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Jul. 22nd, 2020 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfI'm high right now so idk how much sense this will make or still be profound when I'm sober, but here goes.
First, some background on embroidery. Yes this is necessary. Also it's my damn blog 😂
So. A satin stitch is used to fill areas with a solid block of color. If you do it the traditional way, you use floss on both the front and back. It's pretty wasteful to use that much floss when you're only going to see half of it. Enter the surface satin stitch, which uses half the floss because you only cover the top part of the fabric.
A satin stitch is a long series of straight stitches, which can get unwieldy if the straight stitches are very very long, like the part of Blathers's wing here close to the torso. But you can't really tack them down because there's too many and it would ruin the smooth look of the satin stitch. And you don't want the stitches to be too diagonal, because it would ruin the look.
So the solution is to make them verrry slightly diagonal, so they overlap each other just a little bit--not enough to be super obvious, but enough that you don't have the problem of long rows of straight stitches.
I thought I'd discovered something brilliant, but no, it turns out I just reinvented otomi. Otomi can refer to the stitch and style of embroidery that originated in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, or a group of indigenous peoples located in the same.
And independently figuring out this process myself was really fucking cool, because my brain is similar enough to a Ñuhu/Hñähñu (how they refer to themselves) person however many decades/centuries ago that we both arrived at the same basic conclusion. One of the things I did not expect when taking up embroidery was how ubiquitous a craft it is (although when I think about it it is very obvious). If people sew to make clothes, they almost invariably embroider. It is a thing that makes me feel connected to all these people around the world and in the past. (Also my grandma, who used to be a seamstress and who I associate with needlecraft.)
I also love that a practical, utilitarian thing, born out of the need to conserve resources, can also be art. I'm not much of a decoration for decoration's sake person, but I do love the things I use to be beautiful, in make, design, decoration, or all three.
Look. it's just really cool, OK?
First, some background on embroidery. Yes this is necessary. Also it's my damn blog 😂
So. A satin stitch is used to fill areas with a solid block of color. If you do it the traditional way, you use floss on both the front and back. It's pretty wasteful to use that much floss when you're only going to see half of it. Enter the surface satin stitch, which uses half the floss because you only cover the top part of the fabric.
A satin stitch is a long series of straight stitches, which can get unwieldy if the straight stitches are very very long, like the part of Blathers's wing here close to the torso. But you can't really tack them down because there's too many and it would ruin the smooth look of the satin stitch. And you don't want the stitches to be too diagonal, because it would ruin the look.
So the solution is to make them verrry slightly diagonal, so they overlap each other just a little bit--not enough to be super obvious, but enough that you don't have the problem of long rows of straight stitches.
I thought I'd discovered something brilliant, but no, it turns out I just reinvented otomi. Otomi can refer to the stitch and style of embroidery that originated in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, or a group of indigenous peoples located in the same.
And independently figuring out this process myself was really fucking cool, because my brain is similar enough to a Ñuhu/Hñähñu (how they refer to themselves) person however many decades/centuries ago that we both arrived at the same basic conclusion. One of the things I did not expect when taking up embroidery was how ubiquitous a craft it is (although when I think about it it is very obvious). If people sew to make clothes, they almost invariably embroider. It is a thing that makes me feel connected to all these people around the world and in the past. (Also my grandma, who used to be a seamstress and who I associate with needlecraft.)
I also love that a practical, utilitarian thing, born out of the need to conserve resources, can also be art. I'm not much of a decoration for decoration's sake person, but I do love the things I use to be beautiful, in make, design, decoration, or all three.
Look. it's just really cool, OK?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 05:47 am (UTC)