Book Review Art and Embroidery of Jane Hall

Have any of you seen this book? It is called "The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall". This is a great book for inspiration - it's not your usual embroidery book. Jane Hall also uses paint, paper, cut silk, wire, etc. to achieve her effects. When she shows a piece, it may consist of 3 or 4 vertical planes, placed one in front of another to evoke a particular effect.

This book transforms you to a different world. It is a richly textured portrayal of a reverence for nature. It's one of the few embroidery books that is enjoyable to read, as well as peruse for pictures. Jane Hall can find solace in a single snowdrop; she is awed by the wonder of nature and it shows. Her work is layers upon layers of shimmering silks, chiffons, organza and ribbons.

She spends 2-3 months minimum on each of her pieces; the care she takes is evident. No detail is left unstudied, nor its influence on the mood of the completed piece. Even her chapter on materials is mouth-wateringly inspiring. Her fabric/thread design swatches are gorgeous! Although her creatures are more inspired by imagination than reality, sometimes you have to look twice to see which is which. Each of her pieces is shown in full and then in several detail shots, with descriptions of her working methods. In particular, she describes her methods for achieving depth from afar to up close.

There is a mood to her descriptions – awe, wonder, delight in nature and veneration.
It’s hard to believe anyone could improve upon nature, but Jane Hall’s work does.

More playing with needleweaving

I love texture and decided to get out some of my yarns to do some needlewoven bars (long ones!) for this landscape. My felting pad came in really handy; once I felted the background. I pinned the end of my loooong loop(s) down into the pad to prepare for the needle weaving. Ironically, I didn't use a needle for the weaving, since my yarn lengths were a yard long or more. At first I kept running out of yarn before finishing weaving the loop, but eventually I just doubled the yarn, like you would use a double thread in a needle, but without the needle. Then you have a loop at the end of your weaving yarn and if you run out, you can just loop another long length of yarn onto it, avoiding a knot, and keep on weaving.
So I had a bunch of bars coming out of the left side and some coming out of the right side. I hid the end of one bar under the curve of another. It was fun to intertwine (weave!) the bars to resemble hills, the ground, etc....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Playing with needleweaving

I've been playing more with needle-weaving as part of SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009 and I have so many ideas floating around in my head! Not enough time to try them all, but anyway, I thought the idea of a hand was a good one. It was hard to get good proportions - even though I used a picture as a guide (basted to the back), the fingers came out longer and fatter than I planned, but still, you can tell it's a hand. I didn't want to spend hours weaving the palm of the hand, so I used a thicker and lighter shade of blue for the weft portion of the palm.



I didn't secure the thumb and 2 of the fingers down, so that I could try making a peace sign. Peace out, man..... yes I was a hippie in the 70s....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon