Project Planning

I always have several projects in mind, even when I’m working on a major project. Now that the High Atlas pillow is completed, I have to decide what to work on next. I have four things on my list to work on in November. Maybe you’d like to see how I organize and work through all this.

1. I’ve promised several people I would get the stitching instructions for the Blue Middle Atlas Rug done. In order to determine how much thread is needed to stitch the rug on 18 count canvas, I’m stitching a quick one quarter of the design. Then I can multiply how much thread I use to get a rough idea. As I complete each band of the rug, I’m creating the stitch diagrams and writing instructions. Since I’m not stitching it for looks, I’m just using #5 perle cotton. I’ll show you a few photos of it, but not very many.

2. I’m doing my last craft show after Thanksgiving. I’ve been doing these shows around Christmas for 5 years and sales are never very good. But I’ve developed a lot of friendships over the years, and I want to see them one last time and say goodbye. Coasters sell more than anything else, so I’m working on coasters to sell. All the coasters I’ve shown online while I was playing with Moroccan tiles, are now in little acrylic coasters and ready to go. I’m working on more right now – about 2-3 a week. I figure I need about 30 for the two day show. About 20 done so far.

3. Zellig – I shared my first little tile with you for my blog anniversary. I told you that I was going to take that simple design and add to it to make a design closer to the original tile. I just finished this design! The colors are close to what I’ll be using to stitch it. Look for the first post late next week.

4. I’ve decided which rug project I want to work on next. My inspiration is an antique rug from Morocco. I’ll use the general design of the rug shown below, but do all the actual patterns and motifs myself. I’m also changing the colors. I love the original colors, but I need a change of colors after all the browns and oranges in the last few projects. I’m going to do the center in navy and the rest in shades of red plus a few accent colors. I’m going back to my favorite materials as well. I’ll stitch this on 13 ct. canvas and use only Silk & Ivory thread. This is what I used for the Blue Middle Atlas Rug and it’s still my favorite of everything that I’ve stitched. It will be about 15″ x 30″, the same as the blue rug. This will be the standard materials and size for all my rugs from now on. I love the size and the thread is so easy to stitch with.

So while I’m working on projects 1-3, I’ll also be designing the center motif for the rug plus the borders that go all the way around. I’ll practice stitch and attempt to figure out how much thread I’ll need. Then around Thanksgiving, I’ll start sharing a new rug with you.

Do you think I have enough to keep myself busy and out of trouble? I certainly hope so. Now that I’ve listed it all, I need to get busy. Friday I plan to get the first two bands of the stitching instructions for #1 done and get 3 stitched designs into their acrylic frames. Then I can get out canvas and threads for the new zellig design. I love it when I’m busy! See you soon with photos.

Zellig – Would you like to stitch along?

I’ve introduced you to zellig tiles, and showed you what I want to work on. I also told you I’ve seen this motif and others like it in many forms in Morocco art. Here are two more examples. The first is a door that has other types of wood inlayed to create the motif.

The other is a musical instrument where the design was created using wood, bone, and pearl for the design.

Since this design is so complicated, I find that the best way to start adapting it is to pull some of the elements and create a smaller design first. Then I can go back to the original design and try to add more elements to it.

So I started with just the center of the tile I showed in my last post.

By analyzing the design, I found an 8-point star in the center of the design that was created by placing squares together. I know that the lines forming these squares continue on to other elements, but I want to start with something easy and then see how I can expand it later to be more complex.

I created 4 squares first. I then added 4 squares that are on point. This arrangement created the 8-point star in the middle of the design. The design in the original had the motif enclosed in an octagon, to I added that as the outside edge.

The beginning version of the tile is shown below. It’s not quite 3 inches square.

Then I thought, since it is so small, you might like to stitch along with me. Friday marks the end of my first year of blogging. So I’m going to put up stitch diagrams for the rest of the week for this little tile. If you would like to stitch along, you will need:

4 inch square of scrap canvas (or larger – design is less that 3 inches square)

2 shades of one color for the boxes

3 shades of a different color for the rest of the tile.

If you want to use a colored canvas, you won’t need to stitch the white background. If you use white canvas, or want to stitch the background, choose a light color to set off the design.

We’ll start tomorrow.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 3

Another rectangle is now complete, but I’m not sure I like it. I used white Trio to make long stitches and then used Ginger to stitch over it. I think this looks fairly good. The other sections are brown Splendor and yellow Trio. The sections in the middle of three in each row are one stitch wider than the other two. This alters the design a tiny bit. Then I found out that the rectangles are not 5 inches like I thought. They’re 4.75 inches. The individual sections are one inch long and that leaves one section about 4 stitches shorter than the others. I decided to put the smaller section in the middle of the rectangle and reverse the colors  - just to be different.

There are two more rectangles to go – one will be completely filled in like the first one, and the second with have some open areas like this one. Even the border will have some open canvas and some solid stitching. I’m still experimenting and learning.

Here is the pillow as it looks today.

I will continue to work on the pillow as I have time. But I have something different planned for several posts next week. We’re going to study Zellig from Morocco. Stay tuned.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 2

With the center finished, it’s time to start on the large rectangles that surround the center. The photo of the rug detail below shows most of the motifs that I will be working with for this pillow.

I started with one toward the left. The triangles were stitched over 2, 4, 6, 4, 2 threads. I have a limited palette of colors since I’m using only the colors I had left from the rug project. I’ve used several combinations of light and dark threads for the triangles and the satin stitched stripes. The stripes were stitches in varying widths, from over 2 threads to 4 threads. The rectangle measures 5″ X 2″.

Here is how the pillow looks right now. The next pattern isn’t working the way I had envisioned it, so I’m rethinking how to proceed. It has some more open parts and I’m not sure I like the look. We’ll see what I can come up with to make it look better.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 1

There are several reasons for doing a pillow from the High Atlas area of Morocco.

1. There are so many wonderful rugs from this area and I don’t have time to work with all of them.

2. I have quite a bit of Trio and Splendor thread left from stitching my High Atlas rug.

3. I have a photo of a rug that has intrigued me since I first saw it and now I’m going to create a pillow using some of the motifs from this rug, which is shown below.
I’ve picked six motifs from this rug, which I will put together in a pillow. The design will be about nine inches square. The first motif I’ll work with is the white  diamond band that is shown twice in the photo above. I’ve done this motif before in the small red Zemmour style rug late last year. But I wanted it to be the center of the rug this time, so I had to do some thinking. Below is the line drawing of the major part of the pillow design. There will be a border around this which is not drawn on the canvas yet.

There are four diamonds in the center section. I started by stitching the outlines of the diamonds in white Trio using Backstitch. When that was completed, I went around the rest of the area with dark brown Trio, again using Backstitch.

There will be a lot of open space in the center, even after I finish the design I have planned. In the white diamonds, I added a large Smyrna Cross. I stitched the large + in a darker shade, and the X on top of it in a lighter shade. I’m not sure you can see that in the photo, but I like the look of two different colors for this stitch. Then I needed something for the diamonds created when I stitched the dark brown shapes. Just a few stitches in yellow were added to complete the brown diamonds. Then I stitched a border in Cappuchino – Gobelin stitch over three threads. Here is the center, all completed.

I’ll work on the four rectangles around the center next. Each one will have a different motif. See you next week with another update.

Moroccan Embroidery

Though most people think of rugs when you mention Morocco, embroidery is also beautiful and plentiful. Fez (or Fes) is considered the embroidery center. Stitching is usually done in silk and can be quite detailed and delicate. The photo below shows a sample of some embroidery.

Even in the embroidery you can see the 8-pointed star motif. So I decided to try a design based on embroidery and started with the star. It was stitched with #5 perle cotton that is overdyed. I left a space between each of the chevrons used to create the star. I used a brown floss to fill the space – long, straight stitches.

The brown diamonds are backstitched. I pulled #5 perle colors to go with the overdye and then decided as I started stitching that the perle cotton was too thick. So I used floss for the rest of the design. The Rhodes stitch inside each diamond has a bright yellow that was stitch using every other hole. Then I filled in the remaining holes with orange. I like the way this looks, imitating the overdye but only using two colors.

Next I worked on another motif just two stitches away from the edges of the diamonds. I started by stitching long, brown stitches. You can see where I started with a pin stitch in the middle to secure the thread. This will be covered up later. Though I’m enjoying designing and stitching this piece, I’m finding it hard to start and stop threads because I don’t want them to show through the canvas. Most of the stitching is started using this pin stitch.

Then I stitched the half Scotch stitches using 4 ply light rust floss for the two that are closest to the center of the piece, and darker rust for the other two. To finish the motif, I used 2 ply of light green floss with #8 Kreinik braid to finish the Scotch stitch closest to the center of the piece, leaving an empty space where the longest stitch would go. I repeated the floss and Kreinik in a darker green for the last two. The center Smyrna stitch was then done in orange floss.

In my next post, I’ll show you the rest of the design and a photo of the finished piece. I will also let you help me decide if it should be framed as is, or on point. Stay tuned.

High Atlas Rug – Finale!

69 days!

15 skeins of Trio thread, and  5 cards of Splendor Silk were used to complete this High Atlas Rug.

It measures 13.5 inches X 23 inches.

Here is the original rug so you can compare it with my adaptation. My colors are a little softer but close to the original. And mine is definitely smaller in size.

My goals for this rug were to create a needlepoint rug that looked like a woven rug and I feel I accomplished that goal. The second goal was to create motifs that could be woven into the rug as I stitched. Some of the motifs do contain the Brick Stitch which I used to create the woven feel of the original. Others used different stitches, but I like the look of them within in the rug. The motifs stand out a little more because of the use of other stitches.

There are two things I don’t like about the rug. The dandruff of the canvas showing through in many parts of the rug is my main complaint. The second is the green that I used in the rug. When used in very tiny amounts it’s okay, but it seems too much in some of the motifs. Maybe if I had used more of an olive green, it would have blended in a little more. The description of the original rug said they used green but I really don’t see any myself.

Here is my completed High Atlas Rug:

Despite my grumbling about the dandruff, I think she turned out nicely. She’s similar to the original, but not identical. There were more motifs on the original. There was no set pattern for the vertical bands and the star bands, and I felt some were too crowded so I made them cleaner and simpler. Over the weekend I’ll post one more time about this rug, telling you about my favorite parts.

Thank you for making the journey from blank canvas to completed rug with me. As usual after finishing a large project, I long for small projects for a while, so you’ll see a new version of the Henna Star design next week. After that, who knows what I’ll be working on. There are several things in the works.

High Atlas Rug – Progress 20

There isn’t much to show today, so let’s do a question first. Looking at the rug, which color do you think would use the most thread? How about second most? I purchased five skeins of Trio to try out the thread and determine how much I would need to stitch the rug. The yellow and black used in the inserts is about the same amount and when you take out the design in the middle of each black band, I would have a little left over. I decided to purchase one extra skein for the beginning and ending band. I also figured that there was a lot more of the background color (peanut butter) than anything else, so I ordered several extra skeins of that. Now that I’m almost finished, I discovered something over the weekend. I’m going to have almost 4 skeins of the peanut butter background left over!! And I might not have enough black to finish! All the others colors I planned just right. The problem with the black was having to use 3 ply instead of 2 ply to cover the canvas better. So I used the same number of skeins of black and peanut butter to do this rug. Who would have thought?

I’m now working on the final two bands. The X boxes are half finished and the black band is a third finished. Everything is looking good and I hope to have this finished by Saturday. We’ll have to see. Here is the final work area:

And here’s the whole rug as it is today. One more post and then it will be time to go over the good and bad things about the project. Stay tuned.

High Atlas Rug – Progress 19

All the vertical bands are now complete! I finished the band on the right last night. I also took the time to take out the center of the motif in band 5 (bottom left). It didn’t look as good as the original one and I found that I had not counted properly when adding the various layers to form the diamond. I added a row of stitches over 1 thread in the same dark brown as the last layer and then stitched the center again. Now it looks better and matches the first version. On the left below is insert 5 and the last 3 motifs in the left band. On the right, insert 6 and the last 4 motifs on the right band.

All that’s left now are the two horizontal bands that I used to start the rug. The large X boxes and the final black band. I’ll probably work on them both over the next few days, alternating between the two. As I’ve said before, the black is hard to stitch at night.

When the rug is finished in another week to 10 days, I’ll go over my goals for the rug to see if I accomplished what I set out to do. I’ll also tell you about what parts I really like, what things went wrong, and maybe even tell you about some upcoming projects to share with you too.

High Atlas Rug – Progress 18

The last insert is now complete. I changed it a little by eliminating two of the diamond shapes and switching the background to Brick Stitch like the rest of the rug. I was never really happy with the Basketweave Stitch on the first version. Around the outside of the center motif I only used one color, rather than the two in the first version. It’s better now, but I’m still not completely happy with it.

I was hoping to finish the band on the left side of the rug last night, but only added one motif. I’ll add the one that looks like Irish Chain today and then see if there is room for two more motifs or just one. Then I’ll move on the the right side of the rug and finish that band. I think there is room for 5 motifs on that side. So close to be finished. It’s getting exciting now to see how long it will take to complete this fourth rug.