My RSN Certificate Canvaswork has been dragging on for three years and counting, I have three workshops and a six-week course to prepare for, and a magazine deadline is looming, so obviously what I urgently needed to do was go on a two-day class to learn shadow work!

When the RSN’s International Summer School programme went up on their website, I had a lovely browse without any intention of actually going on one of these courses. For one thing, they don’t teach these at their Rugby branch anymore and I don’t really like online classes (except for the self-paced ones), so it would mean travel and accommodation on top of the not inconsiderable cost of the class itself. Moreover, although some of the projects were gorgeous and I would have loved to stitched them, the ones I liked were all in techniques that I’ve had a good bit of experience in already. But them I came across Anita Harrison’s shadow work class, which was illustrated with a rather tantalisingly incomplete picture of the project and a sketch-plus-materials. I’d never done shadow work before. And I like lilies of the valley. I succumbed.

Mr Mabel and I decided to make a little holiday of it – I would go down on the Monday, do the course on Tuesday and Wednesday when he would join me at the end of class, and then we’d have another couple of days there to explore the area. I had found a lovely AirBnB just across the river in Thames Ditton with a riverside garden, I was going to be stitching in one of the most spectacular settings you can think of, and nearby was Bushy Park where you can see deer closer up than anywhere else I’ve ever been. On top of all that, the sun shone most of the time. Bliss!

To my surprise there were only two others besides me in the class, a lady from the Yorkshire Dales who had taken RSN classes before and a young textile student from America who had come for a week with her mother, two aunts and two grandmothers (they were exploring London while she was doing her embroidery). A nice transatlantic touch to our part of the International Summer School, and in case we were in danger of forgetting that that was what we were part of, there was a goody bag with a themed notebook, pencils, pin cushion and small padded project bag.

Having had a look in the goody bag, we got round to the Real Stuff: opening our kits and hooping up. The beautifully presented kit contained DeVere stranded cotton in two greens, white stranded cotton, a reel of blue sewing thread, needles and pins, a needle threader, a glassine envelope with transparent sequins and a green bead, and the fabric. This was an etheral-looking silk organza with the design already transferred onto it; it looked impossibly fragile but like most silk fabrics was actually remarkably sturdy, although it was rather prone to fraying around the edges. Our first task was to line up two small rectangles of organza and baste them behind the middle leaves; the picture shows just how sheer the fabric is.

The essence of shadow work is that the stitching at the back of the work shines through and is as much part of the design as the stitching at the front; hence the translucent fabric. This also means, however, that everything you do at the back of the work will be visible at the front unless covered by other stitching. And that means that moving from one element to another is pretty much impossible – everything that is not immediately connected to something else has to be self-contained in its stitching – and that fastening on and off has to be done extremely carefully. You will notice that in some places the stitching looks a little heavier than the stitching around it; that is where a few tiny backstitches have been worked underneath the main stitching in order to secure it. Here you can see the first stage of the project, with the middle leaves fully stitched using fly stitch, stem stitch and whipped blanket stitch. The next step was going to be some rather scary cutting…

The two basted-on layers of organza had to be trimmed as close as possible to the blanket stitch outline of the leaves; challenging as the hoop made it difficult to get the scissors flat against the fabric, but taking the fabric out of the hoop would slacken the tension and present its own problems. At least with the main fabric held taut you could pull back the extra layers to give a clearer view of where you were cutting. Still rather nerve-racking though. After that, we were told to work the longest of the three stems before adding yet another layer of organza, this time behind the top leaves. Having one stem done meant that we’d be able to add at least one of the flowers while in class even if we didn’t manage to complete the stitching and trimming on the top leaves. Because the organza is a mesh a bit like silk gauze, I found it tricky to get a perfectly smooth curve on the stem stitch, but I was reassured by seeing that same effect in the tutor’s stitched model – seemingly that’s just how stitching behaves on this sort of fabric.

The top leaves were outlined in blanket stitch (unwhipped this time) and the central part was worked in a stitch that is characteristic of shadow work, reverse closed herringbone (also known as double backstitch because of how it looks at the front of the work). It forms an outline of the shape at the front, with the herringbone filling showing through from the back. Depending on the size of the backstitches it can be airy or dense, and you can vary this along the shape, but Anita advised us to work it regularly on these leaves so that we got used to the stitch, and to do any varying on the two small leaves at the bottom of the design. She then demonstrated how to do the sequin flowers, and we all stitched one so she could see that we understood the process. And that was the end of the class! The rest would have to be finished at home.

Back home the first thing was some more scary cutting, trying to get the scissors as close as possible to the stitching without accidentally snipping anything, followed by stitching the remaining two stems.

This, by the way, is how we were taught to fasten on: take the knotted thread down into the fabric about half a centimetre away from your starting point, work three teeny-weeny backstitches, snip the knot off and make sure your stitching covers the backstitches. Unfortunately it seems to be well-nigh impossible for them not to show a little bit, making those parts of the line look slightly heavier. It is particularly visible in the start of the small leaf, although it’s less noticeable at a normal viewing distance. In the small leaves I tried varying the length of the backstitches so that the herringbone is denser in the tips and lighter in the middle, and I like the effect.

With all the leaves finished and everything that needed trimming trimmed, all that was left was the central sequin held on with a bead, and eight more sequin flowers. As all the sequins were transparent, fastening on and off had to be done as carefully here as everywhere else in the piece.

When I say “all that was left”, I make it sounds quicker than it was. The pretty white flowers proved to be surprisingly fiddly and labour-intensive to work in such a way that nothing shows through that shouldn’t! Here’s how they are done. First, thread a sequin onto the end of a single strand of white cotton. Then tie a double knot around the sequin, and push the knot away from the edge. Position the sequin where you want it at the back of the work with the knot sitting at the back of the sequin, and holding it in place with your finger, bring the needle up through the centre. Work four stitches over the top half of the sequin, making sure that one of them covers the line made by the thread where you tied it to the sequin.

Next are the stamens. They look like pistil stitches, but they aren’t – they are worked in two parts. First a straight stitch starting from the centre of the sequin, then a French knot started about two fabric threads away, and taken down through the very end of the straight stitch. Then back to the centre to come up for the next straight stitch. After the third stamen, back to the centre to fasten off by going behind some of the stitches and making a knot as close to the centre as possible. Voilà, one lily-of-the-valley flower with no (or at least very little) thread showing through from the back!

And here is the finished project; I really enjoyed my first foray into shadow work, and although I can see the bits that could be improved I’m pleased with the result.

Anita had mounted her model in a black box frame which made it look lovely and floaty, and she said it was actually quite a cheap one she’d happened to find at Hobbycraft . When I checked whether they still did that frame, it turned out to be on sale at half price, which meant that even with the postage it was a very affordable way of showing off my shadow work. As I’ve only just finished the stitching I haven’t got round to the mounting yet, and I really should be doing a bit more Canvas homework first, but I’ll try and remember to show you my lily of the valley when it’s framed and ready to be displayed!