I spent quite some time solemnly Holly Braiding my way all around the jacket, over seams, over itself, even in a couple of cases over the felt. There will also be tendrils in the same yarn, which will pull out the colour variation and reduce the slightly spotty look – which is much less evident in real life, oddly.
The two different stranded silks I used on these leaves help, too, of course. Up and down buttonhole stitch on the top leaf, with the paired uprights worked in a V-shape, and in the lower leaf, closed feather stitch. I do wonder whether a bit more contrast may be needed, but I think that can wait until the whole thing is finished, and I can see what, if anything, wants more help.
The frilly flower (heaven knows what it was intended to be!) provided a good deal of scope, too. The green stitch over the yellow felt came from Edith John – she calls it Tied Cretan Stitch. The yellow stitching is another one of hers, a pattern of feather stitches, but it doesn’t respond well to the curve and looks so unlike the drawing I now can’t find which it is. The inner edge is tied down with coral stitch in an extremely lively rayon yarn that nearly drove me mad, and I’ve reused one of the variegated yarns from the leaf above to help pull things together.
I’m enjoying myself enormously, but I am not always coming up with something you could call a “textbook example”!
This one shows some of the stitching over stitching that’s been going on as well. I put the stem in first, and then worked the alternating feather stitch and cable chain stitch spikes over the top. I’ve also used rosette chain stitch again. It’s a usefully intricate and intriguing stitch which has some of the practical characteristics of blanket stitch.
The lorgnette case would have been finished more quickly had I not been using a corner of the same canvas I was doing the Fishy Experiments on!
When I’d bordered the scroll pattern, using a long armed cross stitch, I thought that maybe it wasn’t quite long enough, and added a square section to the top to act as a closing flap.
The next task was to cut it out, turn in the canvas and catch it down, and then line the piece with felt so that the interior doesn’t scratch the lenses of the lorgnettes. This is always rather fiddly, but a very necessary stage. I certainly wouldn’t want to try to add the felt without catching down the canvas separately!
The next thing was to turn the lined strip into the case. I’ve used the same variegated pearl cotton as I used for the border, and in effect, the same stitch. It goes forward two and back one, so the finished stitching creates much better coverage than a straight overcast stitch. It has a slight fishbone pattern, and you can continue on from the joining seam to run around the edge of the flap without even breaking stride, as it were.
Since there’s already colour variation in the yellow and the blue, minimising the textural variation by edging the flap with the same stitch as the case is closed with makes the whole thing pull together nicely.
It only took an afternoon or so to finish the case and install the lorgnettes, so they are now ready for those Happier Times I mentioned, when Museums and Menus are a regular part of life once more.
I should add that while I was at university, I was the girl who wore white gloves with her summer frocks. None of my friends will be at all surprised to find me wielding a pair of lorgnettes – in fact, if at least one of them doesn’t ask me what took so long, I will be rather surprised!
And now, the final (for now) episode of Slow TV Stitchery, Episode 73, in which the slips are at last applied, and Tynemouth Priory is Finished.
I decided that I was going to work all the major stems in one of the Braid Stitches, so I spent quite a bit of time revisiting Plaited Braid Stitch, the ordinary Braid Stitch, and others. For a while that was a little painful.
First of all, I was reminded that these stitches don’t stay in your hands the way (say) Feather Stitch does, and then secondly I was reminded that they are very thread-hungry. It’s (almost) all on the front, where you get the benefit of it, but metres get swallowed up in short order. And I knew there would be metres of whatever-stitch-I-chose. My stash doesn’t run to that sort of length, but having performed a few experiments, I realised that sock yarn would be perfectly useable, given the fabric I’m working on.
I finally chose to work Holly Braid Stitch, which I experimented with in 2014 when I was working on the Glittering Nightcap. I’d found it in Jacqui Carey’s book “Elizabethan Stitches”, and after some struggles it had worked pretty well. This time I tied myself in so many knots with it that I asked for help in the Historic Hand Embroidery group on fb, only to find that very few people had attempted it. However, those who did were very helpful, and several very intrigued people asked me could I video it if I got it to work…
So I have. What you see here is probably not enough to learn the stitch from without also following Jacqui’s diagrams and instructions, but I think it helps with the “workflow” of the stitch, which is not well represented in those diagrams, I suspect purely because, as a braidmaker, she thinks differently about the way a stitch works.
Once I had the stitch down pat, I bought a rather gorgeous sock yarn (Woodland Fire from The Yarn Gallery), and whenever I wasn’t sure about the details I wanted to add to a flower or leaf, I just kept on with the stems..
And on. And on!
And now, Episode 72 of Slow TV Stitchery is now live, in which we encounter difficulties in working a pattern backwards, experiment with French Knots, and recall “Leaving the Tyne”.
I’m continuing to explore ideas for the course at The Watermill in Posara, and this one is inspired by the first outing of the painting course I went on. Verrucola is a medieval village and fortress not far from Fivizzano, with a deep stream valley, some very impressive buildings – and a delightful trattoria just inside the walls.
I want to explore the different ways an embroiderer might choose to explore the textures of stone that a site like this afford – the living rock of the hillside, cut stone used for building, and the shaped and smoothed stone used for architectural features.
You can see in the first picture that I have just “drawn in” the street beyond the gate with back stitch and used darning stitch to suggest the shadow beneath the arch.
I’m using padded satin stitch for the cut and smoothed stone of the arch, but since I find that an exasperating stitch, I’ve alternated working on the arch with the tiles which cap the wall which is pierced by the arch.
I found buttonholed herringbone stitch in one of Sharon Boggan’s books, but as you can see, my first attempt didn’t really produce the effect of the curved roof tiles that are so much part of the scenery in Tuscany. The linen herringbone stitch is too stretched out, and the two strands of stranded cotton just look straggly.
I am going to have to emphasise experimentation in the course, aren’t I!
This version is much better – the shorter, higher herringbone stitch, just peering through at the base of the arches, three or even four strands of stranded cotton for the buttonhole stitch, and the stacked stitches create a good recollection of the tiled roofs I saw. I’m pleased with the way the variegation suggests the weathering on the tiles.
You will see that I have added a Page to the site which will make it easier to find and download details of the course if you are interested.
And also, Episode 71 of SlowTV Stitchery is now live, in which I experiment with the shore, and talk of plans for overland travel for Times To Come..
I’m varying the stitching as much as possible, but certain stitches rather lend themselves to certain roles, so there is a certain amount of reoccurrance. Here there are Half Cretan Stitch, Closed Feather Stitch, Feathered ZigZag Chain Stitch (more than once), and Wheatear Stitch.
I’m mostly putting green on green with the leaves, so that although there is variation, it isn’t too striking, and there will be moments of quiet in among all the proliferation of colour and form.
That said, some of the leaf groups demand a bit of counterchange – the dark and light green above, and the dark green and yellow in the next picture. In that case I’ve enhanced the counterchange with close blanket stitch on the yellow inner edge, to make it a bit crisper, yellow Spanish Knotted Feather Stitch on the dark green (I love that combination, it just sings!) and a dark green Mountmellick stitch on the outer edge of the yellow.
I don’t feel obliged to stitch down the felt to the same degree in all cases, but the needlefelting doesn’t have the same effect on the slightly closer, marbled felt, so I’ve often been holding it down with small stitches at the edge. Feather stitch is a conventional stitch for leaves, recalling vein patterns, but equally, I can choose to recall the vein pattern in one half of the leaf and not in others, as here (Chained Blanket Stitch, since you ask!).
I’m planning to do all the stems in some form of braid stitch, so you also see some rather unsatisfactory experiments here!
In other news, I am up to Episode 70 in SlowTV Stitchery, which discusses George Augustus Palgreen Blacktower, Tanya Bentham’s book on Opus Anglicanum, and offers some thoughts about framing..
So now, having finished my two fishie experiments (there may have been a third in the pipeline, but I’ve forgotten what it was!), what can I say I’ve learnt?
First, canvaswork stitches against the freeform bargello. There’s a sort of stillness, almost a static quality to this fish, in spite of the flowing bargello.
The bargello works well, although now I look at it, I’ve not managed to keep it flowing from top to bottom. And it was remarkably difficult to keep track of the pattern across the fish.
The second fish was an attempt to suggest the broken outline of an object seen through the interface between air and water. So this time, the pattern of the bargello ran through the fish, and I had to decide at each edge whether to stitch in the fish colour or the water colour. The pattern runs more successfully from top to bottom of the piece, but the whole thing looks a lot more active, maybe too active.
I think the colours are a bit too bright and swimming pool-like, but as these are experiments, using stash, I’m not too concerned about that. What does concern me is that even after these two, fairly substantial pieces, the appearance of a particular blend of threads as it was stitched was sometimes a surprise. It will be hard to pick the right colours to use if I can’t rely on my imagination of how the thread will stitch up.
So, I don’t know whether I will use this idea for the borders of Placidus, but I’ve got plenty to think about, haven’t I!
Episode 69 of Slow TV Stitchery is now live, on talking projects, the development of musical taste, and the challenges of suggesting wind over the water.
I’m using a lot of variagated threads, of course, and leaving stranded threads un-separated. Furthermore, since all washability is clearly lost here, I’m picking thread for colour and texture, rathere than paying attention to the fibre or considering colourfastness. I can, after all, replace the stitching with something else if I need to!
Basque Stitch edges the brown petals here, and triple chain stitch forms the spine of the yellow one. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you will see that the green calyx is held around the edge with coral stitch and then a blanket stitch which is highlighted with detached buttonhole in a pearl cotton.
I’m really very pleased with how this element has turned out, although I may choose to lighten the stems on the leaves at the top, once I have everything in place and know what I have to balance of the overall impression.
I’ve looked quickly through the posts for the Coat of Many Flowers, and I was much more definite about stitching all around almost every shape for that, except the small teal leaves. For this one, I seem to be stitching a lot more veins and spines, or edging only one side of a piece. If I become anxious about pieces coming away, I can always add some stitches!
This element was more floral in previous incarnations, but here, I think it has drifted more in the direction of a seedhead. The “seeds” are isolated oyster stitches in sock yarn!
I unified the brown petals by using the same thread to embellish each, but made them more interesting by using different sitches. I’m particularly taken with the feathered zigzag chain on the middle one. The other change, compared with the Coat of Many Flowers, is to have turned some of the edging stitches around: last time, when I used rosette chain stitch, it was more like blanket stitch, with the “vertical” stitches pointing in to the centre of the shape.
And now, Episode 68 of SlowTV Stitchery is live. In which I discuss the alarming adventure of a Watermill Stitchery, remind myself to include the slips when I finally assess the success of Swirl Stitch (not yet, alas), and note that the skill of choosing the order in which to experiment is unheralded and undervalued.
I mentioned that I had more experiments to perform on the leaves, and several people hastened to tell me that I should be sure to Test To Destruction. They are right, of course, and having plenty of samples in the pack that Caroline Hack sent me to play with, I was able to do just that.
One of them, I pulled and twisted, trying to snap the plastic. That turned out to be much harder than I had expected it to be, considering how flimsy it felt when I was nervously working needlelace over the leaf shapes.
Then I fished out the heat gun that I still have left over from some experiments with paper crafting, covered a drinking glass with a bit of greaseproof paper, and tried to soften the plastic so it would match the curve of the glass. The plastic certainly moved, but not in a very controlled fashion, so I tried again, this time using one of my needlelace experiments. It was still an undercontrolled shift, but it did produce the sort of twisted look of a drying leaf. I tried hard to photograph it so that the curves really showed!
I worked a series of experimental needlelace sections in some of the other pieces. Knotted stitches in slubby linen (really don’t do this – friction becomes a real problem!), cloth stitch in silk (the yellow that in due course was melted and twisted) and a variety of others.
I think, in the end, the difficulty of covering the borders, and the slippy plastic which makes it hard to keep the threads in place, mean that this won’t be the best way to do the oak leaf wreath. I may still have thoughts about this as I begin to plan, and in particular, I need first of all to work out how big my oak leaves need to be in order to be in proportion with the mirror.
You can now watch Episode 67 of SlowTV Stitchery, which is entirely concerned with my battles with Swirl Stitch!
The basic technique I’m using for the Little Jacket is the same as I used for the Coat of Many Flowers, so the block colour comes from pieces of felt cut to shape. Most of them are the light and lofty felts I use with my embellisher, but this dark brown is slightly denser and more variable in colour. The variations aren’t as clear in photos as they are in real life, and I have a faint hope that if I wear it enough some of the lighter colours will fade a little more than the dark ones, and pull out the contrast a bit more.
This is the first of the motifs I worked on. A long-legged variation on chain stitch on the central petal is set off by neat paired blanket stitch edgings on the outer petals. I’ve decided that the yellow is to be an accent colour, and I’ve ensured that I have small bits of it it scattered across the whole jacket. In this case I’ve not used contrast colours to stitch it down. I’m not sure about the whipped blanket stitch on the lower half, but I needed something to contrast with the single twisted chain stitches on the uper half, and I don’t think I will continue unhappy with it once the whole jacket is finished.
By contrast, I’m not at all happy with this one, and I don’t know what to do with it.
I like the crested chain edging on the brown petals, and I like the odd combination of rosette chain and blanket stitch in the yellow-green pearl cotton, but not how I’ve placed it or the effect it is creating. The stitch running in a spine down the lower brown petal is called “Wing Stitch” in the book I found it in, and again, I like it, but not what it is doing here.
I can see some unpicking in my future!
However, episode 66 of SlowTV Stitchery is now live, in which we consider the state of progress on Tynemouth Priory and plans for the sea, learn from Granny Weatherwax, and start planning more Watermill Stitcheries.
I have been asked to plan a week of embroidery next July for The Watermill, Posara, a rather wonderful place in Tuscany that hosts painting and knitting holidays among other things. Bill and Lois Breckon, who run The Watermill, have been gradually restoring and improving it over the past thirty years or so, and they have a gift for unobtrusive excellence of organisation I’ve never seen bettered.
At the moment, we are thinking of running an embroidery week along the lines of the knitting courses, with studio time alternating with the excursions and fabulous lunches, and I have been thinking quite hard about what might make for an interesting week.
The painting classes are “plein air”, so involve setting up somewhere and painting all morning, followed by a delicious lunch (when I painted this watercolour I had my back to the trattoria where we had lunch) and painting some more in the afternoon. Apparently the knitters sometimes set themselves up somewhere and Knit In Public as well – the locals in all the destinations being so accustomed to artists and tourists that they barely even notice.
My idea for the embroidery week is to go adventuring Beyond Long And Short Stitch, to play with the ideas that are my first love in embroidery, the use of the ornamental stitches and varied threads to recall texture and pattern, to bring pictures to life without too much detail: “Impressionism in stitches”, if you will.
So I’ve started to plan Impressionistic stitcheries inspired by The Watermill and the excursions, which can be put together into a Watermill Sampler. The first (this is a detail) is inspired by the stands of bamboo which are merrily naturalising themselves up and down the valley, and by a recent post on Queenie’s Needlework blog about a stitch she calls “Danish Knotted Cross Stitch” (since the book she found it in didn’t give it a name at all!). When the stitch appeared I was already thinking about the Bambouserie, as they call it, and it occurred to me that it might make an effective stitch for the joint in the bamboo stalks – and sure enough, it does!
The long, rustling leaves of the bamboo are worked as clusters of long Detached Twisted Chain stitches, which I think are somehow much more evocative of the rustle than straight stitches would be. “Bambouserie” has set quite a high bar for my next “Watermill Stitchery”!
Episode 65 of SlowTV Stitchery is now live, in which we make an early start to avoid Noises Off, and thoughts of the sky as a sampler of graduating colour lead to a reconsideration of the idea for canvaswork cushions inspired by the Ironbridge and “Coalbrookdale by Night”.
