A golden snowdrop

Posted on 18th September, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

Last week I finished (in both senses of the word – finished stitching and made up) a project which unfortunately I can’t tell you about yet because it’s been commissioned. But I was mightily pleased and relieved that it was done! So did I then rush back to my Canvaswork, in preparation for Saturday’s class? Uhm, no. It was quite a productive class (more about that in a future FoF), but I had to warn Kathryn the tutor that I had done very little homework and wouldn’t be able to do much for October’s class either. Instead the week was taken up with ordering supplies (cards and envelopes for kits, threads, printed fabrics), gathering materials and setting up one of the three models to be stitched for the Goldwork With Colour course I’m teaching at Rugby’s Percival Guildhouse later this year. (Yes, I am very late. Don’t rub it in. Panic is definitely hovering in the wings.)

The final project in the course (which I can therefore ignore for now) is a peacock, and will use lots of coloured metals and leather, some of which you can see in the box of bling above. It is intended to offer the students the opportunity to create their own version of the design by deciding which materials and techniques to use for the various parts of the peacock. But apart from a small warm-up project that doesn’t need a stitched model (unless I have time to spare) the students will start with one of a pair of or nué designs, choosing a snowdrop on gold or a forget-me-not on silver. I suppose the latter should really be called argent nué, but the term goldwork tends to cover anything metallic so we’ll stick with that. Or nué doesn’t take much in the way of materials: fabric, Jap or smooth passing (I’m using the latter in size no. 6), sewing thread to match the metal, and stranded cotton in whatever colours you need for your picture.

But what is or nué? It is a technique in which metal threads are couched down to complete fill a shape, but using a variety of colours rather than just the usual matching thread – in other words, instead of making the couching as near-invisible as possible, some of it stands out from the gold background to form a picture. Only on that part of the gold which surrounds the picture is the metal couched with the usual golden-yellow sewing thread (or grey in the case of silver threads), in the usual bricked pattern of couching stitches about 3mm apart. The coloured couching is more dense, completely covering the metal threads. There is a related technique sometimes called Italian couching where shading is achieved by working the coloured stitches wider apart or closer together, but in or nué it is done by colour changes rather than variations in stitch density. It is possible to have quite sophisticated shading in an or nué design (some of the medieval examples are stunningly detailed), but often it uses a fairly simple palette in blocks of colour. I decided to keep the shading simple, as it will be the students’ first-ever attempt at this technique. And keeping the shading simple is easier in a design without too much detail. So my first step was to create a relatively simple outline of a snowdrop.

Traditionally or nué is worked with the gold couched down in horizontal lines, but in modern pieces it is sometimes worked in a spiral. In order to present students with both options, I decided early on that the snowdrop would be couched horizontally, and the forget-me-not in a spiral. Now provided you start exactly in the centre, the spiral will more or less automatically form a circle; but keeping the horizontal threads horizontal, especially if you don’t start in the middle of the design and you’ve foolishly decided on an oval shape rather than the traditional rectangle, can be trickier. Fortunately, as the fabric will be covered completely it isn’t a problem to add guidelines. As for knowing when to use which colour couching thread, it is possible to have just the outline on the fabric and refer to an external colour picture, or to put coloured dots in the various blocks, but I chose to use colouring pencils to fill in the design. It doesn’t have to be beautiful, the shades don’t even have to match your thread colours closely – it just serves to show which colour goes where.

The design coloured in to help with the shading

Another option is to print the colour picture onto the fabric, and I have in fact ordered printed versions of these two designs. It will be interesting to compare working this technique on two different fabrics – the one I chose for printing is a heavier weight than the one used above – and it will also give me the opportunity (time permitting…) to work the oval design in two ways: starting from the bottom with a pinched start (more of that below), or starting in the middle and working first one half and then the other. With the latter method it will be easier to keep the couched threads horizontal, but because you always work the couching stitches towards the previous line of metal thread it would mean stitching the top half differently from the bottom half. If I do get round to trying it that way I will report back!

For now I was ready to get the snowdrop hooped up, always an exciting moment as it signals the shift from designing and material gathering to actual stitching! It wasn’t until after I’d placed the fabric in the hoop in my usual way (screw at the top) that I realised I wanted to clamp the hoop in my Lowery stand so that the stand faced me, rather than having it by my side. So I rearranged the fabric, clamped it and started by fastening on the golden yellow thread and the first three colours, three shades of green. Because the picture is built up in lines rather than in blocks of colour, it is convenient to have needles with all the necessary colours on the go at the same time (another argument for a limited colour palette ). Needles with white and grey thread will be added once I get further up the design.

The hoop shifted, and the first colours fastened on

And then there is the gold thread. Because passing is practically always couched in pairs, you either have to have two reels from which you unwind the passing simultaneously, or if you have just one reel, you have to decide beforehand how much you are likely to need and cut two single lengths or one double length. I decided on the latter, partly because having two reels of passing attached to your stitching is quite cumbersome, and partly because I want to use a pinched start: double the thread, pinch it to make a sharp crease, couch it down with a single stitch over the crease, and then continue couching over the pair (shown below with Jap thread). It saves on plunging and oversewing, always a good thing in my book.

A single stitch over the crease of the doubled metal thread

But how much would I need? I won’t bother you with my scribbled calculations of the width of a pair of passing, how many pairs would fill the shape, and how wide the lines would be on average along the oval, but it worked out at about 6 metres. I cut 7 metres to be on the safe side, doubled it, and wound it onto an old wooden bobbin which Mr Mabel had cut some bits off to make sure it couldn’t roll away. One thing to remember when winding metal threads like these is to wind them by turning the bobbin while holding the thread still; this ensures that it doesn’t get twisted, which in turn stops the metal covering (wire or foil) from working loose from the thread core.

Incidentally, if you look up or nué online or in books you will generally see that every horizontal line is cut, couched and plunged separately; sometimes the amount of plunging and securing is reduced by using a pinched start and only plunging the end of the line, making sure that consecutive lines are worked in opposite directions so the pinched starts are on alternating sides of the shape. This is a perfectly legitimate approach, but it is not one I have chosen to follow. As I mentioned before, I’m not a fan of excessive plunging and oversewing, and I feel justified in trying to avoid it as much as I can by the fact that those medieval embroiderers who produced such beautiful work did too – gold thread was gold thread in those days, and very expensive; they weren’t going to waste a good part of it on the back of the work! Instead, they used the back and forth method, plunging only when the shape had been filled or their metal thread ran out. What’s good enough for them is good enough for me .

A box of lilies

Posted on 31st August, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

Well, a box frame of lilies. Following Anita the tutor’s tip after last month’s shadow work class I got this frame from Hobbycraft – as they had a sale on, the discount almost covered the postage, which was a bonus. (Even better, when I told a friend from church who is an avid card maker, she said that any time I want something from Hobbycraft she’ll be happy to get it for me on one of her frequent trips there and save me paying any postage at all!)

I was a little nervous about mounting this project; the material it was stitched on, silk organza, meant it couldn’t be stretched around a foam or mat board backing. Instead, Anita had explained, it would need to be attached to the mat that came with the frame using double-sided tape, which sounded a risky proposition but necessary for the required float-on-air effect. In order to put off the scary moment I started by taking the box frame apart to examine all its constituent parts, to wit the black frame itself, the glass (or more likely perspex), a white mat, a white spacer frame about a centimetre high, and the backing board. I also played with some materials to cover the backing board with; Anita said she’d used silver card, and I remembered some silver lurex in my stash. As I dug that out, I found some golden yellow satin dupion as well. I tried the project against both backgrounds and decided I liked the gold better as it made the flowers stand out more.

Time to stop shilly-shallying and tackle the actual framing. But oh my goodness, the fabric is so sheer and looks so fragile!

First I glued the golden fabric to the backing board, less-shiny side up. While I waited for the glue to dry, I ironed the organza as carefully as I could, then attached double-sided tape to the mat. Peel off the backing, and carefully press the mat onto the fabric. I didn’t trim the organza right down to the mat, but left a border of about half an inch, on the grounds that it would give me something to hold on to should I need to reposition the fabric or pull it taut if it went slack. I then gently pushed it down into the frame, and inserted the spacer in such a way that the excess organza was caught between the frame and the spacer for extra security.

Double-sided tape on the back of the mat

The mat positioned on top of the embroidery

Fabric, mat and spacer inserted into the box frame

Now to add the fabric-covered backing board, the glue having had plenty of time to dry. But unfortunately, things had not quite gone to plan. Although it was the sort of white glue that dries clear, the only thing that was clear in this case was that that doesn’t mean it becomes invisible… On to Plan B – pull off the stained fabric, place double-sided sticky tape around the edges of the board, and stick on a new piece of fabric. Unlike the first time round I chose to trim it with a spare half inch around the edges, just in case it would come in useful. I wasn’t sure how it might, but you never know. I then placed the re-covered board in the frame and secured it with the little push-down clips. Done!

Or not. The surplus fabric surrounding the covered backing board came in useful when I had to pull it from the frame because I had not taken into account that a woven fabric placed behind a see-through woven fabric is going to cause a dizzyness-inducing moiré effect…

I looked at the framed embroidery through half-closed eyes, I squinted at it sideways – there was no help for it, the backing fabric would have to come out. I remembered that Anita had backed hers with silver card, not fabric. There had obviously been solid reasoning behind that choice (or she was just lucky ). Not having any card of the right colour I experimented with some pale golden-beige felt from my stash to see if a non-woven fabric might work as well. It did, but the piece of felt I had wouldn’t cover the whole backing board. Then DH suggested I ask one of my paper-crafty friends if she had any golden yellow card. She did, and brought it round immediately. It was rather darker and yellower than both the felt and the original satin dupion, but it was worth a try.

It worked, but my friend and I both felt it was on the dark side; the shadow work in the top and bottom leaves wasn’t quite so visible as with the lighter background. Another kind crafty friend (the one with the Hobbycraft habit in fact) to the rescue: she brought a box of card in various textures and shades of yellow to church, from which I picked three possibles to try out at home.

After all of which I decided that the darker card was the best option after all. Although the shadow work is a little less obvious, it is still visible; the warm shade sets off the whole design, and being that bit darker it does make the white lilies pop. So finally here it is, my framed shadow work, ready to be proudly displayed on top of the pianola!

Green, green, green, and BEIGE!

Posted on 27th August, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

And, to be fair, quite a few other colours as well, eventually. But as I was labouriously working my way through the dreaded Green Jumble in my RSN Canvaswork, some beige paving was the first thing to offer relief from the relentless succession of greens and more greens – green silk, green stranded cotton, green wool, green perlé; plain green, variegated green and blended green. Not quite 40 Shades of Green, but pretty close. With quite a lot of jumble still to fill in, I felt I needed a break. Some nice simple paving in a nice simple stitch would just fit the bill!

I mentioned that paving in my last update, but mostly as it touched upon the tulips near it, so I thought I’d describe it in a bit more detail. As it happens, the paving turned out not to be as simple as I had imagined. For one thing, in my mind it was, well, paving-coloured. Beige. But closer inspection of my source picture showed it to be a mix of beiges, greys and blues, with a touch of white here and there. In order to achieve the matt texture I wanted I’d chosen Danish Blomstergarn (also called flower threads), an unmercerised cotton; the stitch I’d decided on was Oblique Slav worked in three threads, which offered scope for blending. When I first considered the paving I’d picked six shades of the Blomstergarn, but as I started stitching I realised that range wasn’t nearly wide enough to replicate the colours with any amount of accuracy. Back to my box of Danish delights to add a light blue, a light grey and another couple of beiges. Which turned out still not to be enough, so two more greys were added, bringing the number of shades to twelve. With up to eight needles on the go at any one time it wasn’t what you would call straightforward, but at least it wasn’t green .

Along the way there was some unpicking because of an incorrectly worked stitch, straight compensating stitches added along the top of the paving to create a nice level edge, and a bit of overstitched shading, but in a lot less time than the green had been taking the paving was done! (OK, full disclosure – it wasn’t. As I continued with the green and the small tulips furthest towards the back I kept adding more bits of paving where I felt it should shine through the greenery and flowers. But most of it was done by this time.)

After that, it was back to the green. Suffice it to say that it took a long time, and a lot of different blends (some including reds, pinks and yellows – the excitement!), and occasionally I saved my sanity by working on some more tulips, but eventually all the areas around the large tulips and leaves were filled. Although with the tutor I’d identified a few places where stems had to be added on top of the stitching, the green jumble was pretty much finished.

Red blended into the greens, and some stems needed

You may have noticed in that last photograph that I had played around with ribbon to create two small tulips and a bud on the edges of the design, but the big ribbon-tulip finale would have to wait a bit while I started on a tree and a hedge. The tree, or more accurately clump of trees, on the right is going to be done in rice stitch – a cross stitch with four small diagonal stitches over the arms. This means that you can in theory get 6 colours or blends into any one stitch, making it a great choice for the airy look needed, as it could combine my sky threads with my tree threads. After sampling several options (including one with the crosses worked in different directions, which was voted down by Kathryn as too fussy) I’d agreed with the various tutors that I would do all the foundation crosses first, in blends that would set out the basic shape of the tree and the distribution of greens and blues; then create two trunks by means of wrapped wire over the top; and finally add the top stitches to create the fine detail. I would also work the hedge at the bottom of the trees, extended up to the mill. Well, I managed the tree foundation (in several blends of blue Caron Soie Cristale with white Madeira Lana and five shades of green Heathway Milano crewel wool) and the hedge (French knots in three blends of green) before I was seduced by the idea of really finishing the bottom half of the design for good and all, and getting on with the tulips!

The foundation of the rice stitches that will make up the clump of trees

This was the fun part: rummaging through my stash of silk ribbons, working out how to use the variegated ones to such an effect that it needed less fastening on and off, and “painting” the little flowers with one eye on the source picture and an Impressionist mindset.

Before my floral extravaganza, I’d made a start on the mill in class, trying to recreate the grey upper part with its stark shadows in soft cottons, using several variations of gobelin stitch; and I’d also worked the door in dark green silk, but because of the way the top edge of the paving is stitched, it turned out to be impossible to make a smooth edge between it and the bottom of the door. I discussed it with Helen J, who suggested using stitches that stop just short of the paving and working a stitch over the top. Having done the shorter stitches I’m not sure I like the look of it so that may get unpicked.

And finally, the tree trunks. Two gauges of wire, which in the end unfortunately didn’t make that much of a difference, wrapped in a doubled strand of variegated brown. Secured at the beginning and end, and with an occasional stitch-through-the-canvas along the length of the wire.

Anchoring the first bit of wire at the back of the canvas

Taking the wrapped wire through to the back

And that’s where I’ve got to. Now it will have to be put away for a bit while I concentrate on stitched models for classes and instructions for magazine articles. But I’m really pleased that after all this time, the bottom half is complete and I’ve made a good start on the top half. I’ll finish this module yet !

Shadowy lilies

Posted on 3rd August, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

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!

Hampton Court Palace is a spectacular setting for a stitching class

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.

My two fellow students and the trainee tutor

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.

Hooped up and a double layer of organza basted on

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.

Leaves in reverse closed herringbone stitch

Anita demonstrates how to stitch the sequin flowers

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.

Trying to get the scissors close to the stitching

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.

Thread the sequin onto the end of the thread

Postion the sequin and come up through the centre

Work four stitches, making sure the tying-on line is covered

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!

The French knot pierces the straight stitch

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!

Minimal but meaningful

Posted on 1st June, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

After a few false starts, could this short scribble be the re-ignition of FoF? If so, the title of this particular flight will turn out to be doubly appropriate. But I intended it to refer to the stitching I did today on my RSN Canvaswork. It wasn’t much, and in fact part of it was unpicking, but it has got me back into the project, and so however minimal my progress is, its significance is great – to me at least . I will write in more detail about the interminable third module of my Certificate in a future FoF, but for now I present to you an extended tulip, and some modified paving.

Let’s begin by having a look at what needed modifying. The small picture shows part of the printed photograph I’m working from; it’s what I’m aiming to represent in canvas stitches. This means a lot of simplifying and stylising – canvaswork is not photo-realistic. Still, you don’t want to oversimplify, and that is rather what had happened on the left-hand side of the paving (orange arrows). In the photograph it is mottled, on the canvas it is a uniform brown blob, all the more noticeable because all the rest of the paving uses blended threads. And how I managed to squash that orangy-red tulip (light blue arrows) to about half its height I do not know, but it obviously needed extending. Finally, the bit of paving between that tulip and the one above it needed unpicking because I’d failed to keep the stitch pattern going (yellow arrow); the bottom three stitches had to be split in two to continue the diagonal line where the stitches meet.

For the brown blob the options were: unpicking and restitching with a blend instead of three threads of the same brown, or adding a few random stitches in a single thread of grey. The latter would mean that some of the stitches would consist of four threads instead of three. Would that be very noticeable? I suspected it wouldn’t. I was right. If you look very closely, you can tell (orange arrow). The assessors may well look closely enough to tell. But I am not going to unpick a perfectly good bit of paving just for that. I have learnt something important: I am not as much of a perfectionist as I thought!

Next was the combination of the squashed tulip and the paving that didn’t have the right stitch pattern. Here I was lucky, not once but twice. First of all, the bit of paving that needed unpicking turned out to be at the start of a thread, which made it much easier to take out what needed taking out without disturbing the remaining stitches. The second bit of luck was the way the tulip worked out. When I’d pointed it out in class, the tutor had suggested first restitching the paving with the correct pattern and then extending the tulip over the top. I decided to go rogue and extend the tulip first. This turned out to fill almost the entire unpicked space, with only a very small bit of canvas still bare (blue arrow).

Not only that, but a closer inspection of the photograph showed that some of the narrow space between the extended tulip and the one above it was actually leaf and stem rather then paving. A few green stitches, some of them partly over the top of the paving, sorted that. Finally I filled in a small area between the two largish pink tulips with paving in two blends (green arrow), and that was the end of my stitching session.

Judged by the number of stitches worked, or the area of canvas covered, it’s not much. But I sat down and worked on it, and when I got up I liked the look of it better than at the beginning. That will do me just fine.

From colour to black & white

Posted on 1st April, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

Today is Easter Monday (or second Easter Day, as it is known in my native Dutch), and on Easter Monday 13 years ago Mabel Figworthy’s Fancies was born. Today is also April 1st, which happens to be Mabel’s own birthday (yes, really). So a very good day on which to get back to my unsuccessful new year’s resolutions and break this eleven-week-long spell of not writing any FoFs!

Although stitching has been a bit intermittent due to health and other issues, there has been some, and there has even been a finish – yes, Llandrindod has been completed, a mere five years and eleven months after it was first conceived. You may remember that last time I wrote I was weighing up the relative merits of outlining the gems in opalescent white, or in metallics matching the colour of the gems. Well, in the end I decided on both: the white stood out too much against the darker facets, but the coloured metallics (which are, in fact, Petite Treasure Braid, not blending filament as I thought) were rather too stark next to some of the lighter facets. So why not combine the two? Tested on the amethyst this turned out to be a proper Goldilocks solution – just right. So out came half of the coloured metallics on the other three, and in went the opalescent white.

Trying out a two-metallic solution on the amethyst

Finally I wanted to outline the gold parts in, well, gold. Elizabethan twist (a fine 2-ply) for the dark gold parts, a very fine passing for the light gold parts, with some decoration yet to be decided on the four light arcs. But when I’d finished couching the Elizabethan twist I found that I actually rather liked the effect of not having the lighter parts outlined – it made them recede so that the overall effect was more 3D. And any decoration I thought of (scrolls, spangles) just looked fussy. So after a few fill-in stitches where the silk didn’t quite meet the gold I declared Llandrindod finished; finally! I had hoped to mount it so that when we go to Wales for our annual rally later this month I could take it to the church that inspired it and show it to the vicar, but I haven’t got round to it. Oh well, there’s always next year!

My next project, although it also included bling, couldn’t be more different. Inspired by a penguin brooch in a goldwork book I recently acquired, I decided to make a brooch of my own, but I didn’t just want to follow the penguin project. However, I did want it to be silver on black. What other animals could I think of that were black and white, and that could be reduced to a fairly stylised version while still being recognisable? Having rejected cows, zebras and magpies, I went for a badger, or more accurately, a badger’s face. The first step was to study some photographs of badgers, and to try and capture its essence in as few lines as possible. Then to scribble down ideas for the various silver threads and wires to use. The fabric I had already decided on: the slightly fuzzy side of black faux suede. This meant the white parts would be covered in various types of silver, while the black parts would remain unstitched. But what about the eyes, which were black on black? For that I picked black Kreinik #5 Jap, to be couched in a spiral – my theory being that the shininess of the black Jap would give enough contrast against the matt suede to stand out.

I’d printed the badger outline in several sizes, some very big so I could sketch stitches in them, some smaller to use as templates. The penguin brooch was 5cm tall and that did seem to be about as big as you’d like a brooch to be, but I wasn’t sure if that would give enough room for the various types of silverwork I wanted to include. However, placing the wires and threads on the smallest template showed that it was feasible at 5cm, so I went ahead and transferred that version to the suede, using prick & pounce and a silver gel pen.

The first thing to be stitched was the lighter top of the nose, which would be done in kid leather. But the pewter leather I got was not quite dark enough. Fortunately I found some soft faux leather in just the right shade, and pretty much the exact shade of DMC to stitch it down with! Unfortunately, stitching on fuzzy black turns out to be very difficult to photograph, so my close-up of the finished nose highlight is too blurred to be usable. Never mind, you’ll see it in later overview pictures.

The next thing was all the outlines (everything except the nose), for which I picked Very Fine pearl purl (PP), the thinnest available. Having worked out a stitch order and, in the interest of reproducability, having measured all the bits of PP I cut, I got to work. This was a very satisfying part of the process because it stitches up relatively quickly, but my goodness it is hard on the eyes! Not something to try and finish in one go.

You may have noticed in the picture above that one eye has been stitched as well, couching black Kreinik Jap as intended. It’s fairly visible in the photograph but not nearly so much in real life, so I left the other eye to mull that one over for a bit. Mr Figworthy suggested an oval sequin, but if I was going to use anything like that in a metal thread embroidery piece I’d always use spangles, and they don’t come in oval shapes. Also, a badger’s eyes aren’t silver. But they are, of course, shiny – so what if I used a spangle and covered most of it in black couching thread, with just a bit of the silver shining through, and with perhaps a black outline to give shape to the eye? My first attempt covered the spangle too much, so that it became practically camouflaged. A second version, using eight couching stitches, worked better. Kreinik for the outline seemed a better idea than just black thread, and I did indeed like the effect. At some point I will unpick the first eye and re-do it in the same way.

First, however, I wanted to get started with the middle white stripe, in silver no. 7 passing couched in pairs. My initial sketch divided this into the stripe down to the nose, and the narrow bit underneath the nose with the roughly triangular bits beside it. But as there was a bit more room than I’d thought, I took the pair of passing threads all the way round the face; there is no room for another pair underneath the nose, so I will work a single one there that will extend into the adjacent triangles.

And that’s where I’ve got to. I should do some homework for my next Certificate class (a couple have been cancelled so I really can’t turn up after all that time with only half a leaf and a small tulip done) but I am rather taken with this badger and am reluctant to put him to one side. Also, he won’t be assessed so if anything doesn’t work it doesn’t matter… So I may take the cowardly option and stick with this blingy bit of black & white. At least I’m stitching, and FoFfing, which must be a good thing!

Colourful bling for a Welsh cross

Posted on 13th January, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

My new year’s resolutions aren’t doing too badly after all – I actually finished one of the long-term WIPs! Yes, the third Hannah Dunnett tree is complete, and I am very glad to see the back of it. No, that’s unkind; I do like the tree trio, and it gave me a lot of opportunities for experimenting. But taking the project out of its hoop and placing it in my Finished Projects folder did give me a great deal of satisfaction.

This meant I could now concentrate on that very-long-term WIP, Llandrindod. Taking it to my weekly embroidery group which started up again last Monday I made progress on the split stitch, and also put in some of the subtle bling. In the Llandrindod project box there are several different sparkly threads, some Petite Treasure Braid, some blending filaments, mostly in pearlescent white. This I hoped would give a little sparkle without drawing too much attention to itself. I decided on the thinner blending filament, on the grounds that if it turned out to be so subtle as to be unnoticeable, I could always overstitch it in the slightly thicker Petite Treasure Braid.

The other ladies at the embroidery group liked the effect, and so did I, but I wasn’t altogether sure I liked it enough. The pearlescent white worked fine on the central diamond, but was it the right thing on the coloured gems? And then I remembered that I had some coloured blending filaments tucked away in a box; a mix of two now discontinued brands, which would normally mean I couldn’t use them for a design that will be available as a chart pack, but fortunately equivalents should be easy to find in Kreinik’s range. Did I have the necessary colours though? I did.

Doing a bit of work one evening while Mr F watched a documentary about Pompeii, I managed to finish all the remaining split stitch, and then it was time to see whether the coloured blending filaments would work. Although I have a red, blue, green and purple, the blue and green especially are not an exact match for the silk used to stitch the gems. I therefore decided to try the green gem first – if I like the effect there, it’s safe to assume I’ll like it in the other three gems as well.

Close-up of the red gem with pearlescent white blending filament

Close-up of the green gem with green blending filament

And do I like it? I’m not sure… I’ll leave it for a bit while trying to do some homework for my next Canvaswork class, and come back to it in a week or so to see how the two variations strike me when seen afresh. Meanwhile, feel free to comment and let me know what you think!

PS The close-up picture of the green gem shows that the stitches at the pointy end of the gem are not symmetrical. I will have to do something about that or it will continue to niggle at me!

The whole box of tricks

Posted on 6th January, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

When, in the previous FoF, I showed you the RSN online course Mr Mabel got me for Christmas, it reminded me that I hadn’t actually let you know how I far I’d got with the RSN online course I succumbed to last summer: box making. Well, I finished it! (Don’t look so surprised…)

My one and only update on this project (other than showing you the kit when it arrived) consisted of some of the card parts covered in yellow fabric using sticky tape, and one of the false floor supports attached using ladder stitch. In a bid to improve the neatness of my ladder stitching, as well as the curved needle that came with the kit I tried two different ones from my stash (one larger & thinner, one the same thickness but smaller), but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect. The kit needle was marginally more comfortable to use than the others, so I stuck with that as I attached the other false floor supports.

The next step was attaching the parts that form the inner box. First two sides, then the bottom (which I started to attach the wrong way round – the inner box has all the messy sides on the outside and the nice covered sides on the inside, which got me muddled; fortunately I noticed in time). Fitting those first parts together is very fiddly, as they all flap about and you need about three hands to keep everything in position while sewing them to each other. Fastening the sewing thread on in the corners was tricky, too: the needle gets sticky from the tape underneath the fabric and sometimes the corners come undone when pulling the needle through! But with a lot of patience I eventually had the inner box assembled.

Finally I got to the flowered fabric! This time, because I wanted to try both techniques shown in the course videos, I chose to lace the fabric around the card pieces instead of using sticky tape. Using my mellor (a laying tool or really big blunt needle would work as well) to tighten up the stitches helped to get the fabric nice and taut, but once again I found it very difficult to get it folded round the card on the grain.

Lacing the flowered fabric to the card pieces

In between the lacing and subsequent assembling I felt I needed the occasional change, so I worked on the embroidery that would decorate the top of the lid. It is the word Threads in stem stitch, embellished with a little sprig of greenery using lazy daisies. In the original it is done entirely in dark green, but because that looked a little bit dull I added some highlights in bright yellow to echo the inside of the box.

Getting ready to embroider the word Threads

Once all the bits for the outer box had been laced, it was on to assembly. As with the inner box, you start with two sides and then add the bottom. Then the process differs, because you assemble the rest of the outer box around the inner box. They are meant to be such a snug fit that if you completed the outer box first, you wouldn’t be able to get the inner box inside it.

Fitting the inner box inside the three connected outer parts

Well, it was snug all right. Whether because I had wrapped the yellow fabric around the card too bulkily, or whether my sewing together hadn’t been quite accurate enough, it was a squash to attach the remaining two sides. Still, I got the thing together fairly tidily, in spite of cat hair trying to inveigle itself into the seams. I was particularly pleased with the look of the bottom, with all the bits fitting rather neatly together!

Ladder stitching the outer box together (with cat hair)

The bits all fitting together on the bottom

But that was not the end of it – the tops of the inner and outer box had to be ladder stitched together all round. For extra strength I used shorter stitches near the corners, as they seemed a bit strained, but otherwise I tried to get the stitches as equal as possible. As you can see that didn’t always work; if I’d been really committed I suppose I would have unpicked and re-stitched, but by then I had done such an awful lot of ladder stitching that I didn’t.

Then came the false floor, which included the new challenge of incorporating ribbon tabs with which to lift it out of the box. These tabs were first held in place with some double sided tape, and then more securely attached by ladder stitching through them when sewing both halves of the floor together. And then it was time to see whether the floor fitted. Fortunately it did .

Time to put the lid together. More ladder stitching! The smaller inner lid and the larger outer lid are attached wrong sides together (forming a lip which holds the lid on securely), and the embroidery (laced over padded card) is sewn onto the top of the outer lid. I tried to place everything as symmetrically as possible, but I’m sure there is a bit of variation in the width of the various borders. Still, people are unlikely to take a tape measure out when I show them the box…

And here it is, the completed box; lid on, lid off, floor in, floor out, and with cat.

Box with the lid off, showing the bottom of the lid, floor in

Box with the lid off, showing the top of the lid, floor out

So what’s the final verdict? About the course – great fun, good informative videos, and a well-presented kit. About the box? Well, let’s say I’m not unhappy with it . Measured against the Diploma assessment criteria a fellow RSN student kindly let me have a look at, it’s rubbish. The fabric grain is all over the place, the sticky tape came undone too quickly and frequent re-pulling caused fraying and grubbiness, and it was such a squash getting the inner box sewn into the outer one that the card bent a little in one place, making the fabric go slightly slack (fortunately right in a corner and not very noticeable in the finished box). There is some not-quite-exact placement of the support bits, uneven ladder stitches, and visible stitching on the exposed part of one of the corners of the lid. On the other hand, the stitching definitely got better over time, and I have got a sturdy and quite attractive box. On the whole it was a great learning process, but oh boy was it a good decision not to go for the complicated curved box I was so tempted by!

New year’s resolutions

Posted on 3rd January, 2024 by Flights of Fancy

Happy New Year

The fact that I am wishing you this on 3rd January tells you all you need to know about my success rate with new year’s resolutions. I had fully intended to get FoF back on track after its long hiatus on the first day of the year, but it didn’t happen. Oh well. Better late than never, as they say, and I hope to catch up on all the things that would normally have been posted in the dry spell between the end of last August and now, when instead life and Covid got in the way. This means some of it wont’t be as topical as it might have been, but fortunately goldwork materials, course pictures and Certificate updates don’t really have best before dates. So on with the show, and one resolution that I have kept!

It concerns what some would call UFOs but I prefer to think of as long-term WIPs. My resolution was, not necessarily to finish them, but at least to occasionally put some stitches in. Well, I didn’t want to be too ambitious. And rather to my own surprise, I have actually done some of this occasional stitching! One of the projects to benefit from this is Llandrindod. True, the difference between the progress picture taken in November 2021 and today’s picture is not massive, but it is noticeable – that must count towards the resolution score.

Another design you may remember is my quartet of Hannah Dunnet-inspired trees that became a trio because I simply couldn’t make one of the trees work. I had also got stuck on the third of the remaining trees, as the padded satin stitch used for the autumnal swirls in its foliage was not doing what I wanted it to do. After unpicking and restitching the red swirl twice I’d decided to leave it and work on things that were more fun. But as I was tidying my craft room I came across the trees and decided to have another go. And what do you know, it worked! The satin stitch slanted nicely around the curves, and I’m happy with the way it looks. Just the other three swirls to go, plus some green French knots in the background, and it will be a WIP no longer.

On the grounds that there is no absolute law which states that new year’s resolutions have to be onerous, I made my second resolution a very easy one to keep: improving my skills by practicing with new projects, and enjoying the process a lot! Although I haven’t put a stitch in yet, I have hooped up the fabric and set out the materials for this lovely RSN online goldwork & silk shading course which Mr Mabel gave me for Christmas. Just looking at it and handling the materials brings me great pleasure! I’m sure I will enjoy it as much as the box making course I did last year (an update on which is one of the FoFs-to-come).

I hope all your resolutions are pleasant ones, and that you will have a great time keeping them in 2024!

A blooming brooch

Posted on 29th August, 2023 by Flights of Fancy

Remember Esmee’s Unicorn? From the start I had ideas about using the pelmet-weight interfacing which it was stitched on for a couple of other, more or less experimental projects. One is a goldwork brooch, but as there are a few challenges there (the sturdier metals generally need plunging and cause a bulky back, the metals that conveniently stay completely on the front tend to be more fragile and prone to being squashed) I decided to leave that for now. But this material is also very suitable for introducing young ones to stitching: it’s stiff enough to stitch in hand without needing a hoop, if pre-pricked it can be stitched with a blunt needle, and it can be cut into shapes without fraying. So I started with a simple project that could be finished as a brooch or a fridge magnet (or, I suppose, a needle minder, except the stitching might get in the way).

The first thing was to pick a design; ideally one with bold, simple lines and not too many colours. Was there anything in my collection that would fit the bill? Yes there was – an as yet unstitched floral design based on a print by Vicky, my extremely talented niece-in-law-in-law (my husband is her husband’s uncle) who is artistically known as Woah There Pickle. The whole thing would be too big for this purpose, but I did once extract a single daisy from it to stitch as a birthday card for Vicky. What if I used that, slightly smaller, with only one pair of leaves, and done as a forget-me-not? Although for a children’s kit I’d probably use standard DMC, I figured that for this trial version I could use up some discontinued hand-dyed Carrie’s Creations threads, so I picked some suitable colours and set about tracing the flower.

Next up was pricking the design onto the interfacing. I varied the depth of the pricking to see what size holes I could make, and which size would be best. The jury’s out on that one; bigger holes make it easier to find them with the needle for inexperienced stitchers, but smaller ones can be closed up if you decide you want to put the stitch in a slightly different place. One thing is certain, if the intention is for the stitcher to use the existing holes they need to be pricked more accurately than I did here, as the evenness of the stitch length will be determined by the pricking.

The design outlined in holes on the interfacing

To add a bit of extra colour without having to do more stitching, I first lightly shaded the various parts using colouring pencils. I tried applying more pressure on a bit of spare interfacing to see if you could create brighter colours, and you can – good to know for future projects.

Picking pencil colours to go with the threads

A little colour added to the interfacing

My original idea was to do the whole thing in backstitch, on the grounds that that would be easier for young stitchers than stem stitch, and you can always add interest by whipping some of it. In fact you could make it even easier by using whipped running stitch. But I like the look of stem stitch, so for this model that’s what I went with. And as the model is experimental anyway, I even tried some split stitch and satin stitch. The former works fine, although if that is the intended stitch from the outset it would be better to put the holes a little closer together; satin stitch, however, is not ideal on this background. The stitches need to be very close together and in doing so you are in danger of creating a perforated line that will tear. Still, with plenty of strands in the needle that spread a bit, it doesn’t look too bad. Initially I meant to whip the petals, but it would be tricky in the sharp turns where the petals meet, so I confined whipping to the short lines inside the petals.

The stitching was finished – now for the final finishing! As with Esmee’s Unicorn I cut very closely around the stitching, and soon realised that youngsters will probably need some assistance with that; I’m fairly handy with my favourite small pointy scissors, but even so I managed to nick a stitch at the back, which threatened to unravel one of the leaves! PVA glue to the rescue. It is often dabbed around the edges of stumpwork before cutting, and in this case it did the job equally well afterwards.

Meanwhile I had ordered some very thin neodymium magnets, half of them adhesive and half of them plain, from a company Mr Figworthy uses for magnets to stick into sump drain plugs (as you do). When the glue on the flower had completely dried, I stuck one magnet to the back, and paired it with a non-sticky magnet, held apart by a sort of plastic washer that came with them which makes it easier to separate them.

The finished flower ready for magnetising

The arrangement of two magnets and a washer

And then it’s just a matter of placing the non-sticky magnet behind the fabric of your blouse or shirt or coat, and the flower on the outside, and hey presto, a brooch that doesn’t damage your clothes! Modelled here by Mr Figworthy, it proved easy to put on and take off, but strongly enough attached not to fall off when accidentally nudged. If you prefer to display it on your fridge just leave off the backing magnet.

What next with heavy-weight interfacing? You may remember that years ago our church used to organise an annual Christmas Craft Event at the local Junior school for the children in the village and the surrounding area. Unfortunately for various reasons we had to give up doing this, but now that we have our lovely new building we felt it might be time to revive the event. And wouldn’t this sort of stitching be just the thing? I’m going to have a little play with a Christmas angel based on some calligraphy I did back in the dark ages – made a bit more chunky, so he’ll be easier to cut out, and outline only, so he’s relatively quick to stitch. I’ll let you know how I get on!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Author Archives: Flights of Fancy