Dover Clip Art....

I can not draw.  Ok, I can draw, but not so that anyone can tell what it is that I have drawn.  Therefore, I use other sources for my embroidery designs.  I get a lot from on line, of course -- type a search in Google Images and I'm off.  I've gotten pretty good at finding the outlines in a drawing for tracing.

I also use Dover Electronic Clip Art.  There are lots available (quick search on Amazon had over 1,000 hits) -- and many of them make excellent designs for embroidery, both historically based and modern.

One huge advantage, of course, is the ease of scaling the designs.

005 Asparagus

One of my favorite is Medieval Herb, Plant and Flour Illustrations.  The book has images of each of the designs, numbered.  The CD has a separate folder for each of six different formats -- PMP, EPS, GIF, JPEG, PICT, and TIFF.  Simply leaf through the pages, select the design you like and find it on the CD in the format you prefer.

So, go to Amazon, or directly to Dover Publications and browse the Clip Art with CDs.

Happy designing!

Happy busy Monday

Coming up for air to do a very quick post and let my fingers rest a little from seam finishing on my husband's silk tunic for Saturday.  I had today off from work and have spent most of it in my studio working on this.  Suddenly, I'm not able to make myself "cut corners" -- so even though I originally said "I'll finish the seams after Saturday" here I sit, finishing seams.

I did spend some time over the weekend working with a friend on designs for some embroidery  -- one of which will ultimately be part of my Couching & Laid embroidery presentation.

The requested embroidery is for clothing, and there is only a little bit of specific evidence of what clothing embroidery of the period looks like, none of which is actually what we want to use.  We turned, instead, to designs in other mediums.  A search on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Search the Collections" helped again, and we found a design on a piece of jewelry which will translate to couched cord admirably.

Good sources of general embroidery motifs can be found in architecture, jewelry and paintings of the period you are looking for.  Here is a lovely architectural piece that has a design I have seen echoed in embroidery of many periods, and which could be translated in many forms.  Perhaps next summer, when I am looking for new challenges I will do something with it.

Arch Fragment, ca. 1130-40, MMA Accession 25.120.607
The Cloisters Collection 1925

Well, back to seams.  Hopefully next week I'll be able to show off his new tunic and shirt.