Encyclopaedia of Needlework

I showed you this amazing book

in my last post. Without even opening it, it’s a thing of beauty, from those William Morris-esque willow leaves sprawling across the spine and cover to the black and gold DMC logo end papers. And so small, only 5 and a half inches high, 4 inches wide and an inch and a half thick so it sits snugly in the hand.

Rachel is right – I have so much I want to do that I don’t think I’ll get round to any of the projects any time soon, but it is just lovely to sit and browse through.

Although I am very tempted to try out this canvaswork Shell Stitch.

Knitting is covered…

…as is crochet…

…tatting…

…embroidery on netting…

…openwork…

…various types of lace…

…tassels…

…and so much more.

I’ve done some more finishing of small projects. Firstly the french knot encrusted blue velvet spiral brooch from the sample piece I started on the Lush, Plush and Crush workshop we did at the Guild with Josie Storey a few months back. From this:

to this:

I’ve also created a pair of silk strip wrapped and beaded hoop earrings using some lovely ombre dyed silk strips from Stef Francis and vintage seed beads and sequins over a pair of vintage plastic earrings.

Having fun!

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Stuff in progress

Firstly, a quick update on the french knot marathon. It’s still trailing around with me and has gone from this: to this:

I’m focussing on finishing the shaped bits at the top first, while also adding gradually all the way round.

Our last Embroiderers’ Guild meeting before Christmas was a lovely quiet laid back affair in the midst of the rush with wonderful food, courtesy of our Chair, Mary, and some steady stitching for name badges. We had some stamped calico to work from and I chose the rabbit/hare.

I used some slubby thread in dark grey for his outline, couched down with a variegated stranded cotton, and a thick stranded silk for his coat, couched down in spirals with my favourite variegated metallic Madeira thread. Where there is an area too small to be included in the spirals I’m going to add something like eyelets or perhaps a woven spider’s web.

Another piece on the go is an aside from our ‘Lush, Plush and Crush’ workshop with Josie Storey in the autumn. I cut a spiral from Bondaweb and stuck it to the velvet, added some gold markal stick and then some french knots for texture.

This is destined to provide the upcycled centre for an vintage brooch.

And there’s my “inspired by poetry” piece for the Travelling Book this month. Plenty to be going on with.

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Lush, plush and crush

This was the intriguing title of our full day workshop with Josie Storey at Embroiderers’ Guild last Saturday, so armed with some very lush velvet and the usual sewing stuff I headed off without any real idea of what I was going to be doing!

The technique we were going to be playing with involved ironing prepainted bondaweb onto velvet and then using the stickiness to embellish with anything and everything to create a rich textured surface.

I started with some gorgeous Oliver Twists hand dyed velvet called ‘Stormy Seas’ and so I had to go for wave shapes,

with silk waste, carrier rod strippings

and scraps of painted melted plastic.

By this point I’d decided this was going to be the next piece in my travelling book, so when I got home I layered it up with wadding and calico and quilted round the wave shapes with my sewing machine. From this:

to this:

No hand embroidery – yet…

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Sea Glass pulled thread work – a finish!

In the end I secured the sea glass with the same thread that I used for the embroidery, but I tried to echo the geometric shapes of the pulled thread in the way I wrapped the glass nuggets.

At first I really wasn’t sure, but the addition of pattern and texture has grown on me and now when I look back at the earlier photos I feel there’s something missing.

This is the dyed velvet I chose to back it with:

and the two were attached with tiny diagonal stitches across the criss-cross of the warp and weft all the way around before I sealed the edges with modge podge and cut the finished piece out.

The modge podge has completely stopped the fraying and has dried pretty much invisible and I also used it to stick the finished piece into my travelling book.

My inspiration page:

 

And the finished piece.

I’m ready to get stuck into pulled thread again for my technique piece for our summer exhibition.

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Remember this?

I was looking at my archives, wondering what I’d been creating at Christmas in previous years when I came upon this from December 2011:

I’d had numerous problems with it from the start and once Christmas was over, it ended up languishing in a box. Until I found it in my archive that is. And now it looks like this:

Snowflakes on red velvet in a mixture of french knots, star stitches and woven spiders’ web stitch.

Snowflakes on green velvet ditto, surrounding an odd crocheted snowflake in vintage white perle.

A quick wreath finished with a bow created from…

…a circle of feather stitch in dark green silk thread with another in light green silk stitched directly over the top and dark red silk french knot berries.

It’s coming together, hopefully for a Christmas card, and I’m enjoying it again.

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Volcano? Fireworks?

Another finished piece, this time a pendant. I started with an early attempt at reticulation, which worked beautifully in one part of the brass but didn’t spread to the rest of the piece.

I then cut it out with a hacksaw, tidied up the central hole and polished it.

Initially I wanted to stitch it onto black silk, until I found a piece of black cotton velvet. The edges of the brass and the pearl purl sink so nicely into the pile of the velvet and it gives another wonderful textural contrast.

I took Rachel’s advice after I’d blogged about the blue spirals brooch and stretched the purls slightly before I stitched them down. Much neater.

Some of the longest bullions I’ve ever stitched, and with a slightly slubby thread too. The bullions and the purl are actually holding the metal to the fabric.

I finished off the french knots inside the hole and added some trios in a dark red silk thread to the ends of the purls.

The pendant is two almond shapes cut from pelmet vilene which are laminated together and the velvet laced over them.

The back is another slightly smaller single piece of vilene which has been covered with black kimono silk with a slightly crepey texture.

This was invisibly ladder stitched onto the black velvet and the bale stitched on with red thread.

And boxed.

I really feel I want to do something more with these pieces of jewellery than just accumulate them like I do with my purely textile work. I was wondering if they might be the sort of thing that would sell on etsy… Any thoughts from the wise?

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More Memories of a Golden Autumn

I dyed some of the crinkled spotted voile offcuts from Miss Murdstone’s House Cap with lichen I gathered from fallen branches in the garden of Godolphin House last summer. The soft gold goes well with the whipped back stitch and french knots.

Holly green cotton velvet from an old skirt, straight stitches, cross stitch and french knots in scraps of stranded cotton.

All five fragments together.

Autumnal colours and a range of textures.

Fun finishing next. 😮

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