concentriccookies - Tumblr blog

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CLOSED- We raised $230 for Anera! Thank you so so much to everyone who donated/shared you are all wonderful people. This blew my very conservative goal of what i was hoping to reach way out of the water!

The raffle video is up on my insta stories now and i've contacted the winner.

Final thankyou again to everyone ❤🍉❤

Hey y'all! Doing a raffle for this piece to support aid orgs in Gaza!

To enter:

$5 /entry or $20 gets you 5 entries!

Donate directly to https://www.anera.org/ (Or any aid org of your choice supporting Gaza currently and dm me your receipt)

I'll be running this primarily over on my instagram - concentricstitchery (will link it in a reblog) i'll be posting the draw video there on tuesday in my stories for accountability. Head over there if u want or if its easier just dm me here! It really doesnt matter! I'll be keeping track of where people come from and contacting them their chosen platform.

I'll keep this open till Sunday Feb 4th and draw on Tuesday the 6th. 

Last but not least, free Palestine!

[concentriccookies]

Hey y'all! Doing a raffle for this piece to support aid orgs in Gaza!

To enter:

$5 /entry or $20 gets you 5 entries!

Donate directly to https://www.anera.org/ (Or any aid org of your choice supporting Gaza currently and dm me your receipt)

I'll be running this primarily over on my instagram - concentricstitchery (will link it in a reblog) i'll be posting the draw video there on tuesday in my stories for accountability. Head over there if u want or if its easier just dm me here! It really doesnt matter! I'll be keeping track of where people come from and contacting them their chosen platform.

I'll keep this open till Sunday Feb 4th and draw on Tuesday the 6th. 

Last but not least, free Palestine!

[concentriccookies]

[Image ID: @cicigaretteburnslikefairylights left a reply "Do you have a preferred type/brand or hoop you'd recommend that holds tension the best?"]

I love if i can find rough wooden laminate hoops. I usually only find them in the larger hoop sizes, like 12" and 14" but sometimes have gotten lucky and found smaller sizes too.

A couple years ago i invested in some Hardwick Manor hoops which are made of solid beechwood and have amazingly solid brass hardware too. I use these only as working hoops and then switch my embroidery to a bamboo or cheaper hoop for display after im done working on them. I also wrap the inside of my hardwick manor hoops with twill tape cause it gives them a bit more grip cause the wood is so nicely finished its a bit more slippery (nowhere near as bad as plastic imo tho lmao).

Also if you can find vintage hoops theyre usually a much better quality then the bamboo hoops of today, so i value them when i am gifted them or find them at thrift stores.

You do definitely need to check them though because they can have gaps too, especially the oval ones.

(I stained the wooden laminate and bamboo hoops with acrylic to give them the darker wood look that i like for display use)

If, like me, its really hard to find anything but bamboo around you i just suggest really checking each hoop all around the edge for fit. Also sometimes the inner hoop fits into the outer one in a very specific way, so i'll keep that in mind and try to preserve that when installing the fabric.

Wraping the inner hoop of the bamboo might help? But i havnt tried it yet since i got my hardwick manor ones and i just dont wanna bother wrapping a hoop just for display since its so fiddly.

hey I love your embroidery!! I'm trying to get better at embroidery also, and I'm wondering what fabric you work on? I've tried quilters cotton but it loves to pucker, and canvas but the weave isn't fine enough to get super fiddly. any recommendations?

thanks so much! I just answered another ask a while ago where i had to tell the person asking about my black fabric that i sadly have no idea what the heck it actually is. Its a very fine synthetic twill weave is all im able to figure out.

I have worked with a bunch of different fabrics before as well as both quilting cotton and muslin, and i wonder if your issue with puckering is a hoop tension issue instead of a fabric issue? Do you work in wooden or bamboo hoops? Cause there are some of those that are made very badly and they have gaps between the inner and outter hoops where the fabric looses tension incredibly easy/immediately, and i find that is one way puckers can get introduced.

I also have never had a good time with plastic hoops because i found they dont grip the fabric well at all and i would be fighting for my life with tension the entire time. But other people love em so maybe its just a skill issue on my part lmao. Or the type of plastic hoop i have, idk. theyre some old handmedowns from grandma.

But they can also be introduced if stitches get pulled to tight or if an area gets really thick with overworking and layerering of many stitches as well.

If you really want to switch up your fabric you could try like maybe a heavyer bottom-weight cotton twill? But idk ive worked with a lot of light and even some slightly stretchy fabrics and i've found hoop tension to be the most important for avoiding puckers.

Basically its my belief hoop tension is god and you want your fabric to be taut as a drum inside the hoop. Re-tightning while working is also very important, even when u have a good grippy hoop it will require periodical re-tightnings as u go.

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hey I love your embroidery!! I'm trying to get better at embroidery also, and I'm wondering what fabric you work on? I've tried quilters cotton but it loves to pucker, and canvas but the weave isn't fine enough to get super fiddly. any recommendations?

thanks so much! I just answered another ask a while ago where i had to tell the person asking about my black fabric that i sadly have no idea what the heck it actually is. Its a very fine synthetic twill weave is all im able to figure out.

I have worked with a bunch of different fabrics before as well as both quilting cotton and muslin, and i wonder if your issue with puckering is a hoop tension issue instead of a fabric issue? Do you work in wooden or bamboo hoops? Cause there are some of those that are made very badly and they have gaps between the inner and outter hoops where the fabric looses tension incredibly easy/immediately, and i find that is one way puckers can get introduced.

I also have never had a good time with plastic hoops because i found they dont grip the fabric well at all and i would be fighting for my life with tension the entire time. But other people love em so maybe its just a skill issue on my part lmao. Or the type of plastic hoop i have, idk. theyre some old handmedowns from grandma.

But they can also be introduced if stitches get pulled to tight or if an area gets really thick with overworking and layerering of many stitches as well.

If you really want to switch up your fabric you could try like maybe a heavyer bottom-weight cotton twill? But idk ive worked with a lot of light and even some slightly stretchy fabrics and i've found hoop tension to be the most important for avoiding puckers.

Basically its my belief hoop tension is god and you want your fabric to be taut as a drum inside the hoop. Re-tightning while working is also very important, even when u have a good grippy hoop it will require periodical re-tightnings as u go.

[concentriccookies]

Second piece in my series of human infrastructures unintentional effects on wildlife.

the photo I used as direct reference was taken by @strangebiology & used with permission! You can find the whole album on flickr here.

I fell in love with these pictures cause i just think there is such a beauty to them. But also it starts making you think more about human infrastructure.

Idk but i think a lot of us think about fences as benign in the landscape but working on this piece i started thinking more abt, what do fences keep in? What do they keep out? And what do they disrupt or harm? intentionally or not.

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Hi! I love your art. I was wondering, in the "apples in a 14" hoop", what is that black fabric you use as the base? It's so beautifully dark

Thanks! This is gonna be disappointing cause to be honest, i sadly dont know. All i know is its a synthetic fiber and has a more complex weave structure then plain weave. Maybe a type of twill? I truely cannot tell cause the threads are so fine. It also unravels v easily lol.

I bought a lot of this fabric one year cause i was gonna make a cloak out of it then quickly realized it was no good for sewing cause im shit at picking correct fabrics on the fly lmao. But silver lining is its amazing for embroidey so ive been using it exclusively for that since.

It will be a sad day for me when its all gone.

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Vulture Cleric I made this mask and costume over two years and I am so excited to finally have pictures of it thanks to a close friend who took these amazing shots! <3

This costume and images have been sitting in my brain so long I'm so happy to have them out in the world~

(whoops Image ID's are added now in alt text)

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Eh it finally got taken down! Whether by the admins or from my reporting it to meta who knows, but it took around 4 days.

Anyways if y'all ever see my art out in the wild, thats neither here or my insta (concentricstitchery) i would really appreciate a heads up if u have the time or inclination. ❤

The Deadly and Benign 

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The Deadly and Benign 

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"What is left when unhungry?" -Bon Iver

Figs in a 14" hoop! I used up 3 1/2 skeins of green just for the main green colour, not even counting highlights and shadows lmao, shes a monster.

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A new picture of this one for repost october!

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Apples in a 14″ hoop

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this is by no means intended to dissuade you from following tutorials because they can be incredibly helpful, but if you ever find yourself wondering how your favorite artist is doing thing X, if you come across a piece of art you find incredibly pleasing but don’t know how it was made, take the time to try to figure it out yourself. emulate the parts you like, fake it till you make it even if it’s akin to crawling more than walking, until it feels like it’s coming together in a similar way it did for the other artist. it’s a very good way to learn to demystify the art process, get more comfortable with recognizing which line or color choice implies what and why it was used to circumvent a different choice you might have made instead, and overall improving your own art when you apply everything to your process

it doesn’t matter if the artist didn’t use the same methods to get the same result. the very fact you’ll have come up with your own way to get to the same destination is what will build your art language and style

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“Chided by the silence of a hushed sublime” -Better Love - Hozier

This was a roadkill rabbit that I got a picture of, it was so perfect and so fucking sad. Thinking abt doing a series on humanities unintended negative effects on wildlife, cause i think about it a lot. [image ID’s in alt-text]

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Handwoven checkered tea towels and matching coasters!

I was gonna go all in and design a plaid but after thumbnailing some patterns i got caught up in how much math i was going to need to do so instead i pulled back and went more simple but i really love how these came out. I think the design is a classic one for the kitchen

Woven with a cotton/linen blend 8/2 yarn.

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Some more cotton/linen tea towels i've woven up~

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Could you tell us about the type of loom you're using? How much it was, how easy it is to learn/use, etc. I've been wanting to branch out into weaving more and have a very simple basic lap loom for little things, but I don't really know much beyond that or where to go from there, and I'd love your insight!

Omg got most of the way thu answering this question then i went to search for like a correct termonology or smthn and poof everything got deleted.

So short(er) answer i have a tiny Sample It™ loom from ashford that was gifted to me and got me hooked (which is now being leant out to get someone else hooked heheheh im gonna spread the weaving bug) i also have a 24" rigid heddle loom from ashford. They are expensive, ngl. I did a very hard reflection on how serious i was longterm abt keeping with this hobby before i bought a bigger loom.

Rigid heddles are one of the simpler looms, so its pretty easy to pick up. Theres a couple different brands like Schacht and Kromski, but idk anything about them because my local place doesnt carry them.

There are lots of resorces to learn from, i used library books and youtube vids, and this fb group called "rigid heddle loom weaving" the people in that group are so helpful and there is great knowledge there, so it offsets the awfulness of going on fb.

So idk! Take a deep dive into googling abt these things! There is literally so many different types of loom it is mind boggling. Also if u wanna buy check fb marketplace or your local weaving guilds buy/sell pages, there can b good finds there sometimes.

Goodluck! ❤

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Alpaca houndstooth scarf that i wove~

I love houndstooth so much, i was so excited to learn you could do it on a rigid heddle, im def gonna be doing more with it after this!

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