Jewellery and Knots

With the reopening of non-essential shops this week, the Persian Chandelier and most other ongoing projects have been put aside and my stitching and making has been focussed on building up my jewellery stock.

First, a new sea glass necklace.

I started with a vintage rolled gold pendant which had lost its stone and found a sea glass piece that fitted it perfectly in my dwindling collection of Seaham multis – this one clear with a smudge of pink. Then I added a delicate rolled gold necklace and found some perfectly frosted pink and white glass beads to replace the existing beads which luckily match the sea glass piece perfectly.

It’s available here in my Etsy shop.

I’ve also been altering another fabric brooch from a job lot of junk jewellery. This one was simply a piece of woollen checked fabric needle felted onto a square of black wool with a random button and a brooch back sewn on. I removed the button and while going through my found object stash for the Mandala Brooches, I found what I think might have been part of a fishing fly and a hemispherical panel from a bracelet which both appealed.

I used my go-to variegated metallic Madeira thread to stitch both elements down and add stitches into the fabric around the main part of the fishing fly. It isn’t supposed to be anything in particular but I think it looks a little like a comet!

Sashiko stitching on tiny scraps of indigo dyed cotton with silk thread mounted in a vintage brooch setting have become another boro-style brooch.

I’m really pleased with the sashiko pattern on this one, especially as I did it by eye, and it really pulls the separate scraps of fabric into a whole.

It’s available in my Etsy shop here.

Lastly, some experimenting with knotted stitches in this sort of crewel work style sample. Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch and French Knots on the left, German Knotted Buttonhole in the middle and middle right and Palestrina Stitch and Pistil Stitch top right. Chain Stitch and Four-Legged Knot bottom right and the stem is Coral Stitch and Satin Stitch.

Hopefully I can get back on track this week and I have high hopes of being able to stitch outside if the weather stays good!

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Bamburgh Beach Wallhanging

I was wondering what to work on next and it was after having seen the second project at the bottom of this post from Helen Cowans that I remembered I had an unfinished piece based on the Northumberland coast between Seahouses and Bamburgh.

I started it in August 2004, on holiday in Seahouses. A sort of forerunner to my Cornish Holiday Journal. But summer 2004 came with a bit of a bombshell as three days into the holiday I discovered that I was unexpectedly pregnant with my youngest daughter.

All the vivid emotions of that time are caught up in the stitching as I struggled to get my head round being pregnant again with two older, independent children, wondering if we could do, it, if we should do it, what effect it was going to have on my health etc.

I stitched it on and off through another rough pregnancy, through two months of potential miscarriage scares and finally put it away shortly after the birth. I’ve worked on it sporadically since, but even though the result of that upheaval is a fabulously bright, sparky, loving bundle of dynamite that I wouldn’t be without for the world…

…the cloth still holds some difficult memories.

But it’s not far off being finished. In fact the only thing I realised I really I needed to do when I got it out was to embroider a line of footprints just below the high tide line and then add the surf. Stitch some good memories into it.

This is how it stands now, with the addition of some footprints which I started during the New Year.

From the bottom: back stitch on a scrap of satin from the dress my bridesmaid had for my wedding, feather stitch on coarse cotton, massed french knot clusters on denim and whipped running stitch on some permanently crinkled dress fabric (you might recognise it from the Cornish Journal!).

Seeding, woven spiders’ webs and back-stitched spiders’ webs in hand-dyed coton a broder on calico dyed with the same dye. Coral stitch in various vintage threads on coarse cotton.

Three weights and colours of silk with back stitch linking two.

More later – I’m feeling more positive about it already.

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