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 .

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!

James goes bling

Posted on 1st April, 2022 by Flights of Fancy

Some time ago someone suggested that James, the snail from my RSN Jacobean module, would make quite a nice little crewel kit. That is now on my To Do list, but as I was looking at his outline, I suddenly thought, “wouldn’t he look good in gold?” And because there’s always room for another project, I thought I’d have a go. First of all, bits of him needed padding. I wanted the shell raised in the centre, which was done with a rather pleasant-looking little comma of felt with two more layers over the top, and extra stitching to emphasise the spiral. The brick/stone he is sitting on got a single layer of felt as it would be filled in, although I didn’t yet know what with.

My idea was to stick as much as possible to the “layout” of the crewel version, which meant an open body with some dotted shading and a filled-in shell and brick. The best way to represent the shaded satin stitch on the original brick would be vertical cutwork, and I wanted that outlined first. Then there was a line indicating the curved ground the brick rests on, plus the outlining of James’ body. As I wanted to keep them all distinct I went with pearl purl for the sides of the brick, twist for the ground and double passing for the body. The twist was attached with stitches snuggling in between the plies so the couching is invisible.

Time for the shell. I couldn’t see a way of reproducing the “spoke” effect of James’ raised backstitch crewel shell, so I chose to couch along the spiral instead. In order not to lose the spiral in one homogenous mass of circling couching I started with a double line of check thread, with the rest of the shell done in pairs of passing again. A lot more plunging than I’d like, but heigh-ho, it was needed to get the effect I wanted. (Oh, I also added a spangle eye and metallic thread feelers with little beads on the end. I know a snail doesn’t have an eye as such, but I prefer him with one.)

A few dotted bits of bright check in the body to represent the seed stitching in the crewel original, and then on to the brick! Vertical cutwork in one of the cylindrical purls and one of the angular ones, and because it seemed a good idea to have the brick relatively matte compared to James’ shiny shell I picked rough purl and wire check. As always, cutting the chips to exactly the right length was a, uhm, lengthy process – a chip is too long, so you take off a fraction of a smidgen and suddenly it’s too short. I have a fair few spare chips in a separate little bag now…

I decided to shade the chips a bit like the satin stitch in the original to add texture. And when, several hours later, I had covered about half of the brick, I realised I wasn’t sure I liked the look of it. Bother. I’m not even sure why I have second thoughts about it. I like the shading. I even like the look of that row of companionably snug vertical chips in itself. I’m just not sure it makes the brick look the way I want it.

So that’s where I am with Blingy James – he has been temporarily put away while I think about his brick and decide what I want to do with it. I’ll let you know when I know!

Fortunately there are two pieces of goldwork (or more accurately one piece of goldwork and one piece of silverwork) which did get finished, and indeed were finished some time ago. They were the Secret Project which can finally be revealed because the edition of Stitch magazine in which they appear is now in the shops. I present to you: Come Rain, Come Shine – two metalwork samplers in the shape of, respectively, an umbrella and a parasol. If you choose to stitch it, I’d love to see pictures of your finished projects! And as always, if you have any questions about the instructions, the materials or anything else, just drop me a line.

The two projects with the magazine they appear in

Assessing an assessment (goldwork) – part 2

Posted on 25th January, 2022 by Flights of Fancy

Having got the S-ing issue off my chest last time let’s move on to Padding (Bruce’s, not mine…) Second-highest score on both criteria, with deductions for the felt not having been stitched firmly enough, and there being a bump in the soft string. By the way, I was really pleased with the comment that although the width of the soft string padding would have been thought too wide generally, it worked for this design. It was one of the headaches about Bruce’s tail (which was just the perfect design area for padded cutwork) that where it attached to the rump it had to be quite wide to look natural (in as far as any goldwork kangaroo looks natural). I’m glad that was successful.

Do you remember how I struggled to keep that endless expanse of couched Jap on Bruce’s haunch and hind leg to lie flat against the sloping padding? And how the sample I did showed none of that buckling, even though my couching technique was exactly the same on both? And how I couldn’t work out why they behaved differently? Well, the assessors’ comment that the felt had “not been stitched firmly enough to support the gold” made me think – my sample padding was quite a bit smaller than the haunch (2 x 4cm against 4½ x 6cm) and that fact alone would have made it firmer, as the felt had less ground to cover between the attaching stitches. I suppose it’s like holding a very short string taut by holding the two ends, and trying to do the same with a much longer string – however tightly you pull the ends of that longer string, it is more likely to sag than the short one. In the email to Anne Butcher, the Head of Teaching, I’ve asked whether the assessors would be willing to tell me how I can remedy this lack of firmness in larger areas of padding, so I can avoid the distortions in future projects (such as, hopefully some time in the not too distant future, my Advanced Goldwork).

Sampled sloping couching seems to work better

I realise that the above theory doesn’t account for the buckling on the thin part of the leg, but that may have been because the gradient there was very steep; I’ll ask about that as well. As for the bump in the soft string padding, going back over the progress pictures I took I think they must refer to the one shown below, which does indeed show up even when covered in cutwork. Still, on the whole they were pleased with how the padding supported the gold, which is very satisfying!

A slight bump in the soft string padding...

...shows up even when covered by cutwork

Next up is Couching, Plunging and Pearl Purl.

Full marks for my bricking, and the way I had invisibly joined the pearl purl – as I did extra sampling for the latter, I’m pleased that came out so well. I can in fact see the join if I look closely, but that may be because I know where it is, so I won’t point it out to them .

The front leg, or arm as they call it, was never my favourite bit. It was changed to couching-straight-onto-the-fabric fairly last minute, when Angela realised that there was no such couching in the design and it was required by the brief. The herringboned plunging (green arrow) is not my best, and the plunging along the top line has, as they very rightly point out, damaged the fabric in places (purple arrows). The gold foil has also come a little loose near the plunging on a few threads (red arrow for one example). Not my best work. Still, I was a bit surprised about the comment that the turns in the arm needed a further stitch, as the only turns are in the paw/hand, and I can’t quite see how I could have put in any more stitches there. Also mysterious: “the turns on the leg show progression.” Unfortunately I worked the leg before the arm…

There were two comments about the pearl purl: that some of the couching stitches were visible, and that there were “many kinks”. Absolutely no disagreement with the first one – there are some visible couching stitches. Fortunately not so visible that they are noticeable when Bruce is viewed from a normal distance, but at “assessment distance”, yes. But the kinks, well, I wondered what exactly they meant by that. There are several (bright pink arrows), for example, in Haasje and in Bruce’s front leg, but they are there because the design line changes direction in a way that can’t be couched in a smooth curve. There is one such kink in the hind foot where the gap between the coils of the pearl purl is larger than it should be (green arrow), which may be what they mean. But if it is I honestly cannot see “many” of them. Another question I asked in my email, therefore, was how the assessors define a kink. They can’t have thought them extremely important though, as they deducted the minimum number of points (two, in a double-weighted section) covering both the visible stitches and the kinks.

On to the final section about the embroidery, which is Chipping and Cutwork. Full marks for uniform chips and uncracked cutwork – I had taken a lot of care over the latter especially, re-cutting and attaching quite a few of the tail chips, so it was encouraging to see that that paid off.

There were two areas of chipping in the piece, the sun and the centre of Bruce’s haunch. The two things you mustn’t do in chipping is overlap the chips, and have felt showing. But for me at least (perhaps that gets better with more experience) it sometimes seems that it simply has to be one or the other, especially when trying to fill in the last bit of an area. I did try to cut some of the chips a little smaller to fit into small gaps, but it didn’t always work. The pictures below (the last chip was just about to be placed in the sun) show a few of the gaps that I either couldn’t fill or didn’t actually notice; among the sparkle in the pictures it is quite difficult to spot overlaps, but looking close up at the piece in real life, especially at the sun, there are definitely a few of those which I missed when working on it. A learning moment, which is what it is all about!

Besides there being the required span of cutwork and not many cracks, the cutwork tail had two other positives: the chips hugged the padding closely (awww – sweet) and the ends touched the fabric on both sides. Again, something I had really worked on, by endlessly re-cutting chips so they would be exactly the right length. I’m hoping to train myself to get a better eye for it so I get the length right first time! The two criticisms refer to challenges that are rather related to each other: the angle of the chips (which ought to remain at about 45 degrees throughout, and therefore has to change with the curve of the tail) was slightly lost, and there were gaps where the felt was visible. In trying to minimise the gaps, I flattened out the angle at the top of the tail, and in trying to maintain the angle, I introduced some very visible gaps in the tip of the tail. I mentioned the latter in my Project Evaluation Notes after discussing it with Angela, who said that because the outline was very nice and even it was probably better not to unpick some chips and try to fill in the gaps; knowing the time and effort it took to get it to look that even (hugging the padding and touching the fabric, as the assessment calls it) I gladly took her advice. And compared with the two bits of cutwork I did before this module (a one-on-one RSN class in 2017 and the goldwork racehorse in 2019) I can definitely see improvement, so I’m happy with that. More practice and one day I’m sure I’ll get to the point where I can keep the angle and minimise gaps.

The last section, which is not really about the embroidery itself, is Mounting. You may remember I lost a fair few marks on that in the Jacobean module, so I was pleased to see that I had improved: four points lost instead of six.

Most marks were deducted for failing to stroke the fabric around the edges back in place to hide the pin holes, and that was fair enough; partly because of the looser, rougher weave of the silk, some of the pins had made holes that I simply could not get rid of, and in one or two places they had actually severed the thinner dark fabric threads. I described my unsuccessful attempts in my Project Evaluation Notes.

That, by the way, brings me to an interesting distinction. I’m always telling students (and other fellow stitchers) not to point out any mistakes in a piece to people who are admiring it. For one thing, they are often things that they wouldn’t otherwise have noticed. Who but the stitcher knows that a particular stitch should have been very dark brown instead of very dark blue, for example? But when handing in a piece for assessment, it’s different. It actually works in your favour if you can say, “that bit is wrong, and I know it is wrong; this is what I did to try and make it better, some of which helped and some of which didn’t work”. It feels oddly counter-intuitive, pointing out to those who will be judging you exactly where they can deduce points , but in the end I think it is the best way, as it shows that you have a realistic view of your own achievements.

And having had a realistic look at all that is wrong with Bruce, I will now have another good long look at him and feel proud!

Assessing an assessment (goldwork) – part 1

Posted on 21st January, 2022 by Flights of Fancy

Some months ago (last September, in fact) I received the assessment for the RSN Goldwork module, and I promised you a FoF about it as I had done for the Jacobean module. And then it didn’t happen. Life got in the way, and moreover there were a few things in the assessment that I was still mulling over. At the Knitting & Stitching Show I mentioned these to Noleen Wyatt-Jones, the Day & Evening Classes Manager, who is a most helpful, cheerful and encouraging person and who told me to write to Anne Butcher, the Head of Teaching, with my queries and comments, and she’d let Anne know that my email was on the way. She has helpfully, cheerfully and encouragingly nagged me to do so on several occasions since, and there was clearly only one way to stop that: write the email! So I did, with this FoF as a by-product; or rather, two by-products, as it turned out to be far too long for one edition!

Just a bit of recap on the marking system: you are awarded between 1 and 5 points for each criterion, or a multiple of these if the section is given more weight. If a section is seen as three times more “weighty”, then the possible marks are 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 – there is no option of awarding, say, 8 points. And before any marking gets done, you see the assessors’ general comment.

As it is the very first thing you see, it is a great relief when that comment is positive! Unlike in the Jacobean assessment no characters were singled out, but I will definitely settle for “interesting design” and “very good grounding”. As a former teacher who sat through numerous parent-teacher evenings trying to find acceptable things to say to them about their children, I am very much aware that “interesting” (like “different” and “individual”) can be a tactful way of conveying that the achievement is not quite what was expected, but I will ignore that and take the comments at face value!

The sections of the assessment vary from module to module, but they all start with “First Impressions” (although some of the criteria within that section are specific to the module).

Again, no alien fibres! Lexi will be most disappointed that she didn’t manage to leave any trace of herself on the finished work – she’s been trying hard enough right from the start .

I’ve been trying to find a picture of the fabric with bits of wax on it (they do occasionally come off the waxed thread) but it seems I managed to remove them immediately, and well before any pictures were taken. Obviously a good strategy! As for the paint lines being covered, there was one place where I was initially left with a visible line: Haasje’s face. I found that following the line precisely with the pearl purl made him look wrong, and so I decided to couch it so that the outline looked right, and worry about the visible paint later. I managed to scrape that away successfully – the tacking line that was put in right at the start on top of all the paint lines I had to cut from the back and squirrel away. I’m delighted to find that I was successful in doing so.

On to the section on Design, where they remarked favourably on the fact that I hadn’t allowed the gold to spread beyond the original design or lose its proportions, and on the “flow” of the threads and wires within the design. Yay! Even so, this was one section where I was braced for a loss of points, and so it turned out to be: one point on the choice of fabric, and two on the use of S-ing.

To begin with the fabric, the assessors were absolutely right. The brief specifically requires a power-woven silk dupion (or linen, but I have never seen anyone use that; silk looks so much more luxurious) and mine is hand-woven, which even under tension is noticeably less smooth. Neither I nor the tutor noticed this requirement until the project was already well underway, and I will admit that in any case I was so pleased with the colour and the textured look of the fabric that I decided to stick with it, explain it in the Project Evaluation Notes which you hand in with the finished piece, and take the consequences.

On to what I knew would be a bone of contention: my decision to use S-ing for the sun’s rays. The assessors’ argument is that a) it is a technique that should only be seen on an advanced goldwork piece, and b) if a technique is not listed as optional then it should not be used at all. Some of this had been mentioned (with varying degrees of discouragement) by my three tutors, and if I had been really worried about my mark I would have given it up as too risky. However, I really liked the effect of the S-ing there, it worked for the design in ways that the only other likely option, rococco, would not (less shiny, not enough contrast with the cloud outline), and most importantly, I did not and do not agree that it goes against the brief.

When it comes to materials and threads, the brief is unequivocal in what you must not use: no velvet, and no threads other than those mentioned. But on the subject of techniques, the only caveat is that you must include all the techniques on the list. There is no mention whatsoever (as there is for the materials and threads) that no others are allowed. Now if I had decided to do the sun itself in padded kid leather, that would clearly have gone against the brief as kid leather isn’t mentioned in the list of allowed materials. But the S-ing is done in smooth purl, which is on the list. I wrote all this in my Project Evaluation Notes in what I hope was a balanced way by being open about the fact that two of the three tutors I had for this module had advised against it (the third said it would be safer not to but that in the end it was my design decision); the assessors obviously didn’t agree. Still, in spite of the loss of points I am glad I did stick with it, as I think it was the right design decision within the constraints of the brief.

I will ask about this, too, in the email; I’m really not that bothered about the lost marks, but I would like it clarified what you can and cannot do in this module. A fellow student told me, when I mentioned something in the Canvaswork brief, that that was probably there because of something she had done in her Canvas piece, which the assessors weren’t happy about but which was at that time within the guidelines. They then changed the brief to exclude it from then on. Perhaps that’s what should happen about the S-ing as well, if the RSN strongly feel that it should not be attempted by Certificate students. I will keep you posted! And I’ll discuss the rest of the assessment the next FoF.

Spangles, stash and students

Posted on 19th November, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

It’s been a while since I last Foffed, but now I can burst in with a Hurray! Finally, the second of the two secret stitched models is finished (sneak peek of a tiny bit of it below) – but is it finished? Well, everything that is on my design plan is now on the fabric, but I keep thinking it may need a few more spangles before mounting…

Which brings us nicely to the second part of this FoF. It’s always pleasant to get new stash, and although this doesn’t look particularly interesting it feels very nice: fluffy cotton wadding for mounting the models mentioned above (and probably the metalwork racehorse). It’s very much like the stuff the RSN gave me for mounting Bruce and is meant to compensate for all those lumps and bumps on the back of goldwork caused by the plunged and oversewn ends. By the way, having used lightweight, open-textured polyester wadding for years in cards and to put behind embroidery when mounting, and having seen pictures online of “batting” which looked more like this soft but more solid cotton (or wool), I thought they were two different things. Turns out they are all wadding if you’re in the UK, and all batting if you’re in the US. Ah, language, I love you .

As for students, I’ve been seeing nine of them for a few weeks now at the Percival Guildhouse in Rugby, and so far they seem to be enjoying themselves which is a good sign! They came to the course with varying levels of previous experience, from a lady who wants to brush up her embroidery skills after a lull of some years to one who has done mostly cross stitch until now and wants to “have a go” to some who have never done any stitching whatsoever. I was impressed with how dedicated they all are, working hard on the new stitches in class and then showing me what they’ve finished at home the next week. Here are some of the Little Wildflower Gardens (the Week 1 project) which they brought to class the week after, several of them complete with bullion knot bee – Well Done Students, is what I say!

Kits galore and fame for Bruce

Posted on 30th September, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

Keeping on top of kit production in dribs and drabs is one thing, but with the Rugby 6-week course starting within a month from the Knitting & Stitching Show the process definitely needs ramping up – there are 70-odd kits to be made up! Fortunately it makes the whole production line so much easier when observed and supervised by a cat…

That was cutting-and-ironing-fabric day, having printed the instructions and cover pictures the day before. Now I’m on to transferring. The Knitting & Stitching Show people choose from a selection of workshops I offer, and beyond the original proposal I have no say in what gets picked; this year one of them was Hardanger, which is worked from a chart, so those kits could be made up without any further work. However, for reasons unclear even to me I decided to make the Rugby course a freestyle one, which means all five projects need the design transferred to the kit fabric for each of the ten participants. Plus twelve for the other K&S workshop. That lightbox is going to get a lot of use in the next few days!

Meanwhile, as I was starting to stick the needles for the various designs into bits of calico, I thought it would be much more convenient for the course students to have one simple needle book in which to keep their needles throughout the course. They are quite quick to put together, and don’t they look nice and colourful? I just have to add the size 22 petite tapestry needles to complete the collection.

Change of subject although it is still show-related – the RSN always have a stand at the Knitting & Stitching Show and this year *modest cough* Bruce will be one of the exhibits at the London and Harrogate Shows! It was actually a very funny exchange of emails because the first one I received asked for my permission to display my stumpwork piece; flattering but surprising as I have done no RSN stumpwork at all as yet. But it turned out to be an error in terminology, and they did in fact mean my goldwork piece. Go Bruce!

Gold, gold, gold

Posted on 24th September, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

When you get into goldwork you soon realise that it has a vocabulary all of its own – and I’m not just talking of waxing and plunging. There is pearl purl, which sounds like a superflous repetition but does actually mean something; there is the mysterious milliary wire which looks like a misspelling of military wire but isn’t, and which sometimes occurs without its second “i”; there is rococco which seems to be spelled with any combination of “c”s available. Then there are names which suggest non-existent similarities: check thread and wire check have absolutely nothing in common; wire check has much more in common with smooth purl. And why do only two of the flexible hollow purls (the cylindrical ones, shiny “smooth” and matt “rough”) have “purl” in their names, while the two corresponding facetted ones are called “check” and are designated “bright” (shiny) and “wire” (matt)?

A selection of purls, not all called purl

But some of the names you come across are not just obscure or mildly amusing, they are downright odd. Flatworm, anyone?

Flatworm starts its life as a rather thick passing thread, which is a metal wire or a thin strip of metal wrapped around a silk or cotton core. Then it gets bashed (not the correct technical term…) so that it ends up as an irregularly flattened, rather chunky ribbon. I describe it as “irregularly flattened” because when you try and lay it down flat, you’ll notice it twists here and there, unpredictably and to varying degrees. Not-so-flatworm, you might say.

If you use it as an outline, or a thin curve consisting of one thread only, you could couch it down as it comes, twists and all – I’ve not tried it but I think it would create rather a pleasing effect. But I want to use it to fill a shape, and for that it needs to be laid flat. Not that difficult, it just takes a little untwisting, so that’s not really the problem with this thread; what I found more challenging was managing the turns.

This refers only to filling a shape in back-and-forth rows, by the way; for a spiral filling I think getting it to lie flat around the curves would actually be the difficult bit (imagine doing that with a ribbon). But in my case the first thing I had to decide was how to make the turn. With passing or any of the other goldwork threads you would simply bend the thread around the needle at the end of a row, possibly pinching the fold with tweezers or small pliers for a nice sharp look, and go on couching in the opposite direction. But that doesn’t really work with this flattened shape. So I looked to another goldwork material, plate. It is basically a metal ribbon – flattened metal without a thead core – and it comes in Broad no.6 and Narrow no.11 (not shown in the picture) with the broad version also available Whipped (with a metal thread wound around it).

This metal ribbon is attached only on the turns where it is sharply folded over, and it zigzags rather than lying in parallel rows. As it can’t be couched along the rows because of the overlaps it tends to be used for relatively small, or at least narrow, shapes. Online you can find many beautiful examples of acorns and other shapes filled with this material, but for copyright reasons I will show you an unfortunately rather messy bit of my own sampling.

I did actually try turning the flatworm as you would any other metal thread (orange arrow), just to see what the effect would be, but as the picture shows it isn’t very good. Even after pinching the ends together there is a noticeable gap which shows the underlying felt padding. As this is an extreme close-up it is not quite so visible in real life, but still far too much to be acceptable. The other turns have all been done by securing the flatworm on the edge of the padding with a stitch parallel to the edge, and then folding it over with another couching stitch close to the fold (yellow arrow). Although there are still slight gaps, these are so small that they don’t offend the eye when seen at a normal viewing distance, so this is obviously the way to go. Watch this space for pictures of the flatworm used in a proper project!

As those of you who take the occasional look at my Facebook page will know, another golden moment during the past week was the arrival in my Inbox of the assessment for the RSN Certificate Goldwork module, a.k.a. Bruce. I will write more about the various scores and comments later, but for now I will just reveal with a grin on my face that I passed with a Merit and an 88% overall score. Haasje was speechless .

The final furlong

Posted on 13th July, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

Last Wednesday I should have had my first official Canvaswork class. Unfortunately I have a chronic tum condition and it decided to flare up; not the best conditions for concentrating on what is essentially a new technique to me. But the RSN were very understanding and helpful (“oh you poor thing, just drop us a line and we’ll arrange something”) and cancelled it for me even though I let them know only a day in advance, with the money credited to my account for a future class. With the summer recess coming up that won’t be until September at the earliest, however, so I decided that my stitching time would be dedicated to getting the racehorse out of the way before moving on to the commissioned project.

The racehorse (or Queen’s Silks as it’s officially called) has had a few adaptations and alterations already, most notably the eye, and I’ve also substituted my own check thread for some of the rococco parts. But in one place I stuck with the rococco: the lower part of the gold hind leg. As the shading or detailing in the other, copper hind leg had already been done in rococco I decided it would look better to echo that in this leg.

My next stitching session was in bright sunshine, and you’d think that would make everything easier to see. Well, it did help with the stitching part, but it made the black design lines (never particularly clear on the dark green fabric) practically invisible – the thing that may look like a design line is actually the shadow of my couching thread! I resorted to working without my glasses with my nose all but touching the silk as I worked on the pearl purl outlines of the neck and front leg. I’m using the pearl purl that came with the kit, even though the gold is a bit yellow for my taste. On the other hand, it does provide extra contrast (you’ll see later just how much contrast with some of the other gold).

That last picture also shows the swirly couching around the shoulder, which took quite a while to get right. The copper part going up to the neck had to be completely unpicked when I realised I’d once again entirely missed the outline. The second version came out much better – just as well, as I wasn’t going to unpick it again! While doing that part of the horse I’d forgotten to fill in the couching in the bottom of the swirl, so that was next. By the way, can you see the mellow gold pearl purl in the top right-hand corner? That came from my stash because I didn’t like using the yellow one for the head. Quite a colour difference.

For the detailing in the front legs I ignored the stitched model; it used the large rococco in the gold leg and S-ing in the copper leg, but I didn’t think that worked very well going round the rather tight curves of the leg, so I opted for check thread in both. In bright light the gold check thread looks almost silver against the yellow pearl purl!

Finally it was time for the last bit of the neck and the head. I took a bit of a shortcut in the copper cheek detailing by using a doubled thread starting with a loop; this meant the top lacked the subtle curve, but it did save on plunging and securing (easier with check thread than with rococco, but still to be avoided whenever possible, to my mind). The other parts were done pretty much as they were in the stitched model. And there he is, racing ahead in all his metallic glory, and I’m jolly pleased with how he’s turned out.

Horsing around

Posted on 29th June, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

Although I really need to get on with that secret goldwork project, I’m having such fun spending a bit more time with Helen McCook’s racehorse that I keep coming up with excuses – the latest one is that the hoop needed for the new project is currently in use holding my Canvaswork sample cloth, and I have to wait for the arrival of two 25cm Nurge hoops (my favourite brand), one 16mm and one 24mm deep. And then of course there will be a further delay until I’ve got round to binding it. So apart from doing some preparatory work for my first proper Canvas class next week, I’m enjoying an equine binge.

The first thing to do since the last update was to get rid of those pesky black outlines which I failed to cover when plunging the couching on the horse’s flank (feel free to let me know if that’s not the right term, I’m not a horse expert). There were a few options including a Jap outline, but in the end I decided to go for a solid filling of chips – for one thing that meant no plunging and oversewing! I chose the thinnest bright check, no.8, and tried to follow the lines as well as possible while still placing the chips in random directions. Chips are never going to make a truly sharp point, and in close-up you can see that the outlines are not smooth (you wouldn’t expect them to be), but when taking in the whole horse from a normal viewing distance I think it blends in well enough.

The chipping in the context of the whole horse

On to the remaining bits of the back legs, worked (apart from a small length of pearl purl) in gold and copper rococco. Now the rococco that came with the class kit is big. I mean, really big. I have Very Fine, Fine and Medium rococco in my stash and Medium is as chunky as I would choose to go in any of my own projects. This looks a definite Large. It is an absolute pig to plunge, and I don’t even like the look of it very much because it is very difficult to “synchronise” the waves (the first picture shows it in the horse’s tail). I could have used a smaller size from my stash, but instead I went for check thread, rococco’s modest little sister. Much in the way that I prefer passing to Jap, I prefer check thread to rococco. It gives the same sort of effect, but it’s a lot easier to work with!

The whole horse showing large rococco and check thread

The overview picture also shows my start on the grass. The kit came with bright green 471 thread, which is a bit like a fine passing thread available in lots of colours. Compared to the bottle green fabric that seemed rather too bright and too much towards the yellow end of green. In my stash I found a no. 1½ twist in Opal Green which is a lovely shade, but that was a bit too much towards teal/turquoise. Then, playing with them both at my Embroidery Group meeting (last one before the summer holiday, alas), I had a flash of inspiration: why not combine them? So I did, and I really like the effect of the blended colours and contrasting textures! When I started the second line of grass my first stitch happened to be exactly in line with the couching on the first line of grass, which looked odd, so I took it out and “bricked” it, even though the lines of couching are not directly next to each other, which I felt made for a more pleasing effect.

Combining two threads and bricking the stitches

By the way, finishing off the grass in the evening was possibly not the best decision. In spite of the floor to ceiling window in our dining room (where I like to stitch on larger and more complicated projects) the gloomy evening sky did nothing to help while couching two shades of green on dark green fabric using a green couching thread… Still, I managed, even if I did almost pull one bright green thread out completely when plunging its second end. Fortunately the unravelled first end consented to be gently persuaded back down the fabric, leaving the thread at the front acceptable if not pristine.

So what’s left? I’d like to leave the head and neck till last, so the front legs first; they have a fair bit of work in them. I have quite a lot of copper passing left from the kit so I may put that in instead of the copper S-ing along the knee and foot. The angles of the leg are such that the S-ing looks a bit awkward there in the model photograph we were given, and rather loses its stem stitch look. We’ll see what suggests itself once I get to that point!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Tag Archives: Goldwork