Hand Embroidered Doilies from Greece

I recently had the pleasure of looking at these two dainty little embroidered doilies and trying to discover how they were made.  Each one is just 15cm (6in) in diameter. They were lent to me by my friend Beryl Saunders and they originally came from Greece.

 

At first glance the two seem to be identical. The charming centres have a tiny flourish of lace with satin stitched roses and leaf sprays on either side. Each doily then has two rounds of the same hand made lace. Interestingly though, on the second doily the sequence of the two rounds of lace has been reversed.

Looking at the first doily, the two more solid areas on either side of the centre are hand embroidered on a very fine cotton fabric.

The dainty pattern of daisies is worked in satin stitch while the leaf sprays are shadow work, done in reverse herringbone stitch or double back stitch. The shadow work gives the embroidery a delicate subtlety.

First doily - hand embroidered side panel

In between the cotton panels, the embroidery on the net fabric reminds me of the Cornelli Lace icing technique used in cake decorating where the curvy lines bend back on each other and fill the area with a single continuous line. On the doily the meandering line appears to be a continuous line of - overcasting stitch - not icing! The four little doughnut shapes, like the couronnes found in needle lace, are satin stitch eyelets.

Each little section of the doily is joined by a tiny narrow seam of fine overcasting, just visible in the photo above. I really can't imagine trying to work such tiny fragments of embroidery and then joining them up with such fine seams, can you?

Now for a closer look at the second doily.

On the two cotton side panels you will notice that the sinuous floral design  is quite different to the daisies and leaves we saw before. 

Second doily - side panel detail

These two panels appear to be machine embroidered - much to my surprise! If you look at the tendril near the top of the photo, you may just be able to pick up the zigzag machine stitches used to embroider it.

The floral design of the net embroidery is also quite different. Because the cotton panels next to them are machine embroidered, I can't quite decide whether the net areas are well-executed machine embroidered lace or whether they are indeed hand embroidered needle run lace as they appear to be.

The two little doilies are indeed similar, yet quite different when you look more closely. I'd love to know more about them. Do let me know if you have come across anything similar. I'm intrigued at the similarities and the marked differences between them. I would also like to know more about how they came to be made. I'm sure there is an interesting story behind them.

Using Metallic threads

I wrote this post some weeks ago but hadn't got around to sorting out some photos that I could use. I was having quite a time then, working with the metallic thread for the bicycle in this sweet Jenny McWhinney design.

Needle painting and working with metallic thread are both things I have previously given little thought to, but I have now completed Monet and his metallic thread bicycle. Completed - except for the bee buzzing around just in front of Monet. I need to practise my bullion knots before I embroider the bee's body.

In the past I have avoided using metallic threads because they don't co-operate very well when I try and use them. After just a few stitches I seem to get worn threads where the metallic strands of the thread separate, and stretch, and bunch up. Then comes the unpicking and starting a new thread. Not my favourite task!

To try and fix the problem of wearing thread, I tried a bigger needle, and then a bigger one again, until eventually I was using what seemed like a crowbar. It was an old needle sitting in my needle book that I haven't used for years and I have no idea what sort of needle it is. It felt very awkward but in the end the big needle did the trick, or maybe by then I'd got to the end of stitching the bicycle.

The other thing I tried was using shorter pieces of thread, 20-25cm long. This meant more starting and ending of threads, but that seemed about the best length to use without having to end off early and cut off damaged thread. All in all I still need a lot of practice with metallic thread.

How I admire beautiful gold work - stitched with all that (uncooperative?) metallic thread.

On the Way to the Fish Hoek Embroidery Exhibition

I love the drive down the coast to Fish Hoek, so this week has been doubly enjoyable for me. The scenery is beautiful on the way and the embroideries on show at the exhibition are a beautiful breath of inspiration for anyone who enjoys working with a needle and thread.

The brightly coloured beach huts at St James somehow promise sunshine and fun on the beach, even on a dreary rainy morning like we had this morning.

Another scene I always enjoy seeing is the sweep of the white beach at Fish Hoek and the view over the clear blue-green water towards Simon's Town.

Here are a few more photos of the embroidery exhibition. The tables where members sat stitching drew lots of interest and they were able to answer questions about the work they were busy doing. Some of the projects were exquisite gold work, fine creative pulled work, a large almost complete hardanger table cloth and also my 'almost finished cloth book' done in needlepainting. I mounted the completed pages on a big board which ended up being a nice way to see it all.

At the exhibition visitors were invited to take part in the viewer's choice award by casting their vote for the piece they liked best. It created much discussion and many went around scratching their heads trying to choose just one favourite piece. The winning embroidery was a charming and beautiful needlepainting of birds splashing about in their bath.

Below is some of the embroidery started at the Ighali 2009 Stitch-away workshops and it includes needlepainting, French white work, samplers with a big variety of unusual stitches, Ukrainian white work, hardanger and gold work.

The exhibition ends tomorrow and I think we will all breathe a sigh of relief that it is another two years before the next one.

Embroidery Exhibition, Cape Town

If you are in and around Cape Town this week, do take a drive along the coast of the Peninsula to Fish Hoek and the embroidery exhibition that is open until Saturday at the Fish Hoek Civic Centre. I took a few quick photos this morning just before the exhibition opening to give you an idea of some of what you can see.

What to do with yellow fabric? - The Yellow Fabric Challenge

A prize-winning smocked ring pillow with garter, a wedding sampler and two wedding veils amidst other fine embroideries.

The sales table for sewing supplies and small gifts

Work in Progress - Embroiderers will sit stitching their projects at the WIP tables

A selection of work donated for sale by the family of the late Magda Sprenger, co-founder of the Cape Embroiderers' Guild.

The band sampler challenge - 12 samplers in progress and one completed - all using the same pattern yet each one so very different and fascinating to look at.

Cape Embroiderers' Guild Exhibition

25-29 October

9am-5pm daily, Saturday 9am-3pm

Fish Hoek Civic Centre

Recreation Road, Fish Hoek

Cape Town

These are just some of the breathtaking embroideries on show at the exhibition. I'll post more photos tomorrow.

Cape Embroiderers' Guild Exhibition

The Cape Embroiderers' Guild members hold an exhibition of their embroidery every two years. There is always plenty of beautiful work on show and this year there are some special added attractions. Not only will the work done by the members over the last two years be on show, but a number of challenge and competition pieces as well.

First there was the yellow linen competition. Last year CEG members were challenged to use a piece of yellow linen kindly donated to the Guild by SA Threads and Cottons as the base fabric for the annual embroidery competition. This resulted in some spectacular pieces ranging from cross stitch to hardanger and pulled work.

Then there was an embroidered flower competition sponsored by Trish Burr. The flowers had to be no more than 10cm x 10cm and could be embroidered using any technique. There were some brilliant entries and I was quite speechless when I was announced as the winner! I had entered a little Dresden Lace piece embroidered all in white and I thought a coloured entry would be more likely to be what was required. I'll post a photo of my entry soon.

The other embroideries that you can see if you are able to visit the exhibition are the Band Samplers. This is an ongoing challenge organised by Leslie-Anne Bickle. Each month an embroiderer designs a band that is then distributed to the rest of the challenge participants. There will be 12 bands in all. We have been watching the samplers grow over the year and there will be a number of beautiful pieces at the exhibition. Its so interesting to see them all together. They vary a lot as they have been embroidered in different colours on different fabrics and everyone is making little changes to the bands as they go along. These samplers will be well worth seeing.

Finally, there will be a retrospective exhibition of Founder Members' work and embroideries done by members in the early years of the Guild. With all that on show there will definitely be a feast for the eyes at the exhibition.

Cape Embroiderers' Exhibition

25 - 29 October 2011

9am to 5pm daily, except Saturday when the exhibition closes at 3pm

Fish Hoek Civic Centre

Recreation Road

Fish Hoek

Cape Town

You know it's cold when...

Its still very definitely winter in Cape Town despite the days getting noticeably longer. Toast and Marmite are friends but it's not that often that they curl up together. You know it's cold when...

Work is progressing slowly on the Jenny McWhinney cloth book that I am embroidering. The book appeared in Inspirations magazine in 2003 and is a needle painting project.

I think it really is useful to have some artistic or painterly skill when doing needle painting.  The nice thing about this project is that the colour photos give you a good idea of where the colours should go and how they should blend. That's a great help if, like me, you don't have a natural feel for colour.

This is the latest page that I have 'completed'. You may notice that I haven't done the bee yet. Each page has a bullion knot bee somewhere in the scene. I find it takes a while to practise and get my bullions nice and smooth so I'm going to leave all the bees to the end. That way they will look better and should be more efficient and quicker to complete.

The one nice thing about the cold weather that we are still having is that its nice to sit next to the heater, keep warm, and stitch...

Kruger Park visit

If you've checked into to my blog recently, you may have wondered why I dropped out of cyberspace for a while. With my two daughters visiting from overseas and a couple of short trips to Kruger Park, time just rushed by and the blog I intended to post some weeks ago is still waiting for a photo of the embroidery in progress. Needless to say not much stitching has been happening.

In the meantime I have some photos of the family visits and our trips to Kruger. In April, Bronwyn and Simon brought Jake from London to meet his South African family.  At the same time Cindy managed a short visit from Bangkok with little Liam. Its not often that both our daughters are together in Cape Town and even rarer for four generations of the family to be together.

Cindy & Liam (left), great granny Mary Crooks (84) and Bronwyn & Jake

Jake listens carefully to great grandpa Noel Crooks (87) singing to him.

 

Rod, Simon and Bronwyn with Jake

You can see that is was quite hot the day we visited this hide at Ngwenya Lodge, overlooking the Crocodile River. Kruger Park is just on the other side of the water. As silence is requested, we could only visit the hide with Jake when we knew that no one else was there looking for game coming down to the water to drink.

On a day trip into Kruger and with the grass still quite long in April we were fortunate to see a cheetah. He was lying on an anthill surveying the surroundings from his vantage point. The only indication that he was aware of the 20 or so cars jammed up on the road behind him, all trying to find a gap through the bush to see him, was an occasional backward angling of his ears to listen to to us.

 A white rhino and her calf stepped out into the road in front of us. I was concerned that she might object to our car being so near to her calf, but they calmly walked down the road for a few hundred metres, stopping only once to eye us following behind, before disappearing into the bush along a well worn track. It is exciting to see these solidly built animals up close in the wild and we all let out a collective breath when they put some distance between us.

Driving along at 50kmph along the roads in the Kruger Park, you know there is something exciting happening when you see a traffic jam up ahead. A pride of lions - we counted 14 in all - had apparently crossed the road and we were just in time to see them melting into the bush. Of the 3 or 4 loitering next to the road, this male was closest, but far off enough that we felt safe to wind down the window and take some photos. Just then Jake let out a loud baby-like wail. The lion whipped his head around and fixed his eyes and ears exactly on the open window. I have to say its scary to have a lion focusing on you directly with such intense interest. It didn't take long to wind the window up again! Incidentally not 2km down the road we'd come across a gang of about 20 workmen scything the grass along the verge. The armed ranger was sitting on one end of the strung-out group looking quite bored. If only he knew what was up ahead.

Someone in our car, probably eagle-eyed Bronwyn, spotted a couple of young elephant. We stopped and within moments a herd of more than 20 had appeared with some really tiny ones among them and they crossed the road around us. Was my heart racing! At one stage I even had to close my eyes and my entreaties to "Go Simon, go!" were to no avail. We couldn't move. At the tail end, a young male stopped right next to us and before our eyes curled his trunk around a small tree and pulled it out of the ground. Just like that. I expected him to eat the nice green leaves, but no. Very methodically, he broke off one root at a time and holding it with his trunk, carefully brought it up to his mouth to strip off the bark. Only then did he put the root in his mouth and eat it. It was like looking out the car window and watching a live version of National Geographic.

Rod, Lyn, Cindy and Paul with great grandpa Crooks, and great step-ouma Annie holding Liam

In July, Paul was able to visit from Bangkok with Cindy and they were able to take Liam to meet his great grandparents in Nigel. Why is it that those photos that you take with a self-timer are always so hilarious?! We then all spent time together at Ngwenya and visiting Kruger Park. It was fun all being together and we saw lots of game in the two days we visited the park, but this blog is now rather longer than I planned, so 'till next time... take care!

Mrs Archibald Christie's samplers

In my last post I revisited some of the embroidered treasures housed at the V&A and I  promised to show you some of the work I saw done by Mrs Archibald Christie. (How strange it seems today to be known by one's husband's name instead of as Grace Christie.)

Grace was a well known embroiderer of remarkable skill in the early 20th century. I had admired her book Samplers and Stitches on the Open Library at archive.com, so to come across the actual worked samples was a real find for me.

My favourite has to be the little mice eating the ears of wheat in the wheat field. They even had little bits of wheat sticking out of their mouths! The stitching is all so enchantingly regular and the apt use of stitches and changes in thread tone make the charming little scene come alive and I could just imagine the little mice secretly tucking into their dinner somewhere among the wheat storks.The mice are embroidered with Trellis stitch and if you click on the link above you can see Grace's stitch directions in her book for this unusual stitch.

And how hedgehog-like is that hedgehog! I wanted to run my fingers over the surface and feel the prickly spines - not that I would actually do it, even if it wasn't behind glass, but it sure looked invitingly tactile.

Besides the surface stitchery the Reticello and Needleweaving sampler also caught my eye. I like the idea of making up small samplers of the different embroidery techniques.  Hemming them and finishing off each unit makes them attractive and presentable, and also useful as a record of the various types of embroidery such as this form of cutwork. Perhaps these days with the number of good books that abound and access to lots of patterns and technical stitch information on the Internet, samplers like these are becoming increasingly rare.

Sadly the Textile Room at the V&A is being moved to new premises and its not open to us anymore. I only hope that once the move is over, those cabinets of embroidery will again be available for us to feast our eyes on - if we are lucky enough to get to London,  and if we are able to get to see them. Its nice to dream though isn't it?

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.

The Duchess of Cambridge's Wedding Dress on Show

At the time of the royal wedding of William and Kate, it was announced that Kate's dress would go on show at a future date. The Royal School of Needlework have recently put up these dates on their website.

The RSN worked on the delicate lace on the wedding dress, the veil and the shoes. They will all go on show and we will be able to see the splendid embroidery and handwork that went into making them when they go on display at Buckingham Palace from 23 July to 3 October 2011. They will form part of the Special Exhibition of the Royal Collection during the annual Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace.
 
I am fascinated by how the lace, in the style of Carrickmacross, was made and applied to the dress and veil. Carrickmacross lace is both intricate and time consuming to embroider. I can't imagine the dediction and the hours of work that must have gone into the wedding dress and veil to complete them in time for the wedding. If you are lucky enough to see the exhibition I'd love to hear all about it.