Follow-up on Eclectic Embroidery

 Since the previous post about getting back into embroidery in a whole new way, I have experimented with a coloring book, a couple postcards, a copy of art from an old book. This kind of embroidering has very few similarities with the dish towels I used to embroider when I was fifth grade. Consequently, my attempts were not a roaring success. Floss and paper don't jell like floss and fabric. Piercing paper/cardboard with a needle most often requires a pre-punched hole or the paper bends and creases. Another variable is that with paper some paper is pushed through when creating the hole and forms a little ring around the hole. Sometimes the floss will cover this but never at the starting and stopping points. Depending on the color of the photo or postcard, it is possible to hide some of these white spots by touching them gently with a marker in a matching color. Obviously that isn't always possible.  

For example:  I bought this postcard with plans to embellish it. It is a painting of Johanna Maria Lind, 1820-1887 painted by Eduard Magnus. I thought she probably wouldn't mind if I added a halo effect behind her with embroidery floss. The edges of the card were a little dinged so, before I took a picture of it, I touched up those spots with a black marker. 

When I finished stitching, I employed the same method for covering all those places where the white paper pushed through to the front of the card.

My plan for this postcard was to stitch a rainbow in the sky. Although you can't see it in this picture the sky higher up is blue with some scattered clouds. Getting the exact color of blue with a marker would be pretty difficult.  

Obviously I had other issues with this endeavor, mainly due to lack of planning. I didn't take into consideration the telephone poles when I started stitching. I could easily have started a smidge higher and avoided chopping off the post as I worked my way down. (These projects are all about learning what not to do, so I forged ahead with little remorse.) But back to covering the pushed through paper.  As you can see, where there rainbow meets the roofs, it is a bit messy.

I used a fountain pen with black ink to smooth the edge along the rooftop. But this particular project had more issues. Sometimes when piercing the paper, the needle gets a little too close to a previous hole and suddenly you have a pothole that just gets worse every time you get close to it.

It is a bit harder to keep the stitching uniform when you are making holes for the needle to pass through rather than using the needle to find just the right spot. If you get slightly off the mark on cloth, it's easy to back the needle out and try again. On paper, any attempt to put another hole where you really wanted it to be will most likely become a disaster.

This one is taken from an adult coloring book. Because the paper was fairly thin, I didn't want to make too many holes so I did a combination of markers and thread.  Here I colored the background and then added French knots with embroidery floss.

These designs are all from one page of the coloring book so each flower is on a three inch square.

I ran into some trouble and had to improvise on the stitching. There were just too many stitches and the paper would not hold together. I did the best I could to somewhat salvage the design. In the process, any hope of attractive stitches went to hell.

This is a page from an old book so the paper is brittle.  Not the best choice, but remember, this is just an experiment. I chose to use silver (2 shades), bronze, (2 shades), and black floss using only three strands.  

The two shades of silver on the wings of the standing angels appears blue here, but the inside lines are actually a very dark gray, and the outside lines a lovely silver. Even though the edges of the paper were torn and brittle, making holes as I stitched did not cause any problems. I was careful to hold the needle at a 90 degree angle when piercing the paper and I believe that was the key to a clean, precise hole. Even though this paper is old, I am guessing the quality of the paper is very different from something I might find in a recently printed book. All, I know for sure is that any paper should be tested with a needle prior to starting the project.  

I certainly have not "solved" any of the issues that arise with embroidering on paper products. The one lesson I have learned is to keep it as simple as possible and use long stitches to create a design rather than trying to fill-in an existing pattern. I did rescue a merging of holes in the angel art by putting a small piece of Scotch tape on the back side and stitching through that.  On a very small piece that might not work as well. I have considered taping the backside of something before starting to see how that works. Guess I just named my next project.