Thursday, March 08, 2007

What kind of chain.....................?

This is the first of the challenge stitches which was completely new to me and sent me flying to Sharon's Dictionary of Stitches. Well you don't know what you are going to get if you put Barred Chain into a search engine!!!! Well it sounded a bit sado-thingy,... you know! when I started to try it out I thought it was. I have never shed so much blood.
I have not even bothered to scan my sketch because it was just a little wobbly squiggle! I really didn't know what I was going to do with it and I thought I would look up the definition of barred to see if that helped and I came across a reference to a barred spiral galaxy on Wikipedia showing a photograph from the wonderful Hubble Telescope (if you've never visited take a look at the gallery, just breathtaking).
Anyway here is my barred spiral galaxy using barred chain which I have now learnt to love.


Click to get closer. I have posted a photo and a scan as the true colour is somewhere between them both. Aquamarine being the jewel for March, as I think I have mentioned.The material is the remainder of the material I dyed for the EG workshop, the centre of each spiral is a machine made cord and then all the rest is barred chain.I was trying to give the effect of pieces being drwn into the spiral. The scan (at the bottom) looks badly ironed but it is in fact the shadows in the dye.

10 comments:

Gail said...

Very, very cool. I have not even started mine. Love the design.

Magpie's Mumblings said...

Hi Pat
I love the galaxy!! What a unique concept you came up with. I was stymied by this stitch too and found it hard to do. Glad to see you overcame that and did something brilliant.

Susan D said...

Pat, I love you take on alternating barred chain. I've just looked on the link for the Hubble telescope and I can see loads of inspiration for future works.

JoWynn Johns said...

Wonderful! Breath-taking!

neki desu said...

fantastc! you got the stitch down!

neki desu

Annica said...

Great story! LOL. I saw your pictures on flickr earlier. I think your Barred Chain Stitch is beautiful. And thanks for the link to Hubble, what a wonderful site!

Carol said...

Love this sample, It is beautiful and my favourite colours. Wel done you.

Elizabeth said...

Fantastic, I love this interpretation.

Vivian said...

beautiful colours and design!

Mary Corbet said...

Nice! I like the wispy look! And I love the colors!