"Moon Beams" Heart

Shhhh - its night time.  The moon is shining in the dark sky and I am wishing on it.  Wishing for those things we all wish for - peace and pleasure, laughter and loving, conscience and caring.  As a girl I never realized that there was an actual 'man in the moon' until I put on my first pair of glasses.  I've been talking to him ever since.

I'm afraid my camera just could not capture the delicacy of the colors in this heart.  The loops are punched in palest lavender with Wildflower thread 'pale lilac' as the trim. 

"There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon". - Matsuo Basho

Assembly Line?

These days it tends to look like an assembly line in my studio -- each upcoming punchneedle sitting on my 'staging' table, waiting for attention.

I really don't work in an assembly line format - each PN piece is worked to its completion before another is started.  But -- one of my pet peeves is not being able to move along to the 'next in line' because I don't have the correct colored thread.  To be punching away in the middle of a section and find that I am almost out of a certain color and that there aren't anymore skeens in my stash is a definite 'GRRR' moment!

So, as I'm working on one piece and as the inspiration for the next one, or two or three pieces comes to me - I'll take the time to draw the design, transfer it to Weaver's cloth and begin the 'collection' process.  When I am ready to start each project, unless I've miscalculated (which does happen *smile*) I can move through it without that dreaded 'oops' feeling. 

Right now I have three pieces waiting in the wings -- and you can be sure I'm double checking the number of skeins that I have on hand.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius

Beginning Punchneedle

Finally, after a couple of months of delay, I have been able to devote some time to the craft of punchneedle.  I had dithered away a lot of time trying to use reverse punchneedle for doll faces.  After that didn't work I decided it was time to get started on an actual piece of punchneedle art.

My plan (if you can call it that) was to take an existing picture and copy it into punchneedle.  The picture had to have shading so that I could practice that technique and the technique of using varigated threads.  Also it had to be simple.  At this point in my punchneedle adventure 'complicated' was not a word that I needed to hear.

So off I went using this picture by Nicole Marley.  I promise you Nicole (if you're reading this) I will only use this picture one time, for my use as a 'practice' piece.  And I thank you for your lovely art which definitely fit my criteria.  I did eliminate the grasses because I was trying to keep this as simple as possible.

I learned so much while doing this project.  I learned how to blend the threads and colors, I learned how to fix mistakes (of which there were plenty) and how to go back and fill in, because I had a tendency to not space closely enough.  I learned to keep track of the thread I'm using so that if I have to go back I know what shade was used where.  I learned how to do blocks of color in a space and then go back and fill in around it - achieving a shading effect.  I learned not to judge a section by the first few rows. The colors in the actual piece are much deeper and more vibrant than my little camera could capture.

Punchneedle is very meditative and I very much enjoyed 'filling in the spaces' with thread and color.  The whole project went quite quickly once I got started.  But saving the very best for last was to turn the frame over as I went and to see those loops creating a picture before my very eyes.

"You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice". - Lauryn Hill

Punch Drunk?

Here I go again - learning a new skill (well of course at the beginning one can't actually use the word 'skill').  Earlier this week I took a class in punchneedle.  Once again my local quilt shop Material Things gave me some new inspiration.  I was looking around in there a couple of weeks ago and saw some lovely finished punchneedle pieces - pictures and pins and covered buttons.  I was entranced by this form of looping embroidery floss through fabric and making pictures.  Probably just because its the way my mind works, I immediately thought that it might be a fun way to make future doll faces.  As with rug hooking, in punchneedle the loops are on the front BUT the back of the fabric has the same image only in flat stitching.  Why couldn't I use this for faces? Fortunately 'Material Things' offers punchneedle classes.

My friend Peggy had taken the class before, but wanted a refresher so the two of us set off to see what we could learn.  It was a small class, so we got a lot of one-on-one instruction.  I found out that punchneedle actually began in Egypt long, long ago.  They used the hollow bones of birds as their punch (okay its much improved these days having its very own needle punch contraption).  There are several sizes of needles - fine, small, medium, large which allows the use of different numbers of floss.  The needle has settings from 1 - 12 with 1 being the lowest setting.  I can see that a 12 could be used to make the mane of a lion (or a really wild, bad hair day)!

One of the secrets is to keep your fabric as taut a possible.  Embroidery hoops are used but it was obvious from trial and error that the better (and tighter) the hoop the tighter your fabric will stay as you punch in and out.  Peggy brought small plastic containers for us (thank you Peggy) which we placed underneath the hoop. This means you can punch away without drawing blood by hitting a valuable body parts!  

There are all sorts of in's and out's to this new-to-me craft, but I discovered that I really liked it.  It can be much like beading in that it is very meditative punching in and out of the fabric.  Unlike beading, if you make a mistake it is very easy to correct.  You just pull the offending loops out, smooth the fabric with your needle tip and start over.  For someone new to the craft like me - this was probably the most important information that I learned!!

"He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet". - Joseph Joubert