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.
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.
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