Is it difficult?

I had a really interesting discussion on my Facebook page yesterday about how it wasn't always easy to tell how hard a design was to stitch. Hopefully I have managed to rectify that now. I have added difficulty ratings to each page of the Speciality Stitch designs. Each design gets a rating from 1 to 5 with 1 being the easiest and 5 the most advanced. I would recommend complete beginners started with a 1, though if you are an experienced cross stitcher, crewel worker etc then a 2 should be pretty simple. You can see a description of the ratings here  or just access the page by clicking on the rating under the design. 

All of my designs come with very detailed instructions which are especially written to be clear to someone who has never encountered the stitch before. Even if you have encountered it I always recommend reading through all of the instructions first just to be clear (JN I am thinking of you :) )

Above all I am always happy to answer any questions that anyone has about any part of one of my patterns. I have discovered over time that what makes perfect sense to one person won't necessarily be clear to another so if I can find a way that does I will certainly try.

Knowing your own worth.

I am working on a piece today that I hope to be able to sell as a Fine Art piece and the difficulty that is haunting me is how do I price something like that. I have clocked up 13 hours on it already. If I was scrubbing floors or filing papers for a living the minimum that I could expect to get in this country for that time is £80.34. I am only 1/2 way through this project at the best estimate, so I'd be looking at £160 just on the creation, that doesn't even take into account cost of materials or and fee that a seller might require. The best I could look at for commission is 25%, most places charge a lot more. So when I release a piece with a price tag of £250+ what will people's reaction be? I guess most people will laugh, but then, wouldn't you want to be paid for your time? Where are the people who paid a fortune for a spirograph picture by Damien Hirst? Embroidery doesn't hit the same market that paintings do. I remember watching the play 'Art' by Yasmina Reza (and thoroughly enjoying it) where friends fall out when one of them purchases a white painting for a silly sum of money. This always comes to mind when I think about selling my work. I wish that I could sell my work for a sum that would pay me minimum wage. When you look at art do you see the time and skill that goes into a piece or just look for the gimmick? (OK now I'm singing a chorus from Gypsy) When I release this piece I will charge what it is worth in time and costs, I won't be able to put any value on for art or skill though. Who knows if I'll be able to sell it? Probably I won't, maybe I'll just end up with a house full of beautiful pieces but still no income. Maybe I'll find an art patron who loves my work because it isn't 'off the wall' and zany. Maybe it's all just dreaming.

What next?

I am trying to work out what to work on next at the moment. I have several very pressing projects on the go but I'm not sure which to go with. My priority has to be to find something that will bring in some money, I can't keep going on the way that I am. I am currently working on a book idea, a piece that I hope to get into a magazine, some fine art pieces, a new work to be sold in chart form and the knot garden pieces. 
I feel like I have a really good idea for a book that will fit well with the mood of the time but this has to be a long term project, there's no way that it will bring in any money in the near future as I have a lot of work to do and then there is no guarantee that I can find a publisher.
The magazine piece is a more likely way to make a bit of income but again, there is no guarantee of take up, the pay is very low and it takes quite a long time.
I am really keen on the idea of working on fine art pieces right now, of course I can't guarantee that they'll sell and they can't be cheap given the amount of work that goes into them. I would love to do some commissions. I would love to do an exhibition. It will take a lot of work though and if I am not constantly releasing new works will people stop looking?
I have designed a lovely new piece that I want to sew as my next 'chart release' this would be the quickest thing to work on but chart sales are too low, I need to take some risks and try and find something that does stand a chance of selling. I need to sell 10 charts a day to make a living, I don't sell anywhere near that many.
The Knot Garden series was a very big hit at my recent demo sessions. I have completed 2 of 4 and I am about 1/4 of the way through no.3. My hope is that I can interest English Heritage in them, either as charts, kits, cards, prints or all of the above, again - no guarantees.
So, 5 good ideas, all time consuming, requiring a lot of work and no guarantee of making anything from them. I have tried working with a rotation before, saying on X day I will work on this and on Y I shall work on that, but once I start working on a piece I tend to become absorbed by it. I have a couple of model stitchers helping me out with the book idea but can't afford to pay people to do it. I guess I'll just have to go with what feels right and hope like mad that something works.

Bespoke Art

I have been wanting for a long time to work on some 'fine art' embroidery pieces. Something larger scale and working with different styles and fabrics. I have decided to offer a High End bespoke design service to create beautiful individual works of embroidered art. I would work with the customer to create something personal to them, maybe to celebrate a wedding or a birth or just to be a piece of featured artwork to compliment their decor. Prices would depend on the types of embroidery involved and would be calculated to cover the amount of hours involved in sewing it and the costs of materials/frames etc. If you would be interested in this then please email me to discuss it.

Tale of a design

Whilst I’m waiting for my website to get back up and running properly I thought that I’d talk a little about the design process from idea to charts.

A design usually starts with a vague thought. I’ll have a shape in mind or a colour scheme that I want to play with. This stage can take hours or, in some cases, years. I always play around with the idea in my head until I have a pretty good idea of how I want it to look before I even attempt to put it down ‘on paper’. Once I start physically designing it, I will have the shape and structure of the design sorted but the details evolve in the ‘drawing’ phase. The designs don’t always come out in one go. Some flow easily but others fight back. ‘Crystal’ for example was an idea that I had had I mind for ages. I knew how I wanted it to look in the centre and out as far as the hardanger part but it took well over a year to finally put together the whole design.

The design process isn’t finished once I have it all mapped out on computer. Sometimes things just don’t look how you expect them to when you start to sew them and then it’s back to the drawing board. This is the main reason that I don’t usually work with a model stitcher. I have to take my hat off to Ylva Saleem here who has stitched a couple for me and has put up with sending daily progress scans and being regularly asked to unpick and try something different. This obviously means that releasing a new design is never a speedy process. On average one of my speciality stitch designs takes 3 months to sew, obviously some more and some less. I try to sew for a minimum 3hrs per day. I admit to not being the world’s fastest stitcher, mainly due to dodgy wrists and the ability to get sidetracked rather easily. I find it best to set targets for how much to achieve per night, I’m rather competitive so don’t like to lose, even if it is just a self set challenge.

I love it when I complete the sewing stage of a piece. I think that’s the best part of it for me. It is however closely followed by the worst part – writing the instructions. I want my designs to be accessible to all, no matter how much experience you have so I write detailed instructions for all parts of the design. The only exceptions are cross stitch and backstitch as I do assume that anyone who is thinking of tackling one of my designs has usually tried cross stitch first. (If however you are completely new to embroidery and would like detailed instructions in those stitches then contact me as I have written some in the past.) Every stitch has hand created diagrams. These are not a quick process. I have never found a graphics programme that meets all my needs so I usually have to work between 3 different ones to get the results that I want. I am pleased with the diagrams that I create and I hope that they are clear for people, they drive me mad as I do them though J I did run a ‘test’ session a few years back where approx 50 people tried out a design and the instructions and then gave me feedback. I found that really helpful for refining my existing instructions and creating future ones. It taught me a valuable lesson that you never know what someone is going to find tricky so try to cover all bases.

I am steadily building up a ‘stitch glossary’ and one of these days I am going to create a pattern that only uses these stitches. My problem is that I always want to do something different, to experiment and play about. I am punished for that at instruction writing stage. I am currently trying to work up the nerve to tackle the instructions for the lacy edge decorations which is probably why I am writing this. Procrastination is something that I excel at. This is the first chart that I have done that uses the lacy edge and that’s going to need a lot of diagrams! Over the years I have rewritten and updated the instructions, which has meant going back over old designs and bringing them all up to the same standard. Hopefully if you tackle one of my designs now it should all be clear and easy to understand. If it isn’t then please email me and I will try to make it so.

All in all I’d say it takes an average of 6 months for a design to go from a spark of an idea to a completed chart. It’s a great day for me when I can finally put it on my website for sale and I love getting feedback from people about them. One advantage of this type of design is that you can (in most cases) choose your own colours to sew them in. Some people have sent me photos of works that they have done and when I get enough I shall add a gallery page to the site. Much as I love creating them, their purpose is to be designs for others to sew so this is, hopefully, just the start of their journey.

A sneaky peek at my latest design

My latest piece (to be released as soon as I have written the instructions) I have called her Joy as she was such fun to stitch. She was created as a retirement present for my daughter's Headteacher. The Maltese Cross is part of their school logo so I took that as my starting point and it just grew from there. I really am pleased with this one, love the colours and the mix of styles.