growth and green

I have been adding some green growth to my layers test piece. The river brings growth, and we harnessed that growth for our own purposes back in those Mesopotamian days to extraordinary effect. In the distance, space marked out for a fragment of royal inscription. I was amused, when picking up my test cuneiform stitching to judge the size of that space, to find myself turning it the right way up - which tells me the stitching has, at least, taught me a bit about how to view cuneiform :-)

Then there is this, one of many reels of, for the most part unusable thread, having aged to fragility, that I have inherited from mother, grandmother, aunt and probably great grandmother. This was probably produced in wartime, a delightfully informative website tells me.

isn't the green delicious

I'm using it in a piece we did with Cas Holmes, a delightful teacher and artist, whose work I have admired for many years. The workshop, run over two sessions, focused on how we could blend momigami, "very squashed" paper, and textile scraps, in a piece with both hand and machine stitch. It was so enjoyable, in particular because she was teaching us via Zoom sessions, which bring their own challenges. The first was in part about preparation of the papers we had selected, by crumpling and kneading them in our hands until they loss their stiffness and became more fabric like - this is the momigami element. She encouraged us to layer these with scraps of fabric, pinning them to a calico backing, then stitching them loosely down using expressive stitches that worked with the underlying strata. In the second session she showed us how she uses machine stitch over the initial stitch layer, painting into the fabric with thread, creating texture and highlights, turning the piece over to stitch from the back to add elements of less purposeful stitch. Throughout both sessions she also talked to us about the design process, using her own work to show us examples of how the layers come together. Here she is talking about her piece "In Great Grandmothers' Shadow".

So far, I have got to here, a sort of landscape, with sort of buildings, and a ground layer to divide the space. 

As you'll see I've not reached the machining stage yet, and the paper element of this is so fragile that I suspect it will disintegrate once I start. For Cas that is a good thing; something she uses in her work and I can see its potential. But for this bit of stitching, I'm not so sure - which probably means I really should, and learn from moving beyond my inhibitions. For now I have just done hand stitching, and am happy with the result, though I feel it needs a bit more. I enjoyed the tactile nature of the paper, the difference in sound both as the needle and thread pass through, and the sound and feel as you handle it, skin rubbing against different fibres. I may well explore more, another way of layering.

I hope your stitching week has been good?

Starting and finishing

Moaning Mona, as she is becoming known, is nearly finished. She should have been handed in at our meeting last Saturday, but she's nearly there.

This meeting involved several very enjoyable little workshops being run by members of Sussex Stitchers, embracing the sharing skills and knowledge side of belonging to the Embroiderers' Guild. We have also been running a monthly stitching group (called Fly Stitchers) for some newer members to give them more confidence in their (already very good) stitching. One of the questions we are often asked is about starting and finishing threads.

There are a couple of schools of thought on this. One of the most common methods is the "away knot", where the end of the thread is knotted and brought down into the fabric far enough away from your starting point that you can take it through to the back of the work and weave in when you have finished. This is a really good method if you are working on small motifs and designs, or using a stitch which isn't intended to cover the fabric.

In the case of Mona, however, the area of her hair is densely stitched with a mixture of stem and outline stitch (of which more in a bit). This being the case, I've used the method recommended by RSN teachers, which is to run the thread down on the line you will be covering with stitching, then bring it back up and take a small backstitch to anchor it before starting the stitching proper. When you get to the end of the thread, you do a similar thing in reverse.

So here you can see various "freckles" in the unstitched area of her hair, where I have got to the end of a thread and "parked" by making a small securing stitch, bringing the end of the thread to the surface again and snipping it close to the linen. It will stay there until it is covered by subsequent stitching. (The bottom edge is much squarer than it appears here!)

You can also park thread temporarily, as below, where in the foreground and further up you can see threads ready to be used for the next bit of stitching. I have started stitching upwards from the area of organza where her hair meets her face, rather than working from the top down and risking a bulge in the layers of organza.

Here, below, you can see where I have started a strand of darker brown, the loose end is middle right, and if you look closely you can see the tiny anchoring stitch just before the needle goes down into the fabric, having come up where I am starting this colour. On the left are two more needles with different blends of brown as I am mixing colour both in the needle and as I move across the hair from left to right.

The other thing I am doing is mixing stem and outline stitch so that there is more texture in the hair, rather than having the twist of the stitches all one way. If you're not sure of the difference, the source of all good stitchy information Mary Corbet will tell you here.

Now for the other bit of finishing - i.e. finishing Moaning Mona

Having seen lots of our other stitchers' contributions, I think she's going to look rather wonderful when she's done. I'll be sure to take a pic to show you.

Focus

Yes, focus, I could really do with more!

I have been absent from here for some time, just being busy really. I have several projects on the go - never giving quite enough time to any of them, but hoping to get more than one thing finished by giving each at least some time. So there is the Mona Lisa project with my Embroiderers' Guild group. We have chopped her up into 25 rectangles and have each taken one to work on with whichever technique we feel suitable. I have her forehead. Just about to start cutting out organza shapes to get the colour of her skin before stitching that and finishing her hair.

Then there is my Mesopotamia project at Studio 11 - very slow stitch, but I am thinking about it all the time; how to express what catches my interest about the subject, how to be creative with ideas as well as images in stitch and cloth. The two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates are gradually flowing down the hanging I'm working on at the moment.

and towns are popping up along the way - in this case, Dur Sharrukin, Nineveh and Nimrud

Also, there is my patchwork - that monthly class which a little group of us are attending where we are learning all the basic skills in a nine patch quilt with borders. Just the borders and quilting to do now!! Only a little bit behind!!!

And recently I acquired,  or perhaps took over responsibility for the most wonderful piece of English Paper Piecing, a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, part finished, left to a friend by her godmother. The friend feels she can't finish it so it has been sitting on the top of her wardrobe making her "feel guilty" for the past 13 years.  It is double bed size, and I have fallen in love with it.

There are odd edges that need finishing before I can get to grips with how to proceed. There are also lots more hexies to be cut and stitched round the templates, template papers to be removed from the completed bits of piecing, flowers to be pieced and decisions to be made.

Such inventive fussy cutting.

I have no idea how long finishing will take, but it's a daily bit of quiet stitching that does my soul good.

On top of all that, I am now part way through a ten week course on the history of Mesopotamia - part way through and falling behind! Falling behind because we have been away for three long weekends in the past seven weeks, doing very enjoyable family things with my dear heart's family. This last weekend we were in Kassel for a very joyful wedding. The weather was toasty, the sun shone, the corn poppies were blooming

and the church roof threw back the light to the sky

Then this post popped into my side bar of places I enjoy.

How to have more focused hours in your day

Wonderful advice, but will I take it?

Life is full.

Tool packaging shibori

Nearly there

I have been quietly busy. This year's final day with Christine, and I'd missed the previous two because I felt poorly. So, a pleasure, and some inspiration. I found time over the past few days to wrap up some fabric and see where a bit of shibori can get me.

A silk scarf, folded, clamped, rolled, clamped, Apply three blanks from some piece of tool packaging, aligned top, bottom and between, as perfectly as I could manage

clamped with acrylic shapes as well, so apply an even pressure across the ends.

Edges rolled and clamped to make small white marks I hope

And some little crescents, just to see

Different clamps, all submerged in turquoise, acid yellow and some old black, just to see

Then a piece of silk, scrunched, pushed together, wrapped tightly in a laundry bag, with some marbles to add extra texture 

I'm hoping for clear edges and spaces of white, all to echo the dark holes in the centre, and perhaps some patterning from the bag itself, and the elastic band

The marbles, in tune with the piece of silk shading I am working on now and again, very slowly, glasses off, eyes close to the frame, because it's the only way I can see clearly enough when using just one strand of embroidery floss! This was our "here's how" piece from the last Branch workshop.

I have no idea what will happen now

Time to unwrap

Inspired by the EG

I have been neglecting this little space in the blogosphere because I have been rather busy. We've had several good sessions at the branch of the Embroiderers Guild that I belong to; another of our mini workshops, this time my choice was ribbonwork, but I've not done enough finishing to share with you here yet. We also had a marvellous talk by Anthea Godfrey about the work of her mother, Margaret Nicholson. It was so interesting to hear about someone who forged her own path at a time when women were still expected to stay at home and look after their families. Anthea brought an utterly inspiring set of her mothers embroideries for us to see.

Margaret used a wide variety of embroidery and beadwork techniques, employing all sorts of materials and methods. She particularly enjoyed Or Nue which is a goldwork technique which involves laying metal thread on the surface of the fabric and attaching it with embroidery silks in such a way that the stitching, using different colours, creates a picture which sparkles and glimmers in the light. It is a very old technique; a great speciality in this country during the 14th and 15th Centuries, when it formed part of the repertoire of English embroidery, known as Opus Anglicanum, or English Work. You can see examples in the V&A and we exported embroideries across Europe, often to religious foundations or churches, as the Church was a major patron of the arts then.

Margaret took this technique, combined it with others and, with her wonderful talent for design, created beautiful images full of imagination and colour as you can see here. 

Anthea brought so many pieces that we could have spent all day just looking at one or two; the technique is so fine, and so labour intensive, it seemed miraculous that one woman could create so many beautiful embroideries in a single lifetime.

After such an inspiring talk I came home full of fire to get on with another Guild project, our regional challenge which we have every year. The theme this year is "Inspired by Royal Jewels" and the branch are busy creating all sorts of bits of embroidery to display at the annual Regional Day. I had a good look at royal jewellery and found myself rather uninspired, until I thought of the Alfred Jewel which is held in the Ashmolean (always a place to spend many happy hours!). This took me to the Anglo Saxons, and I discovered this rather lovely brooch found at the burial site of an Anglo Saxon princess in Kent. 

That seemed pretty royal to me, and much more inspiring than tiaras and diamond necklaces, so off I went. Drawing on the techniques I learnt at our Wendy Dolan workshop last year, I decided to create a cuff or bracelet based on the design of the brooch. Much trialling and stitching later, and I'm really rather pleased with the result - if you'll excuse the "old dear wrinkles"!!

Goldwork, beads and layered organza cut back with a soldering iron to emulate the cloisonne technique of the original.

I just might see if I can do something else now.

Sampler finished

at last I've finished the first bit of the Branch stitch project. It really has taken far too long, in fact I see it was started in January this year, which is a little ridiculous! However, I've learnt a huge amount and have really enjoyed it. It looks a little darker here than in reality, but with dark fabric you have to trick the camera by taking the half depress to get the tones from somewhere else, at the same distance of course. In this case I focused on the carpet, which is a light beige, then moved the camera to take in the stitching

What have I learnt? That you need to use the right needle for the weight of thread, otherwise it doesn't pull through the fabric well and gets more wear, so doesn't last as long; that the shinier rayon threads have a tendency to untwist much more, so they squiggle and wiggle about while you are stitching, which can be very counter productive; that starting and finishing tidily is really helpful; that blanket stitch is far more versatile than I could have imagined; and finally, that I'm very glad I didn't get French Knots!!

I love these little knotted buttonhole stitches in the bottom right quadrant, and will use them in the next, pictorial bit of stitching, to evoke some flowers in a field

and of course how could one forget buttonhole stitch as used in Stumpwork? OK, I nearly did, but amended plans for the central circle to include a little setting sun of corded buttonhole, which I'm really pleased with.

All in all, a really interesting and enjoyable project with plenty learnt, not least the getnly art of finishing!! Hope you like it.

A Lull

I'm in the real doldrums at the moment with my stitching and textiles in general. I've nearly finished the first of my stitch pieces for the Guild, but just can't settle to finishing it.

I've still got my ordered squares of linen I took to Birmingham to work on, but have done very little since except stitch them all down to the background. I have a Studio11 session tomorrow, and am feeling all squirbled because I have done no preparation and have no idea what I'm going to do at all, except take pleasure in the space to just be and perhaps ponder. I will at least put some threads together for the linen squares and take my Guild piece to finish!

In part I think it's probably down to some health issues. For several years I've had an intermittent nagging pain in my midriff. Having had some keyhole surgery go disastrously wrong a while ago now, I'd always put it down to aftereffects from this - you don't want to see the scars, I look quilted!! Then, in the week before we went off to the Lakes it got considerably worse for a number of days; so much so that we wondered if we'd go at all, but it settled down to bearable. Since we got back I've been for an ultrasound scan, always a fascinating process, such magical technology. It turns out, I have gallstones! A veritable constellation of them in fact, so my good doctor and I decided today that it's time to sort it out. Expect an announcement of surgery sometime in the future. Hopefully this keyhole will go right ....

Meanwhile I've been reading some treasures. A friend recommended both authors, first Kathleen Dean Moore

Then Kathleen Jamie.

 

Both write wonderfully about being in nature, in very differing ways and in very different places. I've been struck as much by the contrasts as I have by the pleasure of reading. The first, who is American, writes from a philosopher's point of view, and the landscapes she describes could only be those of her homeland. There is a particular quality in what she describes and perhaps also in the way she writes that belongs there; a sense of largeness, openness. I found myself wondering whether growing up in a huge continent with such immense scale somehow evokes a similar expansion of thought and aspiration.

Kathleen Jamie is a Scots poet, and my near contemporary. She has a poet's feeling for language and for the landscape and at times touches on her own past in such a way that I can almost feel myself in the same place and time, so familiar it is. She however, had the courage to follow her ideals; I was never so brave. I have nearly finished the second book, Sightlines; Findings came first, both borrowed from work, and will feel a sense of missing an almost friend when I take them back. Her writing is intimate, her focus often close and with a sense of the deeply personal about it, you feel you have been offered precious bits of her life to share.

I'd recommend them both

A little bit of stitch

I seem to be taking a dreadfully long time with this. It's the Branch Stich Book and I have been neglecting it badly, busy with other things and with trying to maintain enough energy to actually get anything done at all! However, I'm back in touch with it again now - do you find that? You seem to miss some connection with what you're trying to do so it goes on the back burner for a while, though this really should have taken priority! My stitch is blanket stitch, it's a really nice opportunity to work with variations of one stitch, also to try out different threads from ones store. 

I've also jut done the first year's account balancing act as treasurer of our local branch. It doesn't need ot be in 'til next month, but The Lakes approach so I want to make sure all is good before we go away. 

Everything balanced, hurrah hurrah ..... I'm very pleased with myself

Starting and finishing

As these bits of embroidery should be seen from the back and the front, I have no muslin to hide threads behind. One way of doing this is with an "away knot"; you bring the thread through from front to back some distance (at least a needle's length) away from where you start, begin with a small back stitch to secure, then weave the waste thread in once you've finished. As this fabric has a good even weave, and is quite firm, I am lacing the tail end through the very top thread of the weave on the back, where it will be over stitched, then taking the securing stitch. It will save me time and the end result is the same.

Finishing off

The tacking thread shows me the perimeters of the space I'm filling in each quadrant. I've divided the space up in a similar way to some of the carpet pages in manuscripts like Kells and Lindisfarne. I'm quite nervous about all this, truth be told, there are so many fine needle women in the guild, who have been members for many years. I hope my stitching is up to scratch! There has been unpicking already!

Auditioning

I am away from work at the moment, on doctors orders. This gives me some time to nurse the daily hurts that come with having Fybromyalgia and a connective tissue disorder, which leave me feeling drained and exhausted. I don't talk about my health much here, it seems too much like an indulgence, and is only part of who I am. However, I reached a point where I simply had to stop. This allows me to do things at my own pace, to rest when I need to and to take a focused course of Ibuprofen to try and help my body to heal itself. I feel like a convalescent, but the positive side is that I have time to work on a stitch project our Branch Chairman has suggested, a sort of stitch dictionary. We chose two bits of fabric and a piece of folded paper on which was writ our stitch - in my case, blanket stitch. One is to work the stitch in as many variants as possible, using a variety of threads and pushing the stitch to see where it will go. The second bit of fabric is to create an image, using the threads and stitches.

The first task, of course, is to audition threads. I tried a varity, the brief being to use as many different weights and types of thread, and to push the stitch as far as it will go. There were a number that didn't work

This little twist of greens (from Cecil's stash), while full of lovely textures, moves the colour range too far away from "neutrals" which was the brief

likewise, the yellow/orange is, too far away from the initial range. 

So here is what I came up with

the darker piece of fabric will be my test bed, the rosy coloured one I'm keeping for the image. This is my excuse for moving the colours towards the rusty and ruddy, which blend with the darker fabric as well. I have a few ideas for an image, but nothing firm yet. I'm waiting to see what the stitch can do and what it says to me.

An update: busy times

I've just had the pleasure of visiting the Eye of the Needle exhibition at the Ashmolean, and what a pleasure it was. On display were a variety of pieces of 17th Century needlework from the Feller collection. The range of work was delightful, from strip samplers to pictures, boxes, a mirror frame, book covers and items of clothing. There were also some church textiles, with the comment that

"Embroidery and religious practice were closely linked by some authors. Embroidery requires a focused body and mind"

I rather liked that - an early reference to mindfulness perhaps. 

One of the great joys of exhibitions is the opportunity to really see the fineness of the stitching and the way that light falls across the threads, giving the work a life and depth not visible in illustrations. It was very clear from the informative notes that work of this period held a strong moral message about the place of women within society. Themes, ranging from biblical stories and the classics to allegorical pieces, were often designed to reinforce the social expectations of the day: obedience, faithfulness, chastity and hard work.

There was a marvelous variety of techniques on display; stumpwork, needle point, whitework, pulled thread, beadwork and gold work. The way these techniques were combined in some pieces showed the great ingenuity and skill of the women who worked them. The colours in some were still vivid and clear, while others had faded to more delicate hues. The range of materials used was also rich. Along with the traditional grounds and threads of silk or linen, I saw glass beads, sequins, coral, pearls, silver threads and wire and fragments of bird feathers. These were crafted into a wonderful range of images. Flowers of all sorts were abundant, along with a menagerie of curious mythical beasts, butterflies, insects, snails, peacocks and parrots, lions and unicorns, deer and donkeys, dancing dogs, a camel and even a couple of frogs. These kept company with the likes of Abraham and Isaac, Adam and Eve, Ruth and Boaz and allegorical figures representing virtues and vices, many intended to reinforce the expected behaviours of the women who stitched. Above and below these characters there were cheery suns and moons peeping out from behind pastel coloured clouds, soaring birds and diving fishes, along with the occasional angel. I particularly liked an image of a kingfisher with a fish in his beak, and a lumpy toad crouching at the foot of a stumpwork tree.

The samplers were also delightful, some with neatly arranged rows of various techniques, some with a wonderful higgledy piggledy disorder about them. The fineness of this sort of work can only be appreciated by looking closely and the Ashmolean was kind enough to provide magnifying glasses for visitors to enable the stitching to be appreciated to the full. I saw white work, tent stitch, satin stitch, raised chain, detached buttonhole, bullion knots, needleweaving, silk shading, in fact the whole range of techniques available from the period.

One could have spent hours looking at just a couple of the embroideries, so interesting and detailed were they, but an hour and a half was all my legs could stand. I came away with a deeper understanding of the needlework of the period and a delightful menagerie of embroidered beasts in my head, further enhanced by seeing similar images carved above the windows and doors of the wonderful buildings that fill the streets of Oxford. It was a splendid way of spending a Sunday morning and I'd recommend anyone going to Oxford in the next few months to take the time to visit the Ashmolean and discover the delights of this collection. I can also recommend the first volume of the two books about this fabulous collection, it has lovely images of the embroideries and just the right amount of fascinating text. You can preview it here. I'm afraid I've just snaffled the second volume from Amazon at better price than usual, and was amused to notice that one bookseller has their copy for sale for £4,072.93. I suspect a misprint!

In other news, as they say, I've spent the past couple of weeks moving my dear little Aunt Cecil into care and beginning the difficult task of clearing her property. Having put it off for as long as possible her carer and I agreed that she's no longer safe to be left alone on evenings and weekends. It's been a terribly hard thing to do, and the sense of a life being dismantled and distilled down to just one room is strong. I brought her here to be near us two weeks ago, then went up again this week to do some sorting and sifting of "stuff" of which there is a great deal. I felt dreadful delivering her to the care home, however she has taken it all in good spirit and seems very settled in her new abode. She's just five minutes from us, so easy to pop in and see every day and we can take walks by the seaside, eat ice creams together and go on bra buying expeditions to M&S! I have another trip later this month to bring down some of her furniture so she feels more at home in her room.

I've also been in an exhibition! Goodness me! Our Embroiderer's Guild put on a show of recent work in the lovely workshop where Christine teaches me good things. I had two pieces on display (amongst almost seventy), both of which you've seen before

 Uffington, galloping across the Downs

and some magical mushrooms from the workshop we were given by Kay Dennis. I felt rather proud of them once they were mounted and framed. 

I was one of four of us who put up the exhibition. It took six hours in the sweltering heat to display everything properly, extra exhausting for me as I'd been transferring Cecil that week, which involved four gruelling hours, much of it on the motorways, coming home! I entirely failed to take any photos of the exhibition, but if I speak sweetly to our Chairman she might let me share a couple of her photos, so you can see what talented people I was sharing the limelight with. 

stitching

I've had a post about my textile adventures in draft for I don't know how long, but I seem to be too busy, or too tired to get it finished and posted! It's all about the bits of dyeing I've been doing, but I've done so much more since I drafted it that I can't face the updates!! However, in the realm of stitch I had another lovely workshop with the Embroiderer's Guild last weekend. This time with Wendy Dolan, who's work I really admire. It was a workshop in using architectural details as a source for stitching. We were instructed to bring some simple images to work from and a variety of toning fabrics and threads.

I took along a variety of photos, or rather prints of photos. Once we'd been shown some of Wendy's work and understood the way the embroidery was to be achieved, I selected this image - which I took back in the days of wet film photography - or at least, before I could afford digital. It is from a brief and much needed break in Oxford in the late winter of 2001.

The image is a window in Christ Church College, one of the many beautiful buildings that grace Oxford. I walked past it several times on my way to the Botanic Gardens, a glorious place for peaceful contemplation. I loved the way the stems and branches of the climbers seemed so intertwined with the building's character that they appeared to be somehow part of it, rather than an addition from Nature's bounty.

I had selected a variety of salvaged fabrics from one of my many rummages through remnant bins in various shops over the years. They were all soft furnishing fabrics, and I selected ones that seemed to chime with the idea of old buildings. A mixture of natural and synthetic fibers and various textures, as I recall they came from a lovely little shop called Fabric Design in Matlock Bath. I visit them each year as we break our journey to the Lakes, and always come away with a bag of remnant goodies!

The workshop was fascinating - it's always a pleasure to see an expert at work; makes one realise how much faffing about and stopping and starting is involved when you don't know what you are doing. The technique involved tracing off the main lines of the image; using the tracing to arrange small blocks of fabric roughly under the tracing paper and onto the foundation fabric, positioning the bits with regard to the image, but in a loose, abstract fashion. We then transfered the traced lines, in reverse onto some stitch and tear or heavyweight vilene, placed that on the back of the design (having stitched all the bits down first) and stitched the first draft, as it were, from the back. The the bobbin thread outlined the design. then we turned the fabric over and began to work  up the design from the front. All very scary to a beginner, but seeing Wendy's finished embroideries showed what can be achieved.

This is my resulting embroidery so far - all machine stitched and not yet finished to my satisfaction, but a brave effort! I'm conscious that it all looks a bit crooked, especially when I see it like this, rather than in the flesh, but it pleases me and I'm very aware that I am a very beginner when it comes to machine embroidery. I shall probably stitch more, but not too much more as I don't want to overwork it. I'll certainly try another one now I understand the way it is done.

In the meantime, I'm also making a sketch book cover using some of the fabrics from my Studio11 experiments. We have a sketchbook project for City and Guilds this summer so I bought a sketchbook specifically for this - it seems fitting for it to have a cover made from fabrics dyed and embroidered by me. I'm half way through, and will post the finished results, hopefully before Monday when I go for my next class.

Goldwork dragons and a Royal wedding dress

The sun shone this weekend, after days of grey skies and intermittent rain - the ground is soggy, but the hazel just outside the window where I sit during the day has been just wonderful, clinging to it's leaves through all the wind we've also been having, as they have changed from their summer green to the beautiful clear yellow they are now. The colour just sings when backlit by the sun, bright, clean, uncomplicated. But even on those days when the mist has closed in and our view has not extended beyond the walnut at the end of the garden, this yellow has still shone for me, glowing with it's own inner light, right through to sundown and beyond - a smile outside my window each day.

Yesterday was our monthly Embroiderer's Guild meeting. We had the pleasure of a talk by Sophie Long about her experience of being an apprentice at the Royal School of Needlework. It was immensely interesting, especially as, having graduated, she then had the honour of being part of the team who worked on the Royal wedding dress. She brought along examples of the work she had done whilst studying at the School. They were really impressive, and many are shown on her website, including the most delicate whitework swan, a very clever blackwork image that was based on a photograph of her sister, and perhaps my favourite, her goldwork dragon. None of these pictures give you more than an inkling of the detail and craftsmanship in these pieces of needlework. We were able to peer closely, as she allowed them to be passed round as she was talking - I seem to recall her saying that the whitework piece took around 90 hours of stitching. I was really struck by how much work the apprentices had to do, both during term time and in the holidays - not for the faint hearted. Of the intake of 7 when she started her apprenticeship, only three graduated and she is the only one still working at the craft. She was very modest about her success, putting it down to the stroke of luck that meant that, just as she was finishing, someone in the Embroidery Studio was leaving and she was offered the place. I suspect this offer wouldn't have been made had her skill not been considered up to their very high standards.

After her talk, she had brought along bits and bobs for us to look at or buy. I succumbed to some lovely threads - now I look at them, perhaps I was influenced by the tones of Autumn ...

It is such a pleasure to belong to a Guild like this. There is so much to learn; both from the people Brenda invites to talk to us or run workshops, and from each other. Having not been a "joiner of things" in my life up 'til now - perhaps the result of being an only child, I am now reaping the benefits. In addition, after the talk a little group of us who are doing the City and Guilds together, got into a huddle to discuss our progress so far!

Mushrooms!

so here they are, all finished though not yet framed. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. I didn't expect to be able to create something that looks so complete from just one workshop (OK and a week off sick!), but having a kit to work from made all the difference as it provided the framework, all I had to provide were the stitches and a bit of thought about what colours to use.

 

A couple of closeups so you can see just how 3 dimensional they are once all is put together on the ground cloth

the grassy knoll

and a few little dewdrops, just waiting for a fairy to gather for her morning skin care routine.

Would i do more stumpwork? Yes, absolutely; it has a magic about it that I really enjoyed; the detail is such fun and creating a little three dimensional world ticks all sorts of boxes for me. I just need to practice more.
But first, there's a City and Gilds to work with. We had the first of our "splish splash splosh" days with Barbara yesterday, which was great fun, as ever. I have homework to do, having created a distorted grid stencil to play with ... oh and there's Cecil's quilt to finish. That's this afternoon's pleasure