Elizabethan scissor case – finally finished.

It was over a year ago that I started an Elizabethan scissor case at one of our Embroiderers’ Guild workshops. I stitched the rose petals in the session, worked most of the rest of the embroidery fairly quickly after and even got as far as putting on the spangles. And there I hesitated. I wasn’t sure about the density of the spangles, so I added some more seed beads on their own and then stalled. It wasn’t right.

I did find some cotton for the lining that I preferred to the fabric in the kit, but over the last year, that’ s all I did.

However, I’ve had a few days away and thanks to some horrible and typically British weather, been able to get a fair bit of sewing done. Firstly, the scissor case. The beads were completely wrong, so they came out. and then I stitched the finished front to a matching triangle of the lining fabric.

I love this gentle autumn leaves print and it tones well with the brown of the stems.

After ladder stitching the opening I’d turned it through closed, I then brought the sides to the back and ladder stitched that closed as well.

In the end, there were more than enough spangles for the front, but I do wish I had brought them a bit closer to the point.

Inside looks very cosy!

And it’s the perfect place for one of my pairs of embroidery scissors.

So pleased to have this off the hoop and finished.

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Scissor case and bracelet

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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