Urist McDorf

A little WIP look at my TAST weeks 3 and 15, and my embroidered diary entry for week ending 7th April 2012.

Since looking up some youtube videos on stem stitch I discovered the source of my previous difficulty with the stitch.  Turns out I completely misunderstood how it was worked.  Now I know what I’m doing I’m finding it a lot easier, and now it might actually be one of my favourite stitches.

I’ve used stem stitch for the head of the mop, the swirly Spring Cleaning bits (which showcase some gorgeous new DMC colours the lovely lady at my LYS tempted me into buying!) and for the hair on my mini-me.  The rest so far is satin stitch.  I’ll start on the text next, and I still need to work out how to work feather stitch into this.  Maybe I’ll play around with it as a filler for the swirly bits.

One thing I’m finding interesting.  IRL I actually have massive breasts to go with my mighty hips and thunderthighs, but I find if I try and sketch both a large top and bottom half it’s difficult to convey motion in the poses, whereas if I leave the ribcage and breasts relatively smaller I can more easily indicate movement and more complex poses.  This isn’t much of a problem when I’m JUST drawing, but with the simplified details in my embroidery, it is. 

I was originally going to pose me leaning against the mop, looking tired with one arm melodramatically brushing my forehead, but although the pose is possible and normal IRL it looked really odd sketched, as I had to make it look as though I’d dislocated my hips from my spine to convey it through stitches, and you couldn’t even see the pose properly at all if I left both halves of my body big.