Dimensions: 2.5″ x3.5″
Fabric: Muslin
Flosses: silk, cotton, rayon
Stitches: stem, satin, whipped running, detached blanket, blanket, straight, painting

I made this ACEO as part of the Phat Quarter “Comics” swap. The requirement was that the piece have images and text. I thought, being a bit of a comic book geek that I’d find some iconic image in one my comic books and just embroider that. I blogged about the process earlier, and you can see my original sketch on the post.

I couldn’t find anything I liked.

Then I started thinking I could do something interesting that was more inline with my normal “embroidered prayers” artwork. During morning prayers one morning, I had an idea. One of my morning prayers includes this bit of text:

The water conceived and gave birth to darkness
The fire conceived and gave birth to light
The wind conceived and gave birth to wisdom
The fire conceived and gave birth to light
(Adapted from the Talmud by R’Jill Hammer, from the Kohenet Siddur)

Needless to say, that’s what inspired this piece. If you read my main blog, you know I’ve been working a lot with the elements lately — so this was a great chance to begin exploring them through my art.

Generally I’m very particular about my stitches, but this time I was focused on getting the sketched look I had in my actual sketch.  The feel that came through in the sketch and especially the final design just really worked for me.  I really liked all the shading and texture of it.   I decided to experiment with a more “thread painting” technique, although in this case I would say “thread sketching.”  Thread painting tends to have a polish and perfection to it that I wasn’t looking for here.   For the floss I used a variety of choices.  Much of it variegated Kreinik silks that I’ve had forever, but never enough left to do a large piece.  Since this is a very small piece it gave me a chance to use it all again. Where ever I had a silk I could use I opted for that.  The rest is done in DMC cotton floss, and a little bit of sparkly DMC rayon silver for the wind.

The most difficult design element to work out was the fire.  While we weren’t required to use the ACEO format, I thought it would be a good challenge for me.  My preference for sometime has been round pieces that I hoop frame.  I’m very comfortable there.  A rectangular design would push me to try something new. All the types of fire I tried to draw, just weren’t working.  I even tried several different layouts.  Finally I had the idea of the lightening bolt as the fire!  That seemed to work out well, and I’m pretty happy with it.  I was able to bring the traditional fire colors in with the word “light” using a great variegated red silk floss.

The edging is what I’m least happy with.  You never finish a piece with technique you haven’t practiced!  I have so many pieces that sit in a drawer for months, if not years, because I’m afraid to screw them up in the finishing.  Here I took a risk, since it wasn’t a piece that amounted to months of work.  Just a one month from concept to finish (per the swap rules).  Needless to say, I did manage to screw up the edging — but I think the overall effect is fine.  It’s a mostly detached blanket stitch, which I chose to give a solid “frame.”

I always like to see the back of things like this, so here is the back of this piece.