A box of lilies

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

The box frame from Hobbycraft

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

Dismantling the box frame Gold or silver as a background?

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

Very sheer fabric

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

Double-sided tape on the back of the mat The mat positioned on top of the embroidery Fabric, mat and spacer inserted into the box frame

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

The glue-stained fabric Plan B: double-sided tape The re-covered board The frame completely assembled

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

An unforeseen moiré effect

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

Felt does not cause a moiré effect Felt, satin and card options

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

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

The finished, framed piece

Shadowy lilies

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

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

The shadow work class design

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

A riverside garden to relax in Hampton Court Palace is a spectacular setting for a stitching class Deer galore in Bushy Park

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

My two fellow students and the trainee tutor The contents of the goody bag

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

The class kit Contents of the kit (minus fabric) Hooped up and a double layer of organza basted on

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

The middle leaves stitched

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

Trimming the extra layers of organza Adding a stem

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

Leaves in reverse closed herringbone stitch Anita demonstrates how to stitch the sequin flowers Hooped up at home to finish the project

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

Some of the extra organza layer trimmed Trying to get the scissors close to the stitching Stems in stem stitch

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

Fastening on Varying the herringbone density

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

The central sequin and bead

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

Thread the sequin onto the end of the thread Knot the thread around the sequin Postion the sequin and come up through the centre Work four stitches, making sure the tying-on line is covered

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

The French knot pierces the straight stitch Fastening off The finished flower

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

The finished project

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