Category: General Embroidery


Getting back to the Parterre

Small corner border in Squared Daisies stitch in two shades of burgundy, with the threads between them uncovered.

We last saw the Parterre in December, when I’d found a very pretty stitch (Squared Daisies) which was very trying to work, because it involved a lot of stitches going into the same hole.

As I was up to my eyes in exasperation with Amarna and William Marshall at the time, I set the parterre to one side so as to have fewer moments of fury and despair. Now that Amarna is in a totally different stage of effort and William is on the home straight, I’m returning to it, with a quieter mind and greater regularity of effort.

Small squared daisies, infilled with Rhodes stitch

With the very cheering result that you see here. In no time, so it seemed, I’d finished the two panels in small squared daisies, and moved on to infilling them with Diamond Rhodes Stitch. You’ll see that the Daisies are worked in two different shades of red, not quite regularly alternating. The thread is a single strand of Paterna.

For the Diamond Rhodes Stitch, I decided to use a single colour. It’s two strands of Appleton Crewel wool, which is about the weight of the single strand Paterna, and it’s allowed me to soften the colour slightly by using two different shades in the needle.

A very enlarged hole in the canvas, in the wrong place.

And then I moved on to the Super Large Squared Daisies, and, as it turned out, some repeated doing and undoing on one particular one, because I had misplaced the central hole.

Howl and Growl!

And do you know what is really infuriating?

It only went wrong in this particular case. All the others were fine.

Finishing William The Marshall

First corner of the gold underside couching on William MArshall completed

When we left William, I had just embarked on the underside couching, not without some trepidation, I have to say!

I stuck closely – one might say, religiously – to the advice about working underside couching that Tanya Bentham gives in her book about Opus Anglicanum. That is to say, no more than about half an hour at a time, no more than three sessions a day. In fact I think Tanya says 45 minutes, but I rapidly learnt that I lost focus and precision about the 33 minute mark, and two sessions were very much better for me than three.

Progress continues to be made - a little more than half of the underside couching is done.

If you click on any of these pictures to expand them, (they should open in a separate window) you will certainly see some of the infelicities in my workings here – scraggly bits of fabric showing, unevennesses in the pattern, all sorts of misadventures. There were even a couple of points where the fabric, doubled though it was, gave way at points, necessitating all manner of ingenuity. I suspect that my tension was adrift, as I have a definite tendency to pull too tight on my stitches, especially if I’m concentrating on the unfamiliar.

William Marshall on his bay horse, visiting the Chateau de Tancarville to show off. The background is basketweave pattern underside couching, and the picture is surrounded by a blue border with red Templar crosses at the cardinal points, and sprigs of broom and dog roses in the corners.

However, judge for yourselves whether I shouldn’t be pretty pleased with myself…

I do, of course, have to work out how I’m going to mount him, and on what, and it may be that in the end the lines of red, yellow, and green framing the border will need to be redone in some fashion. I like them as an idea, but as I move on to Aethelflaed, Rahere, and the Lady Julian, how much of a unity do I want to retain, and how on earth would I embody it?

Playing with Flox 4 – finish

Different shades of french knots, something like lavender flowers

I worked both ends of the table runner at the same time, because I thought that would enable me to see the whole thing as a single piece, rather than two pieces the same. As I’ve said many times, I have a real problem with repeating motifs, and this is one way I try to trick myself into not seeing the repeats, as it were.

The other thing I did was to put the stems in quite early on in the process. Partly because it was an easy choice to make, and partly because one of my other discoveries over the years is just how much different it makes to the sense of making progress if the design is visually joined up. “Spotty” designs are very discouraging, but if the design elements are linked, somehow progress is easier to see.

Pink frilly flower is now blue and in two shades

In the picture here, you see most of the decisions I made for the main section. Each of the orange petalled flowers uses a different combination of the several orange threads I had in my bundle, which turned out to be just as well, as it makes it look deliberate while reducing the terrors of playing Thread Chicken.

I also learnt from the first frilly flowers and when I reinstated them in blue, I used two shades, which makes for a much lighter and less blocky look.

The two shades of pink in the bell flowers also help to make the whole thing a bit less monolithic. It’s just as well, because the weight of the thread does make the stitching very emphatic.

Finished profusion of floral forms

So, it’s finished, although yet to be pressed owing to the fact that the ironing board bites and I’m rather fighting shy of it at present.

My suspicion, based on my experience with Kai-Lung, is that had I been able to use the original transfer, the design would have been larger, making it maybe possible only to do one end of the table runner, but also changing the relative scale of design to thread. The design is a little small for the thread, so when I come to use up the leftovers on something else, I must remember to enlarge whatever I use. I will just have to be ingenious with my colour distribution!

Getting Back To William Marshall

William Marshall panel, with guidelines for basketweave underside couching finally in place.

You probably recall that before Christmas I had started to practice my basketweave underside couching and had even got as far as drawing in the guidelines.

And there, I got stuck. Partly because my stitching frame was in the way of the Christmas tree and had to be folded down, and partly because I rather lost my nerve – the interval, you understand!

Finished practice panel of basketweave underside couching

I decided to finish the test patch with the actual thread I’d decided to use, and then I would have No Excuse.

And in fact, this doesn’t look too bad, does it?

There are bits I’m less than chuffed with, but on balance, the pattern is fairly clear, clearer than on the previous piece, and I think I have to decide that any further improvement had better take place in situ, as it were.

About four rows of underside couching in place!

So here I go!

I decided to start on one of the straight lines I drew at intervals to help make sure I stay on track, and slightly off-centre, so that any particularly egregious infelicities in the changeover aren’t bang in the middle. You may recall that one of the discoveries from the practice piece is that I am more comfortable working horizontally and away from me. So I will work from this point to the far edge, and then turn the frame around, and work to the far edge in the other direction.

Wish me luck!

Playing with Flox 3 – a couple of missteps

Densely stitched flower forms in warm colours, looking very congested

Flox is quite an odd thread to use. It’s tough and almost wiry. I love the shine and brilliance of the colours, but even the fairly loosely woven fabric I chose was a little bit too closely woven for the thread. I had rather a battle with it, and it was a bit tricky to find stitches I liked the look of. I’ve ended up using a very small selection of stitches – chain stitch, stem stitch, French Knots, and fly stitches.

The pink fly stitches on the frilly flower, I decided, were a bad choice. I’ve no quarrel with the stitch, but pink beside the apricot/ orange of the six-petalled stitches looked wrong, too congested and overheated and all in all, Just Wrong. Amid much muttering, and no little anxiety (dear heaven, I’m not used to playing thread chicken to this extent any more!!), out they came.

Experimenting with the bell shaped flowers

I replaced them with two shades of blue – much better!

The final flowers were the bell shaped flowers. I did wonder about working them with a full-coverage stitch, such as Romanian Couching or something like it. You can see in the picture at the right that I tried a fully stitched bell. That came out two. But then I discovered that my two pinks were slightly different shades, like the oranges. So I’ve deployed the two shades to eke out my thread a little.

I did the same with the six petalled flowers – each of the four is a different combination of thread shades.

Fun with Fabulous Shoes

The title photo for the instructions laid over two squares of felt with pattern pieces drawn on .

The instructions for a set of Fabulous Shoes in felt caught my eye when I was in at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate. I thought they’d make a perfect Reset Project for the beginning of the New Year, something a million miles from my usual adventures. When I bought the instructions – and the felt – I hadn’t found the Flox, so I wasn’t anticipating coming home with two projects for Twixmas, as people call it now.

Still, they will be a good change of pace from William, once I get onto his gold, even if that means neither the Flox nor the Felt is finished for the Feast of the Epiphany!

A piece of light teal felt, with pattern pieces for one plain shoe drawn onto it.

There are so many piecs to organise that rather than pinning my pattern pieces on, I’ve been drawing around them, only when I have got as far as having some confidence in my planning. It is going to involve quite an orgy of cutting out, and more than is usual for me of what might be called Plain Sewing, but I think it is going to be rather fun.

I shall probably hang them up in a corner of my studio (we’ve been calling it the Pre-Studio all this year, since it’s still in an intermediate state, but since I do use it as such, at least part of the time, I’m abandoning the prefix!) when they’re done..

A single pattern piece drawn on a darker piece of felt

Naturally, not being a lover of black and beige, I didn’t buy the ready-planned kit of felt, but instead a selection of pieces I liked the look of, teals and greens. And red for the Christian Louboutin-inspired soles, of course.

In fact the teals are smaller pieces than the pieces of black and beige, so I’m going to have to do a bit of playing around for the third shoe.

Watch this space, as they say!

Playing With Flox 2

A close up of the corner of a piece of cream, loosely woven fabric. It has been hemstitched by hand in yellow.

I found a suitable – fairly loosely woven – fabric, and evened up the edges (a lot of unravelling happened!), then hemstitched around the whole thing. In the past, I’ve done the hemstitching last, but as I had a few occasions coming up on which I had time to myself, in public, in which stitching might enable me to be usefully occupied and not loom at people, I thought this was a good use of my time. One reel of cotton, my knitter’s captive blade, and a needle – no other equipment needed, and no risk of losing any of the precious Flox!

A photocopy of the design, coloured in with pencils to plan the colours, and blackened by a failed attempt at prick and pounce.

Then I did a colour plan for the chosen design. I don’t usually plan pieces like this so much in advance, but since I have limited thread to work with, I picked out a crayon for each colour I had, and had a go. The background is blackened because I first tried to used prick and pounce to transfer the design. It didn’t at all – possibly because the fabric is too loose and all my pounce ended up in gaps rather than on threads. The next attempt was a transfer pencil. That didn’t work either, not at all, no sign of transfer of anything. I wonder whether transfer pencils degrade with time?

Main design lines transfered to the cloth in narrow black pen. There are few details

So then, which much muttering, I moved on to my cheap and nasty LED lightbox substitute. If I ever find an old-fashioned one I shall leap upon it, LEAP, I tell you.

You can see that I didn’t transfer all lines in all detail. This is a legacy of the Stitch Off, and a result, also, of the efforts I’ve been putting into painting and sketching over the years. This sort of design doesn’t rely on precision, all of the charm of it comes from the sense of life and profusion, and the fabric and thread are both too chunky to allow for much delicacy. So I’m trying to minimise my reliance on guidelines, and indeed, gradually make the guidance still more minimal. A work in progress, again.

Playing With Flox

Photograph of an advertisement for Anchor Flox in the 1930s. The headline is "Making things GAY!" and the text reads "Make your embroidery brighter and richer, by using Clarks "Anchor" Flox. The brilliance of this silky thread gives life and vivacity to your handiwork. And you'll find that Flox "fills up" so quickly that it not only makes your work twice as gay - it also does it in half the time!"

Well, if I had paid attention, forty years ago, to the adverts in those nineteen thirties The Needlewoman magazines, I would at least have known that Anchor “Flox” was a twisted, fairly heavy thread. I might also deduce that it was fairly new, because the tone of the adverts suggests that the reader needed to have the idea of it explained. So it is a fairly heavy thread, glossy and lustrous, and brightly coloured, creating bright, impactful pieces for interiors, rather than tiny delicate pieces for baby’s layettes.

Two rows of brightly coloured, twisted cotton embroidery thread

I laid out all my colours from the bunches I bought on the Embroiderers’ Guild stall at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show in colour families to see what I had to work with. Bright, colourful, lustrous, yes – yes, all of that. The thread is a bit heavier than the heavy pearl cottons, but the twist is not so tight. I wonder how it will make up? (Apart from “in half the time”!)

Now I look at it in better light, the red is more of an orange, so it’s misplaced, but there’s a fair range of colour here, as long as I’m not going for subtlety..

I went through my magazines, to find a selection of designs that were specifically intended for Anchor Flox, but not so huge (the Persian Fantasy Screen was intended for Anchor Flox, and that ends up as five feet by six!) as to demand more thread of each colour than I have.

I’ve decided to do one of the floral table runner designs, the middle of the top row here, because I think it will talk nicely to the Queen Anne style teacloth which is presently gracing a side table in the the living room. After that, if I seem to have enough, I am very tempted by that parrot…

Still Practicing Beforehand

First attempt at Basketweave Underside Couching. It's a bit tatty.

As my regulars know, all too well, I’m not much given to practicing beforehand. Therefore, the sight of me practicing should give everyone a slight sense of discomfort – the world is out of joint!

For this first practice, I used a gold metallic thread that is a bit finer than the recommended one, but it was at least the right structure and type. I did improve as I went through it, sufficiently to then move on to the real thread for the next practice panel.

Halfway through the second practice panel of Basketweave Underside Couching. It's using the gold thread intended for the real piece, and the pattern looks crisper.

This seems to be going better. The thread is slightly stiffer and thicker, and having taken the suggestion that Tanya made, I tried every combination of working away, working towards, working left to right, and working right to left, until I found the version that worked for me.

Horizontally, and away from me, since you ask!

William Marshall panel, with guidelines for basketweave underside couching finally in place.

Anyway, I intend to finish the second practice panel before I start on the real thing, but in the meantime I have now sufficient belief in myself on this one to have put in the guidelines on William for the real thing.

Even that wasn’t entirely straightforward, as my lightbox substitute is a little too big to fit comfortably under the frame, and has a slightly fragile usb connector, but it is now done.

Happy Christmas, one and all!

Christus Natus Est, a semi-abstract Nativity in Goldwork
Christus Natus Est
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