Stolen From The Muses

Guess who! Working on my next embroidery portrait pattern. I went totally pop art this time! 😅 And if you are here for the knitting: I’m wearing #moriartycardigan by @morganem2 knitted in @garnstudio DROPS Wish. Unquestionably my most worn piece this winter! #portrait #digitalportrait #embroideryportrait #textileportrait #portraitartist #contemporaryart #affinitydesigner https://www.instagram.com/p/CcA-tnIKU4u/?utm_medium=tumblr

🧵Luneville embroidery probably shouldn’t be done in the sofa. But is Saturday afternoon and I regret nothing ✌️ #luneville #lunevilleembroidery #lunevillehook #modernthreadartist #contemporaryembroidery #portrait #portraitembroidery #freestyleembroidery #sketching #sketchembroidery #tulleembroidery #embroideryontulle https://www.instagram.com/p/CbS3oM0qoSI/?utm_medium=tumblr

Guess who’s finished and taking a bath! 🥳 Next time you’ll see her here, she will be properly presented and framed 🤞 #crochetportrait #fiberportrait #crochetart #textileart #freeformcrochet #portrait #threadcrochet #portraitartist #fiberartist #crochet #queensgambit #contemporaryartist #galleryart #anyataylorjoy @anyataylorjoy https://www.instagram.com/p/CbLEqquKxv-/?utm_medium=tumblr

I finally finished the sampler for the second level course of Hardanger with @b.o.r.d.a.r . Although some of these squares looked complicated, the technique is really easy to understand… you just need concentration, good sight and steady pulse 😅 There might be accidents with the scissors if one of these requirements fails, but fortunatelly the course also covers how to solve these misshaps. If you speak Spanish, Cris will teach new courses for levels 1 and 2 from March 10th to May 10th. And if you are #clubdudua member, she will teach a 2 hours online session on Hardanger on March 20th. #embroidery #hardanger #hardange #countedstitchembroidery @duduabcn https://www.instagram.com/p/CaU3Vs4qIX5/?utm_medium=tumblr

Getting her likeness… but I added a few clues in the pictures just in case 😅 ♟Do you guess who she is? #crochetportrait #wip #fiberportrait #crochetart #textileart #freeformcrochet #portrait #threadcrochet #portraitartist #fiberartist #crochet #queensgambit #contemporaryartist #galleryart https://www.instagram.com/p/CaIFjr5KDkc/?utm_medium=tumblr

When you are on yarn diet, but @xollawool is finally available… 😻 🧶 La Pastoreta by @xollawool is a fingering weight yarn made by 100% ripollesa wool, the wool from an endangered Catalan sheep breed. 🐈‍⬛Although it is a rustic yarn, it doesn’t feel itchy at all… and Ònix approves it XD She tried to stole several skeins while I was taking the picture and spent all time purring over them! 🐏 Since I read @independentstitch Deborah Robson’s “The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook”, I try to buy wool from rare and endangered sheep breeds whenever I have the occasion. It’s a small gesture, but as childhood Catalan hero Capità Enciam* says: “small changes are powerful”. 🙌 As soon as I know that Elena was creating this project, I started following her and waiting for this moment. She made a terrific work. Not only for the beautiful yarn that has nothing to envy to more known brands, but for getting ahead with this beautiful enterprise. I wish her lots of luck! 👍 Buy rare and endangered sheep breed’s wool and help keep them from becoming extinct. And now that you can, buy @xollawool! (Not sponsored, just a fan!). 🥬 *Captain Lettuce… it was a parody of superheros in a series of short sketches in Catalan TV whose aim was to raise awareness of ecology and recycling, implying that taking care of our natural environment is in the hands of each one of us. At the end of each sketch, he ended with his motto “Small changes are powerful”. #yarnporn #purewool #naturalwool #endangeredbreedsheep #yarnlover #elspetitscanvissonpoderosos https://www.instagram.com/p/CZzJFI4qARb/?utm_medium=tumblr

🖊 Long before deciding that we will visit Vic for @mostlymaths birthday, he asked me to embroider the Bic ballpoint pen patent as his present. 🥳 “It will be fun”, he said… No, it was not fun. But he is happy with his present and that’s enough for me. 🪡 This is the original László Bíró’s 1938 patent for the ballpoint pen that he submited before leaving Hungary and emigrating to Argentina. Later he improved the design, filled newer patents, and ended by selling his patent rights to French businessman Marcel Bich, who in 1950 launched Bic Cristal, today’s best-selling pen worldwide. 📸 I don’t know if the Bic/Vic pun makes any sense in English (in fact it shouldn’t make sense in well-pronounced Catalan), but we have been joking with it all week. And no, we haven’t decided to visit Vic for the embroidery or the pun, but stars aligned and we took this picture just before leaving the city. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #handembroideryart #needlework #fiberart #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #patents #industrialdesign #industrialdesignart (at Vic, Cataluna, Spain) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZmyBjGrK_E/?utm_medium=tumblr

🪡 Maybe too abstract to be my “thing”, but I enjoyed the process of embroidering out of my comfort zone. 🚂 We made a short trip to Vic to celebrate @mostlymaths birthday and I took with me a limited palette of vintage threads and a piece of tulle with the idea to make some quick sketches with thread and needle. 🧵I will not fool you: it wasn’t quick. As soon as I drafted the first lines I realized that I wanted to give it more texture and depth, and I finished doing only one scene that took me several hours. 🌅 The embroidered postcard is from the Cathedral’s Bell Tower (the highest in Romanic style in Catalonia) and a statue of bishop Oliba, who ordered its construction in the XI th century. If you have never visited Vic as a tourist before (I have only been here for work and enclosed in a meeting room all day), the medieval art collection in its Episcopal Museum and the Leather Art Museum are worth a visit. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #threadsketching #handembroideryart #needlework #fiberart #freestyleembroidery #freehandembroidery #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #tulleembroidery (at Vic, Cataluna, Spain) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZkF1QAuxCI/?utm_medium=tumblr

🪡 Cete admirabilis formae… or what here at home we call the whale with a Futurama’s brain slug on top. 📚 The reference image for this sketch embroidery comes from “Exoticorum libri decem: quibus animalium, plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrin. fructuum historiae describuntur” (1605) by Carolus Clusius or Charles de L’Écluse. 👨🏻‍🌾 Carolus Clusius was a doctor, mycologist, and pioneering botanist of the XVI century, one of the first scientists who provided scientific explanations of the plants and animals he talked about. Among his contributions, we can find the creation of Leiden’s Hortus Botanicus, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. He is considered one of the founders of horticulture. 🐳 Carolus Clusius hadn’t seen this whale himself. He included in his book the image and description made by father Ludovicus of Granada (1504-1588) in his Catechismo*️⃣. According to that, the whale was stranded on the beach of Peniche (Portugal?) and was dead when the description was made. It was a huge animal, so big that barely two large men could be seen standing on either side. Its eyes were one cubit long and its head measured four cubits high… I’m not sure of having translated the measurements well either though. 🧵 This embroidery is part of my personal project to translate to thread zoological illustrations of Sixteenth to Eighteenth-century. *️⃣ Take all this translation with a pinch of salt, as my Latin is rustier than a nail in a backyard. One of my purposes for this year is to refresh it to better understand the books I’m using for this embroidery project. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #threadsketching #handembroideryart #freestyleembroidery #freehandembroidery #threadpainting #needlepainting #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #tinystitches #naturalhistory #whale #slowlife #zoologyillustration #zoologicalliterature #animalillustration #animalembroidery #seamonster #nerdembroidery #engravingstyle #futurama #brainslug https://www.instagram.com/p/CZHidtFq0bO/?utm_medium=tumblr

I always admired @valentinasknits unique style of patterns. The intricate decoration in her yokes look complex but in truth are very easy to make and remember. She has a nice attention for detail, designing not only beautiful yokes but harmonizing the design with small bits of the motif in cuffs and hems. It has been an enormous pleasure to testknit Valentina’s next pattern. I enjoyed every row of Ariya sweater and I can’t recommend you enough to make one yourself as soon as she release it. 🧶 I knitted my Ariya sweater with @thewoolbrokers 2ply jumper weight in an ashy green colorway labeled as FC62. I need more of this wool in other colors: total in love with it! #ariyasweater #knittinglife #sweaterweather #slowlife #testknitting #plantlover https://www.instagram.com/p/CZBwUBIOX1J/?utm_medium=tumblr

Bishop Fish. 🪡Sketch embroidery of Rondelet’s ‘De pisce Episcopi habitu’ or the fish in a bishop’s habit, from his “Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus ver piscium effigies express sunt” (1554). 📚 Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) is considered the grandfather of ichthyology and his work had been studied and admired for centuries. According to Rondelet, the Bishop Fish habitated the Baltic Sea, where it had been caught and brought to Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Aparently, the fish expressed its wish to be returned to the sea and his wish was granted. 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🎏 Although Rondelet included the Bishop Fish in his book, it has a really short description that shows his skepticism about it, as in this case it was a second-hand description and he hadn’t seen the specimen himself. He ends its short description with “Vera ca fit an non, nec affirmo nec refello”: “Whether it is true or not, I neither affirm nor refute”. 🧵This embroidery is part of my personal project to translate to thread zoological illustrations of Sixteenth to Eighteenth-century. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #threadsketching #handembroideryart #freestyleembroidery #freehandembroidery #threadpainting #needlepainting #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #tinystitches #naturalhistory #orca #slowlife #zoologyillustration #zoologicalliterature #animalillustration #animalembroidery #seamonster #nerdembroidery #engravingstyle https://www.instagram.com/stolenfromthemuses/p/CYhHF_xI3k4/?utm_medium=tumblr

Brace yourselves, for a new niche of nerdiness has entered my life on the first day of 2022 and you will suffer the consequences! Drumroll…: Sixteenth to Eighteenth-century zoology books and their illustrations. I dived down the rabbit hole and nobody and nothing can stop me now! Don’t try to help me because it’s tremendously bizarre and I LOVE IT!!! What a delicious fantasy! It all started with my embroidery of a Dodo based on Willem Piso’s ‘De Indiae Utriusque Re Naturali et Medica libri quatuordecim’ (1658) engravings. I was just looking for image references of a dodo… and this book captivated me, and I needed more. Doing my research, two days ago I read a fabulous book about the first nature illustrators where I discovered several more authors. First zoologists tried to be scientific and accurate, but working with third-hand descriptions, dead specimens, and seasoning the lack of data with their artistry and imagination, sometimes they ended with fascinating creatures that would delight any wizardry book lover. As an introvert nerd that suddenly discovers a new feed of knowledge, I need to explore this field further and it may be my only conversation topic in a while. And as my medium and personal interest right now is thread sketching, I have put on the table a new challenge for myself this year, and it is to translate to thread these wonders and share them with you. As in my previous posts, this embroidery is a direct thread on fabric sketch without previous drawing or reference lines in the hoop, so it isn’t an exact copy of Guillaume Rondelet’s “Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus ver piscium effigies express sunt” (1554) Orca, but it’s pretty close. Rondelet is considered the grandfather of ichthyology and his work (in most cases the first-hand observation of living animals and specimens that he dissected himself) had been studied and admired for centuries. Even though, he also illustrated several “fascinating creatures” which he had not personally seen and that I will have to share with you soon. Fasten your seatbelts because we have not been prepared for what has to come. #contemporaryembroidery #threadsketching #freestyleembroidery https://www.instagram.com/p/CYZYP5iIdeL/?utm_medium=tumblr

The anteater. 🐜 📚 Willem Piso’s ‘De Indiae Utriusque Re Naturali et Medica libri quatuordecim’ (1658) engravings are a delightful source of references for thread sketching! 🪡 This anteater is my second embroidery this year, again a direct thread on fabric sketch without previous drawing or reference lines in the hoop. 🧵 I feel like I am getting more confident with my stitches thanks to this kind of warming up embroidery. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #threadsketching #handembroideryart #freestyleembroidery #freehandembroidery #threadpainting #needlepainting #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #tinystitches #naturalhistory #anteater #plantlover #slowlife https://www.instagram.com/p/CYRZA70Ihiv/?utm_medium=tumblr

🦤The Dodo. 🪡 First embroidery of 2022 is a thread sketching, direct thread on fabric without previous drawing or reference lines in the hoop. 🦤For thread sketching this hoop I took as reference Willem Piso’s engraving of a Dronte (Dodo) from 'De Indiae Utriusque Re Naturali et Medica libri quatuordecim’ (1658). A digital copy of the book is available at @wellcomecollection , a natural and scientific museum in London that pleasantly surprised me when I visited it several years ago. #contemporaryembroidery #modernembroidery #threadsketching #handembroideryart #freestyleembroidery #freehandembroidery #threadpainting #needlepainting #embroiderersofinstagram #embroideryartist #handstitch #tinystitches #naturalhistory #naturalhistoryillustration #dodo #extinctfauna #plantlover #slowlife https://www.instagram.com/stolenfromthemuses/p/CYOsR3lo9zT/?utm_medium=tumblr