My Guatemalan temari adventure

   On our recent trip to Guatemala, I was inspired to take some blank temari balls in the hopes of finding someone to put embroidery on them. Guatemala, of course, is justly famous for wonderful textiles including embroidery, but I've never seen it applied to a ball.
  We stayed about a week on Lake Atitlan. In Panajachel I found Berta Mendoza who was willing to try her hand on this project. She usually embroiders in the style of Santiago Atitlan, which is full of birds. I spent quite a few hours in Berta's shop with her and her daughter Sofia. Sofia is a university student studying child development and she lent a hand with the embroidering. Sofia also happens to speak three languages fluently and several others enough to function in the shop. Berta is somewhat more limited linguistically as she only speaks three languages. By the end of the week I was completely in awe of them.

  Besides talking about life in general and having many laughs, I showed them how to make temari and explained how they might make a good craft item to sell given the popularity of Christmas tree ornaments in North America.
  All the embroidery was done freehand without any reference material. The birds are rather whimsical—I wish these beautiful species really existed. This one looks a bit like a parrot.

 Below is a bird in flight on the other side of the same ball. Berta and Sofia took great pride in their work. I was surprised that they wanted to  carefully outline the birds because I thought they looked quite nice before that time consuming step. However I did agree after it was done that it added a lot.

A second ball I took was black and the birds they put on it were even more extravagant.

I'm looking forward to seeing Berta and Sofia on my next trip to Panajachel and to seeing in what direction they take temari balls. This project was an amazing way for me to make contact with real artisans and I'm very grateful for the experience.
 

Temari: stars and stripes

  This season of temari stitching brought a new accomplishment: figuring out a design from a Japanese book, even though I don't read Japanese. With experience in reading the diagrams and stitching temari this should become easier. I hope so because there are many wonderful patterns in those books. The pattern is, I believe,  from Fun with Temari (Tanoshii Temari Asobi) by Toshiko Ozaki, ISBN 4-8377-01035. I'm not completely sure because when I came to Costa Rica this year I just brought of copy of page 50 and 51 from one of the several Japanese books I own. These little confusions crop up when one is living in two places.

   Another pattern featuring stars is from TemariKai.com. It's pattern ST07 by Shelley S. It's done on a 10 combination division and the pattern is built up by stitching a five pointed star around each of the pentagons. It's fun to do because the pattern gradually emerges as you work around the ball. I put pins with little numbers in each pentagon so I would do them in the same order. That makes it easier to not miss a star on one of the rounds.

Sometimes I can now figure out how to do a temari by just looking at a photo. That was the case with one I saw on Pinterest. One thing I don't like about Pinterest is it sometimes is impossible to know who is responsible for something lovely. In this case the link took me back to the Yahoo Temari Callenge group but I don't know which of the many members did the ball.  Barb Suess did a similar ball but her last round is different because the triangles and pentagons aren't outlined. Doing it this way dramatically changes the look of the ball.

All over the place with temari

  Recently I stitched a few balls that are completely or almost completely covered with embroidery. This style of temari is called kousa. This kind of design demands a much great degree of accuracy in the roundness of the ball, the marking, and the stitching. And because of all the stitches needed to cover the ball they take relatively longer to do.
  Once again, thank goodness for the internet where I found these lovely patterns. The first all-over design I did—shown on the left— is pattern GT31 by Ginny T. on TemariKai.com. She describes it as being fairly forgiving for this type of design. That was definitely a good thing for my first attempt at kousa.

The ball on the right is also from TemariKai.com. It's pattern CP02 by Colleen P. The same ball can be seen from a different angle in the photo below. It's quite magical how the pattern forms as you stitch and do under and overs.

 

The ball on the left is a much simpler design. It's pattern SC02 by Susan C. on TemariKai.com. It's on a simple 10 division with a spindle stitched in each section. Then an obi of the same color as the base (black in this case) is woven through the spindles. Simple and very effective. On all of these balls I chose my own colors. This one used some of the wonderful greens I bought in Guatemala last year in perle 8, which is finer than the size 5 I usually use.