Tag: Thistle Threads
Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Masterclass – Month Twelve Goldwork Stitches
The two stitches this month are stitches I think I have seen used as needle-lace stitches, but whereas I’m most used to seeing variants of Blanket Stitch used in needle-lace, these are worked using Up-and-Down Blanket Stitch.
Up And Down Blanket Stitch - Alternating
As it happens, the Up-and-Down variant is one of my favourite stitches, so I sat down rather gleefully to have a go. This is the first of the variations, Alternating Up-and-Down Blanket Stitch, which produce a rather open, netlike appearance on my practice cloth, not much resembling the example in the instructions.
Up And Down Blanket Stitch With Return
The second stitch was Up And Down Blanket Stitch With Return. In this case the seconfd row of stitches goes into the tie of the Up And Down Blanket Stitch, creating a ribbed effect something like the welts on a sweater. It also rather conceals that same distinctive tie stitch, rather camouflaging the stitch that forms its basis. I’m very impressed that Tricia managed to “reverse-engineer” these stitches, as some of them are rather less than clear to work out!
Both Stitches In Pearl Cotton
Naturally, my practise cloth version in the gold thread suffers from the problems of scale I’ve already discussed, but as well as that I find when I look at the photographs that in a couple of cases I have done a pair of buttonhole stitches instead of an Up-and-Down Blanket Stitch. I defy anyone to work that out at the normal scale of these stitches, but I’m actually quite surprised that I didn’t notice at the time, since the short loop at the base of up-and-down buttonhole stitch does tend to twist when worked as a needle-lace stitch instead of a fabric stitch!
These versions worked in pearl cotton show much more clearly the heavily textured fabric that these stitches form when worked at the correct scale.
Tudor Pincushion Progress
Tudor Pincushion Silkwork Finished!
Finally, I have finished the silkwork on the Tudor Pincushion, which is part of the Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Masterclass course I am following.
I think I need to find something that is less fine stitching than this, to give me a rest from all these tiny stitches!
Still, you can see that the final pattern is simple enough in concept, and there is just enough subtle variation in the colours to make the design interesting. The final effect is almost one of a woven fabric, as though the goldwork were embellishing a genuine tapestry. Remember that a real tapestry is woven (the Gobelins ateliers in France are the best known, historically, although a lot of tapestries I’ve seen have been from the Netherlands). A real tapestry is not worked in tent stitch on canvas, whatever the kit manufacturer says, and the Bayeux Tapestry is in fact an embroidery!
First Stage of Goldwork
I’ve also begun to work on the goldwork stitches. The small gold spots are worked in Eight Legged Spider’s Web Stitch which I first encountered in Month Four, and which is a great trial at the size it needs to be on the pincushion. I’ve not quite persuaded myself that I need to restitch them, as they didn’t markedly improve over the four I’ve done, but I am certainly considering the possibility.
The channels between the back stitches are filled with Reverse Chain Stitch, which I first encountered at the very beginning of the goldwork section of the course. This is an easy stitch to do, and very satisfying to see it build.
The course materials have included two Japanese hand made needles, which I was hoping to experiment with at this point, but I can’t even thread them! The eyes are much too fine for the thread, which is awkward, since I may be wasting quite a bit of gold thread unnecessarily because my ordinary needles strip the gold from its core.
There has to be a better way…
Tudor and Stuart Master Class – Month Eleven
Month 11 Goldwork Stitches
So while I continue with the silkwork for the Spot Sampler and the Tudor Pincushion, here are the two new stitches for Month 11 of the course.
The two stitches are Guilloche on Ladder Stitch, and Hemstitch on Ladder Stitch. In both cases I have cheated and just worked a panel of straight stitch bars as the foundation. This is because I wanted to get a firm grip on the structure of the stitch, rather than spending my time on working the foundation.
As the stitches become more multi-phase and more complex, the green doodle cloth is becoming a less suitable foundation. While it makes things easier by making the stitches larger when using the counted diagrams for them, it also makes things more difficult by making the stitches larger! I find that I am having difficulty in getting tension and stitch length neat and correct – in fact, you can probably see that from the rather floppy loops on the Guilloche Stitch Of course when I come to work on the real fabric using the real gold and silver threads, this problem should be much reduced, but I think I will find myself using a stiletto or a laying tool to try to keep the thread under rather closer control, even so.
Tudor And Stuart Masterclass – Pincushion Progress
Tudor Pincushion Progress
So here is the progress on the Tudor Pincushion.
There are two close shades of red and two close shades of tan in the design, – this will increase the appearance of rich, subtle colour variation in the final piece, which will provide a gorgeous background for the gold and silver threads. It also means that I have to be super-organised with my thread. As soon as I cut a length, it is wound onto a card with the thread number written on it, because even my daylight lamp sometimes isn’t enough to help distinguish the colours.
I’ve miscounted and had to restitch the corner motifs in a couple of places, but that is probably because, first, it is a very fine count of fabric, and second, tent stitch is an oriented stitch.
Tent Stitch - demonstrating edges with the orientation and against it
That is, because it creates a diagonal stitch, diagonal elements of the design look different when stitched, depending upon whether they slant with the stitch or in the opposite direction. This doesn’t cause a problem once the piece is finished – especially given how small the stitches are! – but it does mean that it isn’t so easy to know at a glance whether details are right. When the details are wrong, it becomes clear that they are wrong just as soon as you stop stitching, and then it becomes a matter of how much or how little needs to be unpicked.
Of course, I suppose I could interpret (probably correctly!) that as a sign that I’ve been stitching for too long and my eyes are tired…
The Glittering Snail Finished!
Glittering Snail Ornament
The Glittering Snail Ornament from Stitching A Snail For Storage is Finished!
He was a lot of fun to stitch. I was introduced to silk gimp and silk purl (as I’ve already said, I don’t know what I will use them for, but I’m sure I’ll find something!). I don’t think I’ve ever stitched anything quite so small, either.
Tricia provided the blue silk thread to make the cord, and a silk fabric to back the ornament, although I think I need more practice at making cord, since mine ended up a bit floppy! However, it has now ended up with the whole thing, from hanging loop to tassel, made from a single length of cord, and I am hanging it up in my living room to keep it from getting crushed.
My local art shop sells cutouts of mount-card, presumably for people to do papercrafts with, but I find they make perfect mounts for this sort of ornament. I used one card for the front and one for the back, lightly glued fine wadding to the card and then stretched the fabric over the top (using glue or thread to secure it, depending upon which seems most appropriate). Front and back are then held together and overstitched, and the stitching can be covered with cord.
I used almost exactly the same technique – on a larger scale – when I was mounting “Starbright” a couple of years ago.
Tudor and Stuart Masterclass – Month Ten
Interlaced On Ladder Stitch
The two stitches in Month Ten of the course are both based on Ladder Stitch foundations. You can see here that something went a little squiffy with the foundation for the Interlaced stitch. I ran out of thread in the needle and in bringing the new thread in, I didn’t keep the the tension quite right. It wasn’t clear until I took the photo with the macro lens, and cropped it to size. As it is only a practise, I shan’t lose any sleep over it – I’ll just make a mental note that Tension Matters.
The interlacing is just like the sort of interlacing I am familiar with from drawn thread work – I’ve not done it before, but it is a style I’m familiar with seeing and a construction I can understand. It would be quicker to practise the interlacing on a foundation of straight stitches, but I suspect (if only I had got the stitching right) the Ladder Stitch would create a more stable basis.
Wheatsheaf On Ladder Stitch
The second stitch worked on the Ladder Stitch foundation is another I recognise from drawn thread work. This is a wheatsheaf-style stitch. Other variants might include a knot instead of a mere wrap, or include two rows of interlacing in the same style. One of the advantages of this course is that it is pulling together many of the techniques I have seen before, but never had the opportunity to do.
It has also given me permission to “play”. I’m enjoying that!
Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Masterclass – Month Nine
Tudor Pincushion - Stage One
It’s been rather chilly of late, and I couldn’t quite face sitting in the window working on the Spot Sampler, so I spent some time mounting the Tudor Pincushion on a bar frame, and started working on it.
The first thing I did was to part-colour the chart. I’ve never been comfortable with charts, and it’s easier to orientate myself if I have at least some elements coloured in to act as guides. Specifically, I have to colour them in myself, because I’m no happier with printed colour charts than printed black and white charts. I think that colouring the chart myself helps me to understand how the design is put together, and then I find it easier to stitch.
I’ve also tacked the centre lines in. This is something I rarely do – generally I just find the centre, work whatever is over it and then count from that. In this case, there’s no stitching at the absolute centre – not until I start on the metal thread work, anyway – so I made sure that the centre point was marked, at least for the first stage of outlining.
Tudor Pincushion - Stage Two
In fact, as you can see, I’ve already taken out the tacking. At least, I’ve left it in at the edges, but now I’ve got all four of the central outlined motifs in, and worked the first set of tent stitch blocks, everything else can be counted relative to the nearest landmark point that is already stitched.
Since the silk stitching is either in tent stitch or back stitch, it’s not difficult to do, although as it is on a very fine linen – 38 or 40 hpi (holes per inch), I think – I’ve been very glad of my magnifying spectacles!
The Glittering Snail – part two
The Snail In Silk
So, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and full of enthusiasm, I sat down with my Glittering Snail Kit and got started. And, in fact, the silk gimp and silk-wrapped purl are not the only threads new to me, so it was great fun.
The pink and orange threads are both silk floss rather than spun silk. Occasionally I snagged the floss on the screw on the hoop, or a fingernail, or even on another bit of thread (how? don’t ask!), but I really enjoyed it, all the same.
The snail’s body is worked using the silk gimp and stretched silk-wrapped purl, couched with the pink floss. They were easy to work with – they felt gorgeous! – and I have a tiny bit left to play with a little while I think about how I might use them in my own embroidery. At the moment, nothing is really springing to mind, but I’m pretty sure that somewhere along the line some silk-wrapped purl will appear..
The Glittering Snail – part one
The Snail Kit Has Arrived In The Post
You may recall that in December I wrote about the Thistle Threads project to Stitch A Snail For Storage. We’ve been away for a while, but came back to find a huge pile of post which included a jiffy bag from Thistle Threads.
Since I’ve already printed out the instructions (as soon as I ordered the kit!), I can start just as soon as I’ve gathered my wits and drawn the design on the linen. Even though the basic concept of the design is simple, it will be complicated and probably a little tricky to do, because the snail is only about an inch from nose to tail!
Tricia had two reasons for developing the kit – one was to sell something in aid of the Fashion Museum in Bath, but the other was to introduce some new threads to us. So of course, the first thing I did was to rummage through to look at the the new threads, the silk gimp and silk wrapped purl. They look highly intriguing, and I am looking forward to playing with them…
Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Masterclass – More Post
More Post From Thistle Threads
Yet more post from Thistle Threads – aren’t I a lucky girl!
This time, the post contained the real metal threads for the Spot Sampler, and the materials for two pincushions that also form part of the course. There’s a piece of silk brocade, and two pieces of linen, and even more silk threads… I’ve not caught up with printing the instructions yet, so I’m not quite sure what I’m going to be doing with them, although I have had a quick look, and there’s at least one new stitch variation in among them.
Progress So Far
And bear in mind, I still haven’t finished the silk work on the Spot Sampler, and that there are going to be even more ornamental stitches to learn. This photo shows my progress so far. Over the last couple of days I have finished the bargello motif and made a lot of progress on the central motif at the bottom. I once reckoned it took twenty minutes to do ten Queen Stitches, and was very depressed by that discovery, but I think I’m speeding up again!
It’s intriguing to see the new fabric created by the Queen Stitches. It’s not often that the effect of stitches is quite so clear. Instead of the ordinary square-woven fabric, the closely-worked Queen Stitches create a sort of heavy openwork lattice. It has a completely different texture to the basic fabric and when I finally finish the piece, I will have to make sure I frame it or mount it in such a way as to make that quite clear.