Table Runner Hemmed
At long last… I have finished the Finnish Table Runner!
The embroidery itself is very simple – Bokhara Couching and Stem Stitch, with the darkest leaves worked in nested Fly Stitches. I used two shades each of two colours – a greyish green, and a golden yellow.
The couching stitches of the Bokhara Couching are carefully arranged to create a basketweave effect, and I worked harder than usual to make the stem stitch regular with an even twist to it. Real simplicity is hard work, because the simpler the tools and effects you are using, the better-executed they have to be!
Antique Hemstitch - Corner Front
So I have taken particular care to stitch evenly. This was not entirely straightforward, in fact, as the fabric is a plain weave (one thread over and one thread under in each direction) but is not a square weave (warp and weft threads equally spaced). Since it is also a linen, and the threads are a little slubby, sometimes the effect is exaggerated. This became especially clear when I worked the hems.
Incidentally, I’ve no objections at all to the fabric not being a square weave or to the threads being slubby – these are just factors that sometimes influence how something is worked or the effects that are achievable.
Antique Hemstitch - Corner Back
When I hemmed the piece, I chose to use Antique Hemstitch (at least, that is what it is called in Yvette Stanton’s Right Handed Embroiderer’s Companion). This leaves only a small stitch on the front of the piece. I withdrew a single thread for each hem (the instructions usually suggest at least two, but I wanted a narrow line down the edge and not the dogtooth effect of hemstith on only one side of the withdrawn threads), and then grouped four threads in each stitch. If you look hard at the photos, you will see that in one direction the stitches look longer than the other, although they group four threads in each case.
Since the table runner is about a metre and a half long, and nearly half a metre wide, that’s about four metres of hemming, which for some strange reason I enjoyed enormously, even though I’m really not good with repetition. I used ordinary sewing thread, but decided to use a golden yellow to add a bit of colour along the edges.
When my mother saw it first (half-done), she told be I was being a little show-off, but I think she meant it as a compliment!
Heathered Thread
Since I was working with leftover threads from other people’s projects, I was “forced to become inventive” – as Joseph Haydn said in another context!
The leaf and bud shown here use Chain Stitch, but I combined single strands of two or three colours in the needle. This is a technique that I don’t necessarily use very often, but it is always one I consider, because heathering is such a good way to create subtle variations in colour and tone. There’s a nice example of this on The Floss Box blog, where the thread for the water is blended in the needle.
The veins are marked in Thorn Stitch, although I’ve just noticed that the central vein is in Chain Stitch!
Forget-Me-Nots
The forget-me-knots and attached leaves and stems are almost a sampler all by themselves. The leaves and stems are worked in Coral Stitch, which also outlines the flowers. Inside the flowers, there are tiny circles of Rosette Chain Stitches, worked around a Buttonhole Wheel in golden yellow. Rosette chain looks better worked rather bigger than this – I’ve used it since in several projects – and those who followed my posts on the Goldwork Masterclass will know by now that I have since developed a positive obsession with stitch and fabric scale!
Feather Stitch Tulip
The Tulip is filled with close rows of Feather Stitch in red and golden yellow, outlined with stem stitch. It creates a slightly odd texture that I’m not entirely unhappy with, although it would balance the other flowers better if the filling were not so closely packed, and the colours were rather paler.
The stem is worked in a single row of chain stitch with a row of stem stitch on each side. I was gaining enough of a grip on embroidery by this stage that I made an effort to keep the stitch lengths comparable, which gives a nice regular rhythm to the stem.
Progress So Far
As you might have guessed, once I got started, I wanted to keep going!
However, detached buttonhole stitch is a very time consuming stitch, and I’ve been warned by comments in emails that the Gilt Sylke Twist, undeniably gorgeous though it is, can be a bit trying to stitch with. So I have been working quite hard to remind myself it is not a race, and that doing as much as I feel up to at any one time is perfectly acceptable!
I found myself struggling with the Millenium frame on my existing frame stand, which was too flimsy for the breadth and weight of the frame, so after some weeks I decide to invest in the Necessaire Floor Stand that goes with it. After only two stitching sessions, I love it. Sturdy and well made, it doesn’t sag under the weight of the frame, there is a place for my magnifier to attach, and there’s even a hook for a pair of scissors.
Detail of Month One stitching
I haven’t yet finished Month One of the instructions, so what you are seeing is an intermediate stage. At the moment, as you will see from the “Progress So Far” it’s looking very spotty, because there are such acres of linen between the stitched motifs. It can be a little disheartening to slave for hours and find that the odd couple of leaves has made very little difference to the overall impression. This is a problem I had with the Piano Shawl, but in that case I was able to solve the problem very simply by stitching in the stems. I don’t want to do that here, because the silk thread would catch on the gold thread of the stems and be spoiled. So I will simply have to be patient and find some other way of highlighting my progress.
You will notice that there is some peculiarity about the right-hand leaf in the detail picture. I’m not quite sure what happened there – I think it was in the period of struggle before I bought my Necessaire – but I’m not going to take it out until Month One is complete. I want to have a clear sense of progress before I start snipping things out!
Sunshine Award
I was rather flattered to find that Anne wanted to give me an award. As usual, the idea is to link to the giver (which I have), say something about oneself, and then pass the award on to some other bloggers.
Hmm…now, what to say? Ah yes – I’m a true Englishwoman! How can you tell? Well, besides the customary Scottish, Irish and Welsh ancestry, not to mention the Norman French (that was a very long time ago, of course), I’m very proud of being one-eighth Swedish. Only the English – in my experience – are actually proud of being mongrels!
My sidebar blogroll doesn’t reflect the breadth of my reading these days, so here are a few suggestions you won’t find there…
Lunch in Paris – Elizabeth Bard doesn’t post very often these days, but I always enjoy what she writes, and she’s given some wonderful recipe suggestions!
Silver Pebble and
Thrifty Household – I’d like to thank these two ladies specifically for their Making Winter bloghop, which did much to make last winter seem more bearable!
Potter Jotter – I discovered Cathy’s blog relatively recently, and I’ve been fascinated by her ceramics inspired by patchwork – it would never have occurred to me that such a concept would be successful and yet her pieces are utterly delightful.
Finally, lest you begin to fear that I don’t actually read embroidery blogs any more,
Dog Daisy Chains and
Threads Across The Web – Jackie’s focus is on felt and dyed velvet, and Carol-Anne’s is primarily on Japanese embroidery. They are so different to my own that they provide continual enrichment for my creative life. Thank you, ladies!
Transferring The Design
I’ve been looking at the kit of materials for the Glittering Gentleman’s Nightcap Course for quite some time, but since I received the finishing kit I’ve finally decided to get going.
There was quite a bit of preparation to do. There are lines of basting to help with finishing the piece when the stitching is done, and I’ve added fabric at the top and bottom, and bound the sides, to make framing up a bit easier. I invested in a Millenium frame for this project, and I wanted to be sure that I would have enough fabric at the top and bottom to work with the attachment system.
I don’t have anything that resembles a light-table, so I had to improvise. The tracing and the fabric have both been taped to a pane of the only unleaded window in the house, and I spent a careful hour or so using the Pigma pen included in the kit to trace over the pattern onto the fabric. Bear in mind, if you find yourselves applying this method – it’s a most unnatural position to be drawing in, and you will find your arm aching and your hand cramping, if you aren’t careful.
First Bud
Second Bud
I also did some stitching. These are my first two attempts at Detached Buttonhole Stitch using the Gilt Sylke Twist.
Which is just as hair-raising as anything you might have read will have lead you to expect. It’s very lively and springy, and the gold spiral does sometimes break or scrunch up along the silk.
All that said, perhaps because I was prepared for it, I did not find it as troublesome as I feared, and the second bud is a marked improvement on the first, so I think I can be very pleased!
The Felucca
I did say, when I first began working on the “Dreams of Amarna” panels, that I did not intend to become an Egyptologist. I still don’t, but at the same time, my interest in the Egyptology of the thirties, and in what Mary Chubb might have known or had access to, has extended somewhat as I have discovered more.
Recently BBC4 showed a documentary called The Man Who Discovered Egypt, so of course I pricked up my ears. When I realised that the presenter was the current director of the Egypt Exploration Society, Dr Chris Naunton (@chrisnaunton for the Twitterers among you), and his subject was Flinders Petrie, I made absolutely sure to record the programme so I could watch at my leisure. It was fascinating, and I may very well get further ideas for scenes on my edge panels from looking at it again.
For those in the UK that missed it and are interested, the programme is being rebroadcast on Tues 15 May at 10pm, on BBC4.
As it happens, Chris Naunton was the first person I spoke to at the EES when I started my research, so I emailed to say how much I’d enjoyed the programme. He replied, and added that the digitisation of the archive (which gave me the original picture for the Felucca, above) has been continuing apace. The EES now has its own YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL85556374907053C0&feature=plcp
Furthermore, some of the film shows JDS Pendlebury, the Director of Excavations in Mary Chubb’s time, not just working, but playing – organising a sports day for the worker’s children, having a spoof argument with colleagues – and, very importantly for me, there is film of an incident which is described in the book, of bringing back a heavily carved and coloured door-lintel from the site to the Expedition House. Whether I will be able to create a feasible embroidery design from that welter of imagery remains to be seen – but it will be really worth a try, won’t it!
Blanket Stitch Leaf
The leaves that went with the Rose were worked in Blanket Stitch, set back to back down the central vein of the leaf, and outlined in Stem Stitch. In fact, if you look closely at the photo it seems that I worked the outline first and then the blanket stitch, stitching right over the outline. The leaf is really rather too large and the stitches ended up a little floppy. I think that now I would work the blanket stitch more closely, but keep it shorter, leaving unstitched fabric between it and the outline.
Sword Stitch Chrysanthemum
I’m calling this a chrysanthemum, but heaven knows what it was intended to be! The outline is in Whipped Stem Stitch, using two different, but very close shades of pink. The petals contain scatters of Sword Stitches. I think I would now make the sword stitches much smaller, if I were going to use them, and maybe vary the colours as well. The long skinny leaves that run behind the flower are worked in Closed Herringbone Stitch – strange to see that one popping up when I’ve used it so much in reverse on the Map of Amarna! The calyx is worked using several rows of stem stitch – I’d work these much more closely now, and maybe even use two different colours.
Vankdyke Stitch Leaf
I’ve used Vandyke Stitch for leaves on other occasions as well. It creates a slightly unnatural leaf, because the central vein is raised rather than indented, but it creates a variety of texture that can be very useful.
It can be a slightly tricky stitch to get right, since if the tension is wrong (and it goes wrong very easily!) the central braided spine becomes decidedly wriggly. It’s easier in a round yarn rather than a stranded one, so as I look at these two leaves, I’m really quite impressed with Teenage Me!
The Acorn Complete
The Acorn itself was finished rapidly, and looks pretty good. For some reason I found it easier, with the second leaf, to work by reference to the first leaf, rather than the chart. You would expect that that would lead to the result being asymmetrical, but I think removing the extra step of checking with the chart was a good idea!
Space For The Gold
The next stage is to work the background, leaving space for the goldwork stitches that will embellish it. I really do not want to have to refer to the chart with every line of tent stitch, so I’ve taken some time to outline the placement of the goldwork stitches in back stitch. Doing this has nearly driven me absolutely mad, but it will means that I will be able to count the background from the edge of the goldwork rather than from the acorn, which will be ever so much easier.
The background is dark green tent stitch, and I will next post about this when I’ve finished it, and started the goldwork stitches. It will take a while. There is only so much dark green I can cope with at any one time!
First Solo
For all that I have shown you a variety of pieces of needlework from when I was Very Young, this atrocious farrago, worked in my mid-teens, is actually the real start of my embroidery career. I found the transfer and fabric in a suitcase of cloth one afternoon when I was looking for something to do as a change from schoolwork. My other hobbies – playing in orchestras, singing in choirs, and dancing lessons – all involved my parents in ferrying me around, and I wanted something I could just pick up and put down again. I doubt that any of us had any idea what was about to begin!
It gives very clear evidence that skill in stitching and in colour don’t always come naturally – although in fairness to myself, I simply pulled threads from my Grandmama’s stash, because I wasn’t yet sure enough that I enjoyed embroidery to spend money on it!
Trellis Rose
I remember that I’d already discovered (I can’t remember how!) that Long and Short Stitch, and Satin Stitch, while simple in concept, are utterly infuriating to stitch, especially if you are learning from a book, so there’s not a scrap of either stitch in the whole thing. I had a great time leafing through Barbara Snook’s “Embroidery Stitches“, which Grandmama had given my mother, and picking stitches to try.
I started bang in the middle with the Rose, outlined in blanket stitch and with the petals filled in with Jacobean Couching. At the combination of scale of the petals and the stitch it looks much too busy, as it turns out, and it would have looked better if I had outlined the petals in a much darker colour to help differentiate them. Lesson learned!
I will write more about this, because although the thing as a whole is rather horrifying, as I look at it I think some of the stitch choices are interesting, but sometimes not quite taken far enough. Besides, it’s extremely gratifying to see that my work has improved very considerably!
A Cutwork Tablecloth in need of some loving attention
One of the advantages of a family obsession with textiles is that no-one looks at me strangely when I get excited about a fabric, a thread, or a stitch.
One of the disadvantages is that between us we have a good many pieces stitched (probably) by an aunt, great-aunt or grandmother, which have been in constant use for years. Furthermore, as table-linen, if they get dirty, they just go in the washing machine. Usually this simply results in a cleaner cloth, but sometimes forty years of machine washing will catch up with us.
More detail of the Cutwork Tablecloth
We don’t know who stitched this, or even whether it was bought by some ancestress of mine who wanted to rescue it from a jumble sale!
It seems to be a combination of cutwork and pulled work, with some elements I have yet to identify (fortunately I have a whole bookshelf of books to help!), and sadly, it needs mending.
Needs Mending!
As you see! There are buttonhole bars (or are they overcast bars?) which have actually broken, and in order to repair them I will need to reinstate some of the edgings as well.
Then there are other elements of the embroidery that I will need to identify and and replace. As far as I can tell, everything is worked with a single strand of stranded cotton, and would you believe, in spite of a considerable stash, I had to go out and buy some thread to match the existing one!
