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!

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!

More stash, more students, a cross and a petal

Posted on 24th November, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

As I was putting kits together for the course at Rugby’s Percival Guildhouse, I noticed I was getting a little low on some of the shades of Madeira Lana needed for the No Place Like Home project. There was plenty left for the class kits, but I have plans for this little house (watch this space…) so off I went to my two suppliers, only to find that one of them, from whom I got the larger reels of variegated Lana, no longer carries this thread! Fortunately most of the shades required were solids, and I didn’t need that much of them, so Sarah Homfray and her 25m skeins came to the rescue!

One of the things I try to do in the course is to introduce different types of thread, and this wool/acrylic blend is one of them. It made its appearance in week 2. Which brings me to the students using the thread (who, in spite of the title of this FoF, are in fact the same students as the ones I mentioned last time, but “more students’ work” was a bit cumbersome). Here is how they got on with No Place Like Home (class plus some homework) and Butterfly Wreath (in-class progress). I’m really proud of how well they are doing!

When I manage to do some “free stitching” (that is to say not for future publication, or at least with no deadline for publication) I grab one of the many projects lying around that are awaiting completion. Some are fairly recent, like the hourglass stitched with Paintbox Threads materials (update soon), others were started as far back as early 2019, like Hengest and Llandrindod. Hengest is still languishing, but I’m getting on with the pretty jewelled cross. At the moment I’m working on the dark gold that surrounds the gems, and when that is done there is just the subtle bling to be added to the stones, plus possibly some decoration along the light gold circle. But for now I have to decide what to do when the split stitch of the gold frame doesn’t quite match up with the split stitch of the gems. Sometimes it’s a matter of simply filling in the gaps with more gold (orange arrow) – but should I perhaps make the gem corners a bit sharper by adding a few stitches in red (blue arrows)?

Perhaps I’ll work on something else while mulling that over… One thing which I hope to get to grips with in the not too distant future is silk shading or needle painting. You may remember that lovely book I got a while ago which has some exercises in it to try before starting on the full-blown projects – more about that in a future FoF, but another inspiration presented itself from quite a different corner recently. While we were having some pruning done in the garden a late rose got cut, and we put it in the kitchen in one of those tall narrow vases. It’s a lovely dark orange when in bud, but it goes progressively paler when it opens, and when it started to drop its petals I had a close look at one. Not only would the colours make for a lovely silk shading project, it looks like the stitch direction lines have already been pencilled in by the Creator .

A petal with ready-painted lines for silk shading

A freebie, some sampling and a variety of oranges

Posted on 19th May, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

Recently we’ve been having a bit of Bruce overload, I’m afraid. Time for a break from Bruce – only a short one, what with the finishing line so close, but a break nonetheless. Time for daisies, gemstones and oranges!

A little over a week ago I mentioned a birthday card I’d stitched for a friend, and said it might become a freebie. If you occasionally glance at Mabel’s Facebook page you may already have seen this, but indeed, Daisy & Ladybird can now be downloaded from the Freebies page. Enjoy having a play with it, and do send us pictures of your handiwork – remember, just because I chose to use crewel wool and filled in the whole thing doesn’t mean you have to do the same. You could stitch only the outline of the flower in perle cotton stem stitch and solidly fill the ladybird for contrast; you could work the petals in silk and the flower centre in bright gold chipping; you could use ribbons; it’s completely up to you.

Last Monday was an exciting day – with the easing of lockdown restrictions the weekly Embroidery Circle I’ve been attending for years was allowed to meet again! There were only six of us rather than the usual twelve, but it was lovely to sit there and chat and stitch together. As I rather expected there would be a fair amount of chatting, I needed a project that didn’t take too much concentration. I took two, just to have a bit of choice, but stitched just the one: a sample cloth for Llandrindod. You may remember I couldn’t quite make up my mind about the stitch direction in the facets of the central gem, and I couldn’t remember why I had rejected the option which initially looked the most obvious. Time to try both.

Now my first idea had been the one on the left, with the stitches in the facets going around the centre. Then for some reason I decided it would be better to use satin stitch at right angles to the central facet, radiating outwards, as in the sample on the right. But as you can see, this makes the individual facets indistinguishable. This is not quite as much of a problem as it seems, as I will be outlining the facets in very fine metallic thread anyway, but even so it looked rather too homogenous. The final verdict: temporary brain fog when deciding to switch. Back to the original plan.

The other project I took to Embroidery Group (but neglected) was Sarah Homfray’s orange tree, a companion to the apple tree I did a while ago. All the browns and greens are done, and I’m down to the oranges, in both senses of the word. As these are circles, I thought I’d go with split stitch filling – after all, I’ve had lots of practice doing split stitch circles with Hengest.

The only difference with these circles was the shading. I worked two of them from the outside in, and then one from the inside out (not quite finished, as you can see). And they look nice. But there are nine oranges in total, and even the excitement of working one of these three in the opposite direction couldn’t disguise the fact that doing nine of them in circular split stitch was going to be rather samey for a project that is meant to be a bit of fun. A little more variety is needed to spice things up.

Conveniently, the oranges are arranged in three clusters of three, so it’s easy enough to simply switch to a different stitch when moving to the next cluster. For now I’m thinking of woven wheels with the centre off-centre (I hope that makes sense) and long & short stitch working from the perimeter inwards; with the latter it may be a bit tricky getting three shades into these small shapes, but it will definitely keep stitching them interesting. I’ll let you know how these other oranges work out (remind me if I forget)!

A Welsh gem and two of my Five-a-Day

Posted on 12th March, 2021 by Flights of Fancy

For various reasons I haven’t done a lot of stitching lately, although I have made some progress on Bruce which I hope to report on soon (probably after this weekend when I intend to complete the section I’m currently working on – sneak peek below). As you know I am never short of a project or two (or three, or twelve), but none of them particularly appealed to me even when I had the opportunity. So I’ve tried to re-ignite my enthusiasm by planning some sampling, and kitting up a couple of uncomplicated projects.

A sneak peek at Bruce's leg

Two of my long-term projects (and I do mean long-term; we’re talking several years here) which have not had the attention they deserve are Hengest and Llandrindod. In both projects I’m at a stage where there are decisions to be made, and that is always a dangerous point for me. So much easier to just start something new! Hengest has been languishing in his stable because after his mane I need to decide how to stitch his bridle and especially the jewels on it; but as there is still some mane to stitch first I’m hoping to return to him when I’ve reached the point with Bruce where I can’t do anything more until I see a tutor. Llandrindod is a bit more problematic, but I’ve decided that now is the time to tackle it. The challenge is the direction in which the facets of the central diamond are stitched.

Originally I intended to stitch these facets so that the lines of stitches go around the central part, much like the outer facets on the coloured stones. For some reason I changed my mind a little over a year ago and started working them from the outside edge towards the centre. Unfortunately I failed to make a note anywhere documenting this change – or if I did, I can’t find it – so I have no idea why I discarded the around-the-centre approach in favour if the into-the-centre one. Equally unfortunately I don’t particularly like what I’ve done so far. But I don’t want to unpick it, start again with the other method, find out that there was in fact a fatal flaw in it, and have to unpick again. The solution: a sample cloth! In spite of what the outlines may suggest that doesn’t mean I have to stitch the diamond three times in total, as I won’t have to stitch all the facets to get an idea of what the effect of each method is; at least I fervently hope a few facets on each will do the trick!

With Llandrindod and Bruce both what you might call “concentration projects”, as I really want to get them right and there’s a lot of note-taking going on (although in the case of Llandrindod obviously not quite enough…), it’s nice to have some relaxed projects on the go as well. On rare occasions these can be my own designs when they aren’t intended to become chart packs or kits, like Septimus the Septopus, but generally it’s someone else’s design, whether as a kit (I’ve got a good few waiting in the wings, from wonderful designers like Lizzie Pye of Laurelin, Helen Richman of Bluebird Embroidery and Alison Cole) or as a design only where I get to play with my stash and pick everything myself.

The projects I set up the other day are somewhere in between – a couple of little fruit trees by Sarah Homfray which used to come as a set of four kits but two of which I found last January as printed fabric only. So the fabric has been decided for me, and I don’t have to transfer the designs, but I do get to rummage through my thread boxes and play with colours. The originals were stitched using Madeira Lana, of which I have a respectable collection, but I decided to go with my favourite Heathway Milano crewel wool, which is a little thicker but not so much as to be a problem. And this is what I ended up with:

They were meant to be my relaxing bits of stitching while we were away on family care duty, but I didn’t actually get any stitching done during that week. Never mind, they make lovely little fillers for when I haven’t got the clear mind (and the time) I need for Bruce or when I can’t face anything that involves making decisions. I can just pick them up and stitch. Perfect.

Bad lighting and a medieval Mabel

Posted on 30th January, 2020 by Flights of Fancy

We all know how important light is in needlework. I loved finding out that medieval Guild regulations forbade owners of embroidery workshops from making their needleworkers stitch by artificial light – they were allowed to work during daylight hours only. In these modern days we have much better artificial lighting available, and Mary Corbet wrote on her blog once that if you were thinking of getting a magnifier or special glasses, she’d suggest looking at your lighting first. Get the right light and you may not need additional magnification at all!

When stitching in the evening (my usual time, Guild regulations notwithstanding) I will admit to needing both if I’m doing very detailed work, but my Serious Readers floor-standing lamp does make a great difference. Even so, much the most comfortable way of stitching is during the day by the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the garden; I still need my special glasses, but it is definitely less of a strain on the eyes.

Stitching by the window using the slate frame

Stitching by the window using a seat frame

When I mentioned bad lighting, however, I was actually talking about a different kind of lighting – but like the lack of good lighting to stitch by, it has lead to a substantial amount of unpicking.

This is Llandrindod with all the facets completed on the coloured stones. Very pretty and colourful. Sit back and enjoy before moving on to the facets on the diamond and the surrounding gold. But wait – notice anything about those coloured stones? About how they catch the light?

That’s right. The blue, purple and green stones are in agreement, but the red stone has different ideas about where her light source comes from. We are suffering from a case of Llandrindodgy lighting!

And I had paid such attention to the direction of the light when I was designing this and deciding on colours and stitches. I printed out a large coloured version to keep by me as a reference. I must have looked at it hundreds of times over the past months. And I Did Not Notice!!!!

There was no help for it – it would have to be unpicked. And split stitch is just about the worst stitch to unpick, so what that meant in practice was that the majority of stitches would have to be cut and teased out, all the while making sure I didn’t catch the satin stitch centre or make the stitches on the edges of the other facets unstable. It took 75 minutes, but I am now ready to put in the correctly lit facets. Well, once I’ve oversewn the cut ends at the back, as they are far too short to fasten off in any other way – after peering at tiny cut stitches for well over an hour I wasn’t going to do that by artificial light, however good, so that awaits some daylight stitching time.

To return for a moment to medieval embroiderers, I was delighted to discover from an article in the big Opus Anglicanum book that the first professional embroiderer of whom there is documentary evidence was a Mabel. I obviously chose well when I picked my nom d’aiguille (like a nom de plume but for stitchers). The book tells us that “Mabel of Bury St Edmunds was commissioned in 1239 to produce an embroidered chasuble for the shrine of St Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, at the behest of Henry III. The chasuble, which was embellished with pearls and gold work, and lined with canvas and fine silk, took two years to complete, and must have been extremely elaborate.” Go Mabel! I shall endeavour to live up to her example.

I must not stitch and chat

Posted on 9th January, 2020 by Flights of Fancy

Write 100 times: I must not stitch and chat.

Well, actually, I must – after all, why else do you go to meet other stitchers? Even at classes, where everyone is concentrating on the learning process, there’s usually some chatting going on, let alone at a meeting like our weekly Embroidery Circle where we each bring whatever we’re working on and have a bit of a stitchers’ social.

On the other hand, it is a good idea to choose your project wisely; I wouldn’t work on my Certificate piece (even if I could get it there, trestles and all) because I really cannot chat and do anything meaningful on that at the same time. I did bring my doodle cloths a few times, and that worked well: interesting, but not essential to get it absolutely right as it’s just trying out things.

Last Monday I brought Llandrindod, my little Celtic Cross. I didn’t want to work on the SAL, having done rather a lot of that over the Christmas period. I didn’t feel like working on the Ottoman Tulip, and I’ve rather missed Llandrindod. And (very important) the part of the design that I’m working on at the moment is just filling in facets with split stitch. What could possiby go wrong?

This.

Doesn’t look too bad, does it? There’s a slight issue with the red slanted satin stitch which I need to do something about, but the split stitch facets are OK, aren’t they?

Yes. Except that the teeny-weeny medium blue facet towards the centre should have been light blue.

That in itself isn’t too much of a problem; after all, I worked the corresponding facet on the red gem in the wrong direction first, and had to unpick and redo it. Unfortunately with this gem I thought it would be easier and save fastening on and off if I did all the medium blue facets in one go, rather than one by one. Which means that every line of split stitch in that small facet is connected to the facet next to it, and (by running behind the satin stitch at the back of the work) with the large facet on the far right. I stopped filling in the small facet the moment I noticed, and as I started at the narrow, pointy end I may be able to just stitch over it in light blue, but it will need a bit of thinking.

Next Monday I will take the Ottoman Tulip. Two large areas left to fill in and both the same colour!

More haste, less speed; and distracting vestments

Posted on 27th August, 2019 by Flights of Fancy

We’re back from our holiday in Kent, where we had a lovely time and I did no stitching at all on one of the projects I’d brought, and only a little stitching on the other. (Yes, I took two projects with me. Just in case, you know, that I’d do so much stitching that one project wasn’t enough. Ha.) I did see some lovely stitching, though – none at Chatham Dockyard, not surprisingly, but Ightham Mote, Hever Castle and Penshurst Place all had their fair share of tapestries, garments, fire screens, stumpwork caskets and mirror frames and so on.

Some of it I could get close enough to to be able to look at it without my glasses (as I’m very short-sighted that’s the best way for me to see small details), but most items were frustratingly just too far behind the glass to allow a naked-eye, close-up look. I did ask at one place whether they ever allowed people to study the pieces up close, and they did, but it was obvious from the way she phrased it that this was for serious academic researchers only, not for just anyone who happened to be interested in embroidery. Oh well.

Gold and silk embroidery at Hever Castle

The last full day of our holiday was Sunday, so we started with early morning Communion at the local church – of which more later – then visited a nearby wildlife reserve which used to be gravel pits, had a picnic in a field, and returned for a quiet afternoon and evening before the journey home on Monday. Just the opportunity to get out my stitching! Well, after I finished the detective novel I had with me… By the time I’d finished that it was not quite so hot outside, so I put a chair out on the lawn, gathered my project and threads and scissors and glasses, sat down, and found the inquisitive wet nose of the resident Alaskan Malamute alarmingly close to my fabric. Fortunately Blade, though enormous and very solid, was extremely friendly; and anyway, he soon decided that my embroidery was not edible and that I wasn’t about to scritch him behind the ears, so he ambled off to find a shady spot.

This left me to do some work on Llandrindod: I was about to put in the surrounding facets on the first jewel. This is done in split stitch, wih all sections worked in a clockwise direction, three of them in the medium shade and three in the light shade (the large centre facets were worked in the dark shade). Unfortunately the medium red doesn’t show up quite as different from the dark red as I’d expected, but I hope that with the light shade and the accents in pearlescent thread which I will add later the overall effect will still be that of a jewel with light playing on it.

Split stitch is slow work, so by the time I’d finished the three medium facets it was nearly time to start cooking dinner (i.e. put the pies we bought at the local deli in the oven). But I really wanted to see what the effect of adding the third shade would be. Now there is a tiny facet right at the bottom of each gemstone which is worked in the light shade, and surely that wouldn’t take long. I’d just quickly put that in and then pack everything away. I did. I looked at the effect of the third shade. And then I realised I’d stitched it in the wrong direction – anticlockwise instead of clockwise.

I could have left it, I suppose. It’s a very, very small section indeed. Would anyone notice in the grand scheme of things? Possibly not. But I would. And it would annoy me. So out it came. As you may remember from Hengest, unless it’s confined to the last one or two stitches it’s practically impossible to unpick split stitch; you have to cut the stitches and pick out all the little bits of fluffed-up thread. Fortunately the linen I’m using stands up well to this sort of abuse, so there’ll be no problem when I get round to doing the section again, clockwise this time!

I mentioned that we visited the local church on Sunday morning – an 11th-century building rejoicing in the name of St Edmund King and Martyr, a mere three minutes’ walk from us. It turned out to be fairly high church, and the priest’s vestments had a rather interesting design in gold on them. It intrigued me, because I couldn’t see how it was done. For the first part of the service my brain was chewing over this conundrum in the background until I realised that this was not the right preparation for Communion, and cast the matter aside for the moment. Oddly enough, it was while receiving Communion that I found the answer to the problem.

So what was the problem? Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me so I couldn’t ask the priest afterwards if I could take a picture of the vestments, but when we got back to our AirBnB I quickly did a sketch from memory. It looked somewhat like this:

The parts that particularly caught my eye were the thin concentric circles within the wide circle, and the way in which the sides of the outer circle were part of the vertical borders. I was trying to interpret the design in couched pairs of Jap or possibly twist, and the circles looked like a fairly solid outer circle of several pairs of Jap, with a gap the width of one pair followed by a thin circle consisting of one pair, and this gap-and-circle then repeated. In other words, the gaps and the thin circles were the same width. This same effect was also used in the top and bottom parts of the design (the parts with straight sides, concave outer edge and convex inner edge). There was also an interesting weave effect in those top and bottom parts, consisting of short lengths of gold-gap-gold.

There were several things which I couldn’t work out by looking at it from a distance. For one thing, I couldn’t tell where the thin circles were plunged. They seemed perfectly continuous, with no break anywhere in their sheen and sparkle. And talking of plunging, all those short length making up the weave would have to be plunged individually – that’s a lot of plunging and a lot of bulky gold to get rid of at the back of the work! And then there were the parts where the wide circle intersected wit the vertical borders; there should be a change of reflection there, as the curved lines of Jap met the straight vertical ones, but there wasn’t. There should also be a noticeable break, unless the embroiderer working on this garment had attained such a degree of perfection in her plunging that you literally couldn’t see the joins.

It was as I received Communion and looked up at the priest and saw the vestment close-up that I realised my problem was caused by an incorrect assumption. I had assumed that the design was made up of lines of couched gold thread, but it wasn’t – it was cut from solid gold fabric and presumably appliquéd on. Cutting and applying the thin circles and other thin lines must have been quite a fiddly job, but not nearly so fiddly as trying to do it this neatly in couched Jap. (Incidentally, I didn’t work all this out while taking the bread and wine – I just stored the information away for later contemplation. Important as embroidery is, one has to get one’s priorities right!)

So there it is, a lovely design but probably not really suitable for working in couched threads, which is the way I would want to do it. I will probably try the wide-circle-with-voids-and-thin-circles motif some day, just to see if it is possible to make the plunging practically invisible. Perhaps as part of the RSN goldwork module…?

Welsh inspiration

Posted on 2nd April, 2019 by Flights of Fancy

Almost every year my husband and I travel to Wales for a weekend around the end of March, to participate in the rally organised by the Light Car & Edwardian Section of the Vintage Sports-Car Club (usually sensibly abbreviated to LC&ES). We all meet up on the Friday, do a navigation rally on the Saturday, and there is a trial (a type of competition) on the Sunday at which we generally marshal. It’s not like some events where people dress up in period clothing, but a few years ago I couldn’t resist .

That’s our 1925 Austin 7 Chummy. Unfortunately it is in need of a lot of TLC at the moment, so our transport this year was a bit grander – here she is with Eldest and his bride last year (Lily the Lagonda does make a splendid wedding vehicle). My mother used to say the car made her feel like royalty, so that it felt almost compulsory to wave graciously as you pass people.

We’re usually dressed up in waterproofs and/or thermals (it’s not exactly warm in an open car in Wales in March) so I’m afraid we don’t really live up to Lily’s glamour, but that doesn’t dampen our enjoyment! The rain sometimes does… this year, however, we were exceptionally lucky with the weather.

You may wonder what any of this has to do with stitching. Well, the Welsh rally splendidly demonstrates how all sorts of things can inspire an embroidery design. Some years ago, for example, we passed several banks of blackthorn on our way there. They had only just come out, their blossom pristine and white, like a frothy wave or yards and yards of crumpled up lace. I sketched a few ideas, and the result was Blackthorn.

The rally is based in Llandrindod Wells, and every year on the Sunday morning we go to early morning Communion at the local church before rejoining the vintage car gang to help at the trial. The vicar and several members of the congregation know us by now, and we joke that we’re regulars at Holy Trinity – we attend regularly once a year.

As is usual, we are always handed a service sheet, and last year I noticed for the first time a line drawing of a Celtic cross on the front. The shape appealed to me, and I took the sheet with me. Back home that evening I made some sketches and scribbled a few notes, and over the months various ideas were added. Possibly partly because of the rather rough lines of the drawing I got the impression it was based on a stone cross, but from the start I envisaged it with colour in it, and possibly goldwork. It wasn’t until a week or so ago that I took my drawing and tentatively put some facets into some of the shapes. I liked the effect, and a jewelled cross called “Llandrindod” was born! (This year the vicar explained to me that the cross is the logo of the Church in Wales in general, not of their parish in particular, but to me it will always be associated with Llandrindod Wells.)

The colour model for Llandrindod

Some of the colours I’d picked were similar to the ones in Soli Deo Gloria, so that was easy – I had the Soie d’Alger colours to hand! I didn’t really want to try and find the right shades for the emerald and the diamond, remembering the trouble I had just to get the right blue dye lot recently, so I had a rummage in my collection of Rainbow Gallery’s Splendor silk, and found some that would do very well. A few shades of Petite Treasure Braid will add a bit of sparkle.

And here is the project in progress! The centre of the gems will be done in padded satin stitch, and in the picture below the outlining and about half of the padding has been done but the top layers are as yet missing. That is because I wanted to take the cross to Llandrindod to show to the vicar, and I wanted it to have some more colour than just the light gold of the four quarter circles (which would normally be the first bits to be stitched). It also made for a good travel project that way – the split stitch outlines were done at home before we left, so I could fill in the padding without the need for magnification or special lighting, as it doesn’t have to be particularly precise (well, not as precise as the top stitching, anyway).

Often when I take a travel project (and I’m sure many of you will recognise this) I come home with it looking exactly as it did when we left, but this time I actually had time for some embroidery – while acting as Driving Standards Observers on the Saturday rally there were several lulls, during which I could put in a few quick padding stitches. And how is this for a stitching spot ?

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

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