasting yarn.
You can mix the chain stitches with your straight stitches wherever you like.

You can work an entire shape with stitches like these, or you can use one or more to outline the shape and complete it by using a filling stitch on the center of the shape. One of the most versatile filling stitches is the cross-stitch. I tend to think of related stitches as belonging to stitch "families". Let's take a look at some members of the cross-stitch family.

Deatatched cross-stitch variations

    The stitches are, by row:
    a) Standard, evenly-spaced cross-stitch.
   b) Bi-color cross-stitch (left-to-right stitches in one color, right-to-left  stitches in a second).
    c) Cross-stitch with a vertical Holbein stitch across the center.
    d) Cross-stitch with a horizontal running stitch across the center.
    e) Whipped (overcast) cross-stitch;  don't pull the whipping stitch so tightly that you spoil the X-shape of the cross-stitch. The whipping thread is on the surface except at the ends of the row.
    f) Cross-stitch with both horizontal and vertical stitches (sometimes called double cross or George and Saint Andrew), which can be done in 1, 2, 3, or 4 colors.
    g) Bi-color cross-stitch laced with a third color. If you like, you can couch the centers of the arches down with a tiny stitch of sewing thread in the color of the background fabric.
    h) Standard continuous cross-stitch. The ends of the right-to-left stitches will share the same spaces as those of the left-to-right ones.

Look again at the last sample — the continuous cross-stitch. Notice how your eyes tend to focus on the diamond shapes between the cross-stitches, rather than on the X-shapes?  At the end of this article you will find a chart of continuous cross-stitches that have been embellished in various ways. See if you can determine what has been done to each row of continuous cross-stitches.  In at least one sample, two different variations have been combined.

Incidentally, for those of you who crochet, you can crochet lines of chain stitch and use it instead of embroidered chain for many decorative stitches. Pin it to your fabric, leaving a long enough piece of yarn at each end to thread and take to the back of your work to secure it. Use stitch patterns stitch over the spaces between links in the chain and couch it to the background fabric. We will show some examples of this in a later post.

Here is something you can do to with what we have done so far.
    1) Draw a leaf (or some other simple shape) — real or imaginary — on a piece of light-colored fabric.
    2) Collect several colors of yarn or floss, at least one crewel needle, a pair of scissors and an embroidery hoop.*
    3) Place the fabric in the hoop and pull it down tightly.
    4) Starting at the outline of your leaf, stitch completely around it with one of the stitches you have learned so far.  Use as many colors as were used in the sample of the stitch pattern.
    5) Repeat step 3 with at least 2 more (different) stitches inside the first outline. Stitch closely to the first outline, but not necessarily actually touching it.
    6) Choose one of the cross-stitch variations and use it — either singly or attached — to fill the remaining space. Again, use as many colors for each stitch as are shown on the samples.

* If you don't have an embroidery hoop, you can use an empty picture frame, overcasting the fabric snugly around the frame as seen in the picture on the left above.

Pulling thread from burlap

Some of you may have less trouble following curves than you do following straight lines. If straight lines are a problem for you, try to find a firm but loosely woven fabric, like some polyester blends and decorator burlap, which have single threads that are easy to pull out of the cloth. Using the empty rows as guides, practice your stitch patterns until you feel confident that you have mastered them. I know that you will not like all of the patterns, but please try each one at least once.

Lazy Daisy stitch

Detached stitches can be used in rows or simply scattered randomly over the area you wish to fill (much like the diaper patterns used in blackwork). Lazy Daisy is detached chain stitch, often used to depict small flowers. If you want your flower to be symmetrical, it is a good idea to make a circle of dots on your background fabric and begin each loop by bringing your needle up through one of the dots.  The loops should be as uniform as possible.

Wheat ear stitch

Wheat ear, which has other names,  including tete de boeuf, meaning "cow's head", can be a single detached stitch. It consists of a two-stitch V and a couched-down chain stitch.  Make the V with two stitches that are wide-apart at the top and close together — but not quite touching — at the bottom.Bring your needle up at the junction of the two stitches and make a single chain stitch downward. Couch the free end of the chain with a small stitch.

This can also be a continuous line stitch. Instead of a two-stitch V, make a slightly loose vertical stitch and pull it into a V with your chain stitch.

Connected wheat ear stitches

Four-sided stitches

The four-sided stitches can be shown as a detached stitch figures, making sure that adjacent stitches end in the same hole in the fabric. These can also be used diagonally, in which case they appear as diamonds. You can place these in rows or scatter them.  You may want to put a French knot in the center of each detached design. A slightly different construction overlaps the sides rather than ending them in the same place.

Even using only the few stitches you have learned, you can create an interesting design — and one that looks considerably more complex than it actually is, Just try one and see! Now here, as promised, are the samples of continuous cross-stitch for you to "decipher" and practice.

Create something!

Connected cross-stitch variations

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Back to the Crewel World: Yarn Embroidery Revisited

Heirloom crewel embroidery (Annake's collection)

(Last month I promised to revisit the subject of crewel embroidery. This is a topic that we posted on in 2015 and 2016. To prevent too much duplication of information and techniques, I will give you links to those posts from time to time.)

An article in one of our regional newspapers cited the return of interest in embroidery. As someone who never lost interest, I found this very encouraging. It said some new embroideries were less about decoration than in past decades, and they tended more toward slogans and expressions of personal choice and opinion. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. Tee shirts and sweatshirts have been doing that for ages. Some designs were described as whimsical or comical. (If you want to sell your needlework,  you must be careful not to use a design based on copyrighted characters like Disney cartoons or syndicated comic strips.) A lot of work was called “very individualistic”. I always encourage readers to use the techniques you've learned to create something uniquely your own. Even when I provide a pattern, I try to describe how you can vary it greatly in color, stitches, background material, etc. You can even use the same pattern to create an entirely different form of needle art, or use it in a different medium entirely. These are points I intend to strongly emphasize in upcoming posts.

Drawing, turned into a needlepoint chart, works for crewel as well

The word crewel refers to the type of yarn, a loosely twisted 2-ply (2-strand) wool yarn. Traditionally, crewel embroidery is done with a 2-ply wool yarn on a medium-grade to fine-grade linen.

Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry

One of the oldest (and largest) pieces of crewel embroidery still in existence is the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting William the Conqueror's victory over England in 1066 AD. (Although called a tapestry, it is really a huge embroidery rather than a woven tapestry.) You might have seen recent news stories about this famous work. (Look here and here.) The piece, believed to have been made by needleworkers in Normandy and completed about 1100 AD, is 231 feet long (!) and 20 inches high. Besides land and sea battles, it shows many details about the costumes, artifacts, techniques and customs of the era.

Crewel pillow cover

Like Spanish blackwork, crewel embroidery became popular in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  She loved roses and native wildflowers, so those motifs were widely used, along with leaves and vines like those in this much more recent (20th century) pillow cover.  One of the major functions of this type of embroidery was to provide warmth: the embroidery added weight and thickness to bed curtains, canopies, draperies and wall coverings made of linen or wool. The work was usually done by a number of needleworkers supervised by an experienced embroiderer who may also have designed the motifs. Lovely examples of this work are exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Modern bag embroidered in the Jacobean style

Crewel embroidery reached the peak of its popularity during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I 's successor, King James I, who liked to do the embroidery himself. (Crewel was never considered ‘un-manly’ in much of the world.) The work of this period was also called Jacobean Embroidery. This 20th-Century European handbag is done in the Jacobean style.  The designs were heavily influenced by Chinese and other Oriental fabrics, porcelains, and lacquer-work beginning to be imported into England at that time. The Jacobean influence can still be discerned in modern crewel embroidery.  Dragons and other mythical creatures were also popular in the 17th Century.

Early colonists brought crewel patterns and techniques to the New World, where they became quite popular. Some of the stitches commonly used were running stitch, double running stitch, back-stitch and cross-stitch. These basic stitches were further embellished by such techniques as whipping, lacing, and interlacing.  If more experienced embroiderers will bear with me for a few paragraphs, I will demonstrate these stitches for beginners.

A running stitch (also called a basting stitch) is one that covers the same number of threads each time, leaving a blank space of the same number of threads between the stitches.

A double running stitch starts at the end of the running stitch line, often with a second color, and fills in the spaces between the running stitches.

The next row shows a running stitch (dark blue) whipped (overcast) with a second color.  That second color stays on top of the fabric except at the two ends.

The next row shows a double running stitch in two colors that is then whipped with a third color.

This next stitch is the laced running stitch.  It begins with a running stitch (dark blue). The second color (rose) stays on the surface of the fabric except at the ends. It is pulled into a little arc under each running stitch and forms a longer, shallower, downward arch between stitches. This gives it a scalloped appearance. If I were doing this on linens or a garment that needed to be washed, I would use thread from the background fabric to couch the arches to the fabric. That is, I would hold the loops down with tiny upright stitches at the centers of the loops.

The laced double running stitch starts with a double running stitch in two colors. Lace it with a third color. Because the arches are caught at the joining of two stitches rather than crossing an empty space between stitches, the top and bottom arches are the same size and the scalloped effect is gone. This is another stitch pattern that benefits from couching.

For the next pattern row, do the double running row in a single color. Keeping the second color on the surface except at the two ends, loop it around the places where the running stitches join. This is the Pekinese stitch, which usually doesn't require couching.

If you know how to back-stitch, you can whip, lace, and do Pekinese stitches on rows of back-stitching as well, adding to your ‘vocabulary’ of stitches. Practice these stitches until you feel comfortable with them. You can use them for curved lines as well as straight ones, but you need to keep the stitches the same size as you do that.

As I noted earlier in this post, traditional crewel embroidery is done with a 2-ply wool yarn on a medium-grade to fine-grade linen. Some show judges will not let you call a piece "crewel embroidery" unless it is done this way. That was fine, I suppose, in the 17th Century when the technique was at its peak, but it is the 21st Century, and time to broaden our horizons!  Personally, I like to do this technique on wool or a good wool-like synthetic with anything from 1 to 5 plies of yarn (both wool and acrylic), using all kinds of flosses, metallic threads, etc., for special effects.  I like crewel yarn and 3-ply Persian yarn that I separate as needed. Separating the plies also allows me to blend them by combining different colored plies together in my needle.

A blended yarn sampler

Unfortunately, these yarns have become more expensive and harder to find.  Also, some people are allergic to wool or simply can't afford it. Feel free to experiment with the cheaper, more readily available alternatives. You may find some acrylic and other synthetic yarns easier to embroider with than others.  Practice with them so that you can make good choices before you begin a project.

Crewel needles that are sold as such are usually designed to handle 1-ply or 2-ply yarn.  If you want to work or experiment with more plies, you will need needles that have large enough eyes to accommodate the extra yarn. Try to get an assortment of needles with different lengths and sizes of eyes. The needles should have sharp points that slip between the threads of the background fabric. If the needle point punches a hole in the fabric, it is too large and heavy.

Surface stitching anchored by the outline

I also like to keep a variety of blunt-pointed tapestry needles on hand. Once I have outlined the edges of a design part, I often fill the center with stitches that lie flat on the fabric but do not penetrate it. They are held in place by running them underneath the outline stitches.  While the yarn should not be loose enough to move out of its place on the surface of the fabric, it must not be pulled tight enough to pull the outline out of shape. This requires a little practice on a small piece of the fabric to get it just right. The blunt tapestry needle will slip under the outline stitches without splitting them.


You will need some sort of support for your work, otherwise it will eventually pull out of shape. If you are a beginner and doing small projects, start with a set of a 6-inch, 8-inch, and 10-inch hoops. Please use wooden hoops. Metal and plastic ones slip. For more ambitious projects, you may want a frame. Here is a popular kind:

Large adjustable needlework frame

Some other things you will need, if you don't already have them at hand, include: a pair of small, sharp scissors; a bag or basket that never contains anything but your needlework; a well-fitting thimble (if you use one) and a ruler or measuring tape.

For the next "family" of crewel stitches, both beginners and experienced stitchers can follow this link:

The Chain-Stitch Family, Part I: Plain Chain With Variations

Watch for another crewel article soon. Enjoy!

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.