Lovely Whitework

I find whitework fascinating. It's a broad term that includes both counted thread work and surface embroidery techniques and covers many different types of embroidery worked mainly with white thread on white fabric.

If you enjoy seeing the whitework that other embroiderers are doing, below are some links that I have happily visited - more than once! 

1. Yolande has stitched a beautiful English Whitework band sampler designed by Darlene O'Steen. There are lots of photos and there is an English translation included on her blog Fils et Aiguilles une Passion. Click here to visit Yolande's blog and see the sampler.

2. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Luzine Happel came up with the idea of creating a joint Schwalm sampler and she proposed the idea on her blog. The result was that 74 embroiderers from 14 nations contributed 91 Schwalm embroideries, all stitched during Covid. These embroideries have been expertly combined into an extraordinary hanging. There are photos of the final piece and meticulous details of what went into making it on Luzine's blog here. There is an option for translating between German and English on the home page of the blog.

3. The Gary Parr interview on Fiber Talk Stitch Hour with Tricia Wilson Nguyen on 16th century whitework has some very interesting snippets. It's a 90 minute video and there are some technical problems, but there's much to glean from the details Tricia unearthed while studying old whitework samplers. The link will take you to the YouTube video here.

4. Mary Corbett alerted me to Janna Jackuszewska's cutwork patterns in her blog post here on Needle 'N Thread. Joanna is from from Poland and conveniently makes her cutwork patterns and copies of her magazines Haft Richelieu available for us in her Etsy shop KIZI MIZI Studio.  Visit Joanna's shop here.

Have fun browsing all this beautiful whitework. 

And happy stitching too!

Pulled Thread Tangram

Pulled Thread Tangram by Tricia Elvin-Jensen

As a child did you ever play with the shapes of a Tangram puzzle and see what designs you could make with those seven pieces? (Click here for instructions on how to draw your own Tangram shapes.)

Imagine using those shapes to design an embroidery. The Embroiderers' Guild of New South Wales in Australia issued a challenge to their members to do just that - create an embroidery based on the Tangram. 

Oceans away and through the Cape Embroiderers' Guild in Cape Town, my stitching friend Tricia Elvin-Jensen heard about the 'Yellow Envelop Challenge'.  Although not a member of the NSW Guild and therefore not officially able to take part, she nevertheless set to work using her favourite techniques of drawn thread and pulled thread embroidery. And, she challenged herself in another way too and created this beautiful embroidery.  

Tricia-Elvin Jensen

Taking the Challenge  requirements into consideration and with careful measurement, Tricia was able to adapt a UFO she'd started previously. The edge picot row, the outer drawn row and the flower meander row had already been worked.  The grid of the top border and the drawn thread strip at the bottom had also already been prepared, and she decided to fill those drawn areas and the side borders with geometric designs to echo the shapes of the Tangram.

So far so good, but things didn't quite all go as planned. While embroidering the new central Tangram design, Tricia said she mistook her central marking line as a division in the medium triangle and ended up with two smaller triangles - each filled with a different pulled thread stitch pattern. At that stage she said, 'there was NO ways I was going to undo either of those areas'. I think we can all identify and sympathize with that. 

Tricia Elvin-Jensen

Besides taking part, completing the challenge and finishing a UFO, the project proved to be a great incentive for getting Tricia back into embroidery after having had back and eye problems. It also helped her over the very strict lockdown rules of Covid19 in her retirement village.

With kind permission of the New South Wales Embroidery Guild and to inspire you even further, below are the three winning entries of the Yellow Envelop Challenge stitched by their Guild members. Congratulations! 

1. Sue Slattery

2. Frances James

3. Denise Pennell

'Till next time, I hope you find much to inspire your stitching. Perhaps you too can take a UFO, change your original intentions and complete a beautiful piece of embroidery.

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Reticella - Should it be White?

Reticella embroidery has always intrigued me. It's a form of whitework embroidery that combines cutwork and needlemade lace and it's generally identifiable by the square shape of the motifs.

South African embroiderers may remember the extraordinary embroidery of embroider and designer Hetsie van Wyk. See photos of Hetsie's embroidery here and here. Following the detailed instructions in her book Embroider Now, I once tried doing a little piece of Reticella - in pink.

I had just been on a visit to family in Zimbabwe and I had been able to find some Zimbabwe cotton. At the time it was a favourite among local embroiderers because it was an inexpensive evenweave type fabric that could be used for counted thread embroidery, particularly cross stitch and pulled thread work.

It was ideal for experimenting and trying out new stitches and techniques and I was tempted to buy not only the traditional white or ecru, but also small lengths of coloured fabric.

I find there is something especially alluring about white embroidery on white fabric. The question was to see how a piece of traditional whitework would look when embroidered on coloured fabric with matching threads.

Although I need more practice with the technique, I was fairly happy with this little piece of Reticella on the pink Zimbabwe cotton. But, I still think it's hard to beat whitework embroidery embroidered with white thread on white fabric. I'd love to know what you think.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Embroidered Samplers and Whitework at the V&A

This morning, going through my photos, I found some of my visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London a few months ago. The photos were all rather dark, but I have finally worked out how to improve them - thanks to PhotoScape, free software! Unfortunately the embroidery was difficult to photograph behind heavy glass, but you do get an idea of the fineness of the stitchery.

The cabinets in the Textile Study Room at the V&A had some real embroidered treasures. Again I was very glad to have Rod with me to help lift the heavily-glassed work out of the storage cabinets for a closer look. I was searching for examples of Dresden Lace. I found a few pieces and also examples of the very similar-looking Danish Tonder work too. 

I didn't think of taking along a magnifier so I missed some of the finer details I'd wanted to see - like how close the couching stitches are on the Tonder work outlines and perhaps identify some of the pulled work stitches. The base muslin is so fine, probably around 100 or more threads to the inch(!). A magnifier is definitely necessary to see the incredibly fine detail.

Danish Tonder embroidery, 18th Century. The outlines are couched and the background is entirely filled with pulled work.

The next piece intrigued me. Its an exquisitely worked 18th century English whitework border. The border is only about 7 or 8cm wide but just look at the many and perfect repeats of that 'pulled work' block pattern in the centre scallop, each one possibly over just 4 threads.

The label indicates that this piece is 'drawn thread work', but I did wonder about that. From what I could see it looked rather like drawn fabric work, or the term I prefer 'pulled work'. It seems unlikely to me that it has threads cut and withdrawn which is the defining characteristic of drawn thread, but then I'm just speculating.

Also, because I was on a quest to find Dresden Lace, I was amused by the irony that it had been bequeathed by an Edmond Dresden and I couldn't help wondering if the surname was in some way linked, but no, it seems that Edmond Dresden was a great British philanthropist and businessman and not an embroiderer.


Although on this visit to the V&A I intended to focus on whitework embroideries, I couldn't resist having a look at Jane Bostocke's sampler. It is like a magnet to me at the V&A.

The sampler commemorates the birth of Jane Bostocke's young cousin Alice Lee, born 'in the afternoon of 23 November 1596'.

The photo of Jane Bostocke's sampler on the V&A website is much clearer. Just click on it there to enlarge it.

Jane's sampler is the oldest surviving, dated British sampler. I marvel at the sense that we can communicate across that space in time and learn a little bit about her through her embroidery. For example, if you look carefully, you'll notice that the line under the family crests near the top has her name and is dated 1598, but why do you think that only the letters 'Bostoc' are in a silver metallic thread? Did she run out of thread or just change her mind about using a silver thread? Or perhaps she was just experimenting?

It's inspiring to think of her embroidering the sampler in 1598 and yet it has survived all this time and we are able to still see her work 413 years later. For me it also raises questions like what sort of conditions did she work in way back then? And I wonder too what sort of needle she used?


Also in the Textile Study Room, I was also delighted to find the most charming little samplers embroidered by Mrs Archibald Christie. I'll show you some of these little treasures next time. 'Till then if you are in wet wintry and windy Cape Town, keep warm and dry.