Goldwork Acorns

There are so many acorns this year, and berries, hips and haws, I thought I would share my attempt at goldwork, three little goldwork acorns.  I love the shape of acorns and oak leaves, they lend themselves to embroidery.  My goldwork experiment was heavily influenced by Tracy A Franklin, she is a lovely person who offers courses at her studio in Durham but who also writes books.  Her book,  'New Ideas in Goldwork', is a great source of traditional techniques used in a modern fashion.  I had trouble buying the sundries for this little project and found that the Golden Hinde in Warrington has a good selection of materials for the beginner, they will sell small quantities of thread, purl and leather and offer an excellent mail order service.  For my acorns I used a selection of 'purls', these are threads spun with gilt metal around them and come in various forms.  You never pierce the cloth with these threads they are all couched down to get the layering effect.  The leather, in this instance kid leather, comes in tiny quantities and you use felt or bump to pad the shape before stitching down.  Once laid down, the edges of the leather are edged with purl as are all the other shapes to give a neat edge.  There are lots of different ways of laying purl and different ways of working the leather but everything is on the surface, the one thing that struck more than any other is the weight of the work.  This piece is tiny, around six inches by four inches yet there is real weight to it, it makes you wonder just how heavy a full ceremonial cope must weigh with all the goldwork there.

 

Buttons

I've been playing today with some brass rings and some fabric covered buttons.  I had two sizes of ring and made a few different buttons.  I started with Dorset Buttons, they are the wheel button on the extreme left of the picture, basically you cover the brass ring using buttonhole stitch and then make threads running across the ring to make a wheel and then weave the thread under and around the spindles of the wheel to complete the button. In all these buttons when covering a brass ring in buttonhole stitch make sure that you have enough thread to completely cover the ring.  The little bouquets are made by over sewing the brass ring with buttonhole stitch and then using a flower thread or similar to make flower stems that move across the ring, using the top set of flower stems stitch french knots and use beads to make the flowers of the bouquet.  Finishing with a little bow, that I secured using a tiny blob of PVA.  I think they would make very pretty little brooches. The other buttons below, are again using a brass ring and buttonhole stitch, insert a tiny piece of hand made felt that is embellished using a felting needle and tiny wisps of felt.  Still a definite technophobe I decided to try putting a piece of inkjet printing silk through my printer having first taken pictures of a pile of buttons, I liked the idea of a button covered button.  I recommend the Inkjet Silk by Jacquard as being very easy to use and gives great results.

 

 

Cecily

This is Cecily, she is one of my tubby girls and stands 14 inches tall.  She is dressed in a mixture of ginger and green and has ticking legs and a ticking bird.  I think the fabrics sit well together, I am not sure of their origin as I have had them forever but the ticking was bought in to back several patchwork cushions.  I love her green hair and eyebrows, I am really starting to like the alternate hair colours they make the dolls seem more like an illustration and more fun.  The face, as always is hand painted and the eyelashes and eyebrows embroidered. Her hair is apple green merino wool tops.  She is a very calm girl and has a gentle, wistful face. 

Emilie Floge's Dress

 I was lucky enough a few years ago to visit Vienna for a long weekend.  We went specifically to see the Klimt exhibition, an exhibition that brought together many of Klimt's paintings into one show.  I came home much enthused and used many postcards I had collected as inspiration for embroideries.  The piece I want to share with you is inspired by the dress worn by Emilie Floge in Klimt's painting of her.  Emilie was Klimt's long time partner and a well respected fashion designer in her own right.  The dress she wears in the painting uses fabric designed by Klimt himself.  I love this painting, it is one of my favourites and I enjoyed working this little piece of embroidery.  I first painted the quaker cloth in appropriate colours with gouache and then over worked the pattern in a mixture of french knots, random crosses and couching.  I had some lovely threads from the wonderful Oliver Twists that make all the difference in shine, texture and tone. 

 

Woodland Embroidery Exhibition, Astley Hall

We have just spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting Astley Hall in Chorley.  We back on to woodlands that back onto the parkland attached to the hall.  It was originally Elizabethan but is much changed, still having the most fantastic Jacobean ceilings and lots of spooky legends about a white lady.  Oliver Cromwell stayed here during the Civil War.  It's a lovely place well worth a visit in its own right but recently they have renovated the walled garden and refurbished the coach house to be an exhibition space, they also have a lovely tea room with delicious cakes!  They still have exhibitions in the main hall and that is where we ventured today. My dear friend Isobel is a member of the embroidery group 'One Step On'  and invited us along.  I would recommend a visit to anyone who enjoys experimental and traditional hand and machine work.  The exhibition is open Saturday and Sunday until 30th October and is well worth a visit.  Lots of pieces took my eye but I was allowed to take a photo of the wonderful stumpwork piece by Sandie Mayer called Woodland and Wetland.  The detail is exquisite and you can spot a little owl hidden in the leaves.

 

Little Flower Sampler

This little sampler I finished the other day is reminiscent of the colours that always linger this time of year, before the leaves really start to turn but when the hedges are full of blackberries.  I have been collecting blackberries for pies and for dyes later on in the season and the colours stay with me.  I didn't put any blackberries on this sampler just little flowers and buds but I remembered a scarf I made in felt several years ago and I made it at this time of year.  In August and September rich pinks and greens really resonate with me.  Give it another few weeks and I will want nothing but oranges, yellows, browns and reds, the acers in the garden are starting to have a brilliant show but its not quite Autumn yet, its coming but its not here. The sampler is quite small and uses varieties of herringbone, different variations on crosses, french knots and half rhodes plus other stitches that took my fancy.  I think that it is quite pretty, if a little girly but it looks good stretched and framed, ready to go.

 

Elizabethan embroidery doll

This doll was made as part of my City and Guild Part 2 in stitched textiles.  We had to write a history of English embroidery and I looked particularly at Elizabethan embroidery.  I based the doll on Bess of Hardwick, a remarkable woman of her day and a great needlewoman herself.  She rose from minor gentry to be Countess of Shrewsbury, married to George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury.  I am lucky to have been able to go to both her great houses in the north of England, Chatsworth House, which she lost and Hardwick Hall her final home.  She lost Chatsworth after a fall out with her husband and built Hardwick for herself and her children.  I tried to use several techniques used in Elizabethan dress, to the left shows the little ruff and a tiny blackwork collar, blackwork being introduced by the Spanish at the court of Katherine of Aragon.  Beneath shows a tiny velvet book, it would have been a book of psalms or a book of hours and I have chosen to try out stumpwork, making a raised strawberry with picot leaves, french knot seeds and machine made cord scrolling.  The little bag with a butterfly motif uses the technique of making cross stitch motifs on linen, carefully cutting them out and than appliqueing them onto velvet or other rich cloths.  The bottom picture shows the machine detailing on the kirtle or panel skirt made to sit under the over dress.  In keeping with the period the doll has a linen shift in white under her clothes, a red linen underskirt and no knickers!  Tudor ladies didn't wear any, it seems crazy to think that they were practically sewn into their garments every day, either that or were held together with pins but no one had come up with the idea of knickers, could have been quite drafty.

Red Clover Sampler

This little sampler is an idea I have been working on for a while.  I like the idea of a little flower bed or tiny landscape interwoven with the sampler story. 

I used oil pastel to mark out the fields and the sky and then overworked them with machine embroidery with the tension loose enough to make raised areas for trees and hedges.  I picked the clover motif as it reminded me of my childhood home, we lived on Clover Road and were surrounded by clover in the pastures near by. 

I like the overall effect, I am particularly satisfied by the use of detached chain stitch to work the clover flowers.  I think that the space dyed thread used to make a satin stitch line works well.