Shisha Embroidery

This is one of the pieces I've been working on. I still need to put a border around it and maybe some more beading and a design on the border. I'm thinking of also mounting it on a canvas. I showed this background in the post that I did on Indian Inspiration. I haven't named it yet, I'll wait till its finished.

I love the look of Shisha Embroidery. There is a good tutorial on the Joyful Abode blog.

These are some books on Shisha Embroidery that I have.

This is a great book. It is quite detailed. It shows 10 different methods of doing Shisha as well as lots of design ideas. It is packed full of photos - the only disappointment is that they aren't all in colour.

Nearly half of this book is made up of Transfer patterns to be used for Shisha Embroidery. This initially put me off this book as I don't really like using patterns but these are good as a starting point and useful to inspire your own designs. In the introduction it links Shisha Embroidery to Mumtaz Mahal, whose husband the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal. It states that she, "Is credited by some with having originated the idea and techniques for Shisha embroidery." There is an interesting section on Regional Styles of Shisha Embroidery. It also has diagrams on how to do Shisha and other stitches. This book doesn't have alot of photos. Once again most of the photos are in black and white. This is a shame as the patterns and embroideries are so colourful, it would be good to see them in their full splendour.

I love the picture on the front of this book. Surjeet Husain, who wrote this book, was born in India and intially learnt embroidery from her Aunt. She is now a Lecturer in Textiles in London and teaches the art of Indian and English embroidery. The book has sections on General Information, Stitches, A Project - a Bushkiri Bag and Design inspiration. It has some good designs at the back and shows how you can develop a pattern. Surjeet has two other workbooks on Indian styles of Embroidery.

Some links that show Shisha Embroidery are:

Shisha Embroidery Flickr Group

Stitch Magazine Article

Shisha Google Images

Guatemalan Textiles

I love fabric and embroidery from other countries. I have been reading Rayela's Fiber Focus blog and came across her posts on Guatamala. There are some posts on there from Erin, who has an Etsy shop called La Chapina. She sells wonderful packs of Scrap sampler Huipil patches. I ordered one as I wanted to have some interesting pieces to use in my stash.


They came with a cute little worry doll.

They are all so colourful and interesting. I'm going to incorporate them into different pieces that I do.



I went on Dalene's blog - Art4sol today and saw that she has also purchased a pack of these and she has done a post on this today. I hope Darlene doesn't mind that I've also done a post. It's abit like show and tell - I wanted to show mine too. Darlene does some really lovely work, so it will be interesting to see what she uses these for.



I wanted to find out some more about Guatamalan Textiles so I got these two books out of the Library while I was waiting for the pack to arrive.

This book is one of the books in the Fabric Folios series (a great series). Its full of vibrant photos of Guatemalan Textile pieces with explanations of the techniques. The introduction presents interesting background information on materials used, principal techniques, patterns and symbolism plus more. This is a large hardcovered book. Its a beautiful book that covers Textiles from the areas of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand; Orissa, Rajasthan and Gujarat; Mexico and Guatemala; Panama; Romania and Benin. It is full of lots of "Eye Candy". There are many photos of traditional costumes, people and beautiful fabrics. It is written as a Textile Tour of the world where you are transported to each country as she writes about her travels, details about people she meets and her experiences with lots of background information included. It will be hard parting with this one!

Indian Sensations

This is a piece I've started on, which is inpired by India. There's lots more embroidery on it still to come.

India is so rich in beauty, colour, culture, religion, amazing textiles and architecture. Although I haven't been there before it is one place that inspires me creatively. So I wanted to do a post that celebrated all these wonderful aspects of India and gives lots of inspirational avenues to explore the many aspects of Indian style.

So sit back, pour yourself a cup of Chia, put your speakers on, imagine you are wrapped up in an exotic embroidered sari in your favourite colour and let yourself slip through space and time into a land of enchantment, visiting ancient temples, taking in the aromas of the many spices in the Indian Bazaars and let your spirit dance to the beat of the drums....

Photo Credits

Click on photo credits and click on the links to go to each of the various photographers sites. You can find many amazing photos of India on Flickr.

More amazing Indian photos from various photographers can be found on my flickr favourites page.

Explore the many Indian Inspired books:

Also some books I want to get The Techniques of Indian Embroidery and Indian Embroidery.

Watch these wonderful films:

Slumdog Millionaire

Monsoon Wedding

A Passage to India

The Darjeeling Limited

Spend some time looking at India through others eyes - explore these blogs and websites: (click on the names to go to the sites)

Deezden - Dithi does beautiful Indian art work and her blog is so colourful and inspiring

I'd Rather Be in India - Tiggy writes about her visits to India, her second home. Her dyeing, stitching and teaching are inspired by her love of India.

Rang - The Colours of Life

And Another...

ArtnLight

A Cup of Chai

India and I

The Indian Road Romeo

Indian Embroidery Styles

Indian Yarn

Once Upon a Tea Time

An Indian Summer

Photo credit - go to Photo_Mind's photostream

Drift away on the aromas of curries and spices on these blogs:

Indian Food Kitchen Blog

Petrina's Indian Food Blog

Also explore Flickr Groups inspired by india:

I Love India Traditional

Incredible India

India - Miniature Paintings and Wall Paintings

Shisha Embroidery

Indian Food

India - Art and Crafts

India - Village Life

Hope you have enjoyed your travels.

Namaste

Not just another embroidery book

I was so excited when I received this book in the mail. I purchased it from The Thread Studio and it cost a fair bit. So I was abit worried when I ordered it. In the past I have ordered some books from various places and been disappointed because the content hasn't lived up to my expectations. But this book definately exceeds my expectations.

This book is so comprehensive and inspirational. In the introduction it mentions that "241 stitches are clearly described and illustrated ....exploring the possibilities of contemporary embroidery. The author has also done extensive research on the embroideries of other countries, bringing to light new stitches and unusual variations of traditional stitches."

The sections of the book cover - Starting to Stitch, The Stitches - Flat stitches, looped stitches, chained stitches, knotted stitches, couching and laid work, and Creating with stitches.

When explaining stitches she gives comprehensive directions, easy to follow diagrams, lots of variations, ideas and examples of work. I really liked how she talks about the background of the stitches, the country they came from and various little snippets of stories relating to them. She writes in a casual way that is easy to read and follow.

I particularly enjoyed the story about her search for a Tuareg nomad blouse from Niger, which she had once seen a photo of and her duplication of the stitches.

The Creating with Stitches section is really inspiring and gives lots of ideas for creating your own contemporary designs. Some of the chapters, Building Borders spontaneously and Embroidering flower shapes, both give many ideas for combining stitches in different ways with lots of illustrations.

As you can tell, I love this book. It makes me excited and full of inspirational ideas just looking through it. When I first got it, one of my first thoughts was that there was a lifetime of learning in the book. It is a great reference book to have for embroiderers of any level.

Books and Cooking Class

Today I did a wonderful cooking Class called Elegant Vegetarian with Nadine Abensur . Nadine is the author of some cookbooks, two of these are - Enjoy and The Cranks Bible. We made Mediterranean Garlic Soup with Red Onion and Cumin Jam, Cauliflower Fritters in Chickpea batter with Zhoug, Dolmades of Haloumi in olive oil with pine nut, tomato and Chickpea couscous. Artichoke and Parsley Salad, Fried Eggplant with pistashio, coriander, orange blossom pesto and finally for dessert - Churros with Chocolate sauce. The food was absolutely beautiful and Nadine is such a great chef and teacher. I'll have to keep my eye out for more of her classes as it was alot of fun.

This is one book I have been interested in getting but I ended up getting it out from my local library. It starts off with the basics and then has a gallery of lots of designs, explaining how they are done. Then the last section has various projects. The designs in the book are all very modern, interesting and are great inspiration to explore your own ideas. I haven't tried Crewel before so I'll have to have a go. But this one is also good for exploring ideas for other types of embroidery as well.

I also found this book "Stitches for Embroidery" at my local library and it turned out to be abit of a surprise. I'd like to buy this book to have as a reference book. The first part has a stitch sampler of the 20 stitches that are used in the book followed by the directions for doing each stitch. The next sections explore Lines, Texture, Filling Shapes, Leaves and Foliage, Round Flowers, Flower Spikes, Flower Impressions, Stems Trunks and Branches, Trees, Sky, Water, Buildings, Stitch patterns, Patterns from Nature, Getting it all together and Designs. I haven't had time to sit down and have a really good read of this yet but it explores many ideas for expressing these various ideas with stitch. It looks like a book I'll be able to learn alot from.

I love the quilt on the cover of this book!

I love the quilt on this cover so much. The colours are just so striking and the beading looks great.

I got this book a few weeks ago and I've enjoyed reading it. The first section covers the basics, so its a good book for beginners.

The next section covers projects. It covers projects from beginners to more advanced including the quilt from the front cover. I like coming up with my own ideas so I don't like just doing projects and creating a replica of the project piece. Although I am tempted with that cover quilt design. Anyway, I'm finding lots of interesting ideas and beading ideas that I can use to inspire my own creations.

The last section is a gallery of some amazing beaded quilts by various artists and has lots of great eye candy. One of the artists is Susan Sorrell. I have done a few of Susan's online Joggles classes. Her classes are wonderful and her art quilts amazing. I'll have to look up some of the other artists up on the internet and see more of there work.

In the book I think there are a few too many projects with just basic beading and although some of the projects are more advanced I would have liked to see a really heavily beaded quilt with detailed instructions on doing the beading. Apart from that its a great book and any how I just love it for its cover.