Jonathan

the yogre hunt

Jonathan
Cleveland,Ohio, USA

About me…
I’m a father and husband, and a biochemist. I like trying all sorts of things, but embroidery, simple building/wood carving, ultimate Frisbee, various kinds of dance, and outdoor yard/landscape restoration work are things I frequently return to. I’d love to collaborate on other needlework projects with any of you, but with a longer time frame.
I’ve begun to post pictures of things I’ve made, written, or read on my blog

My wife, who got me into this project, posts here.

About my square…
My square is embroidered by hand using 1, 3, or 6 strands of embroidery floss. I used almost four skeins to complete the design. Most of the design uses satin stitch and blanket stitch. There is some outline stitch (I think). The sky uses stitches I made up, although they’ve almost certainly been done before. For the sun, the curved fill was created by adding extra twist to the 6 strands and laying the satin stitch down in curved rows. These were anchored in place by passing a single strand through the 6 strand fill in enough places to hold it. The puffy part is again satin stitch with the thread untwisted to make it spread out, and loose stitches on the top. The rays were made by laying 6 strand floss straight from one end to the other. They were again anchored by basting to the cloth with a single strand. These stitches won’t hold up to wear. This was really designed just for show.

I thought of 19th century embroidery samplers after reading a little about the history of redwork, so I decided to start with a scriptural phrase. I slightly misquoted it from the Doctrine and Covenants 121:33. I wanted to pick something specific to my own religious tradition, but with a sentiment many others could share. I originally intended to use a deep space telescope picture, but decided to bring the image down to earth, literally. The mountains are the ones I saw east of my house growing up in Utah. The people looking up are me and my son.
You can see more about how the design was created here.

Feel free to use my design, or copy any ideas from it. The pictures are all public domain, although NASA wants to be acknowledged if you use theirs.