Both of our last two Embroiderers’ Guild meetings have been workshops and lovely ones at that. In April we had a talk by Brenda Scarman which was followed by her ‘Elizabethan embroidery’ workshop to make scissor cases with Tudor style embroidery.
The main rose motif was stitched in detached buttonhole stitch, which I have used in the past and really enjoy, so I was able to actually finish all the petals of my rose in the session.

It’s stitched in two strands of a lovely hand-dyed mercerised cotton, which felt quite unusually thick, but had great coverage.

The petals are outlined in chain stitch rather than the back stitch I’ve always used, which gives a much better finish as you have one side of the chain to stitch into and the other side gives a lovely even edging.

The tendrils are chain stitch in an ordinary stranded cotton. And I really must get it finished!

Then on Saturday we had a fantastic beading workshop by Gwen, one of our members, on how to make a St Petersburg chain for a bracelet. Gwen’s instructions were so good that I came in a little late, sat down and was able to work straight away from the sheets she had prepared.
It’s a lovely pattern to bead and so easy to drop into the rhythm and I was delighted to finish my bracelet in the session.

I have a weakness for iridescent beads and although the beads weren’t very evenly sized, these moonlight and evening sky coloured seed beads work so well together.

I even had time to start another chain with some much smaller delicas just to see what difference it made, if any, to use a better quality bead.

Not enough yet to tell, but I enjoyed it so much I’m already trying to work out how I can incorporate pieces of reticulated metal!
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