Myths and Dragons-The Four Elements

Working on the second collection in the Myths and Dragons series, I had to rethink my original plan. My initial plan had been to create one dragon in both the 5×7 and the 6×10 hoop sizes with a couple of borders. However, as I was finalising the designs, more and more ideas kept coming to me. So finally I had to stop and think where I was going with all these designs. Looking at the four major designs created in the collection, I immediately thought of the four elements, water, fire, air and earth. As the dragon was primarily to be Chinese, I had a bit of imagining to do to fit in the four elements in the Chinese mythology. Chinese mythology is based upon five elements rather than four. Air, water, fire, rock and metal are the five elements in chinese mythology. But, as everyone knows how much I like to twist the designs to blend in with today’s likes….I decided to bring the Chinese artwork into the four elements as we know them.

My main idea was to only create all the designs for the 5×7 hoop as I have had a lot of friends tell me that stitching out already split designs is not easy for them, no matter how easy I make it to be… So with that in mind, I worked with the designs so they were extremely light density, with tons of specialty stitches making up the designs so one does not have to wait for several hours for a design to stitch out. Each of the four elements can easily be converted to a jacket back design if preferred by adding a border (as shown in the wall hanging) to it.

As the designs are two sizes, they easily can decorate just about any size garment/home decor etc. Just when I thought I was finished, I had this brainwave to find a fabric with chinese writing on it. Well, the one I had in my stash was a bit too bright for my wall hanging so I found just the perfect fabric and then created my own handwriting to make up for the fabric. I really liked the idea and am thinking of just creating my own fabric by embroidering some of the Chinese motifs here and there before cutting out to make whatever garment.

The first element: Water. Water is most essential for all mankind, humans, animals and plants alike. The Chinese fish sign is usually Koi fish but I felt the need for some thing a bit unusual.  I used specialty stitches which show a bit of the background fabric yet are fancy enough to create a definite eye catching design and yet at the same time give the illusion of movement.

Most of the Chinese symbols that I have seen are intertwined with scrolls. The scrolls do not have any definite meaning that I could find so I created my own scroll work and planted my turtle depicting earth in the center of it. Such a large body of the turtle with specialty stitches was a bit of distraction from the scrollwork in the background so I created an illusion of ribcage on the turtle with a fancy fill around giving it texture.

I had a bit of time tring to figure out which bird I wanted to use for the air sign. The end result is a mixture of crane/pheasant. Actually it is rather a stylized artwork with lots of feathers etc giving the effect of air and movement.  I further went ahead and used two different threads for the plumes as that does give a pleasant look rather than just one color.

The last sign that of fire I chose of course the dragon but a more Chinese looking dragon. Again I chose specialty stitches for the body with lots of gold on its face, crown, claws and body.

Each of the panels were then surrounded by a single motif creating a border around each of the element signs. This tied up all the elements together. I had purchased some specialty fabrics for the border of the wall hanging but it almost seemed as if the fabric were drawing the eye away from the embroidery so I opted for a simple red panel at the top and bottom. The red panel was further embroidered using some of the Chinese wordings like peace, happiness, eternity, air, water, fire and earth. A very bright and cheery bell pull indeed but one I’m sure my Chinese friends would appreciate (I  hope). The designs are all completed and in the process of testing and I hope to release the collection as soon as I return from the American Embroidery Conference (early April). Ofcourse the set will be introduced at the show.