Blackwork

June   2005

Blackwork,  also sometimes known as Spanish work,  is known to have been stitched as far back as Tudor times.
It’s believed that Catherine of Aragon  brought garments with the delicate stitching on them with her when she came to England to marry King Henry VIII  and there is also evidence in paintings of Anne Boyne  and Jane Seymour having Blackwork on their clothes.

The technique is a counted thread embroidery made up of simple  lines of stitching that form complex and intricate

designs using a combination of backstitch, stem stitch and double running or Holbein stitch. 

As the name suggests, the embroidery was traditionally stitched with Black silk but nowadays it can be seen stitched in many different colours giving it a very modern feel.  Also the designs have changed from the traditional geometric or small floral patterns that were popular to much larger designs of flowers, fruit and even ladies in period costumes as well as chessboards and maps.




My first attempt  is a lot more modest I have to say.

I went for a small kit a hot air balloon  I found in my local needlecraft shop which is stitched in the traditional Black but with highlights of Gold threat to add a bit of interest .

I’m not quite sure what happened to the finished piece. 
I either made it into a card to give to someone or I sent it to my friend Nicki to make into one of the cushions for Kids Company but I really can’t remember.

Winter Queen

April 2005            

It would seem that I really have a thing going on stitching all these large designs with lots of bead work on them and while they can be tedious and fiddly the end results are stunning.

I’m so hooked that I started stitching Winter Queen from Mirabillia almost immediately I had finished Celtic Spring, even thought I had no intentions of hanging it on my wall.  In fact the finished piece was never framed and is still sitting in the drawer of the unit I keep all my threads in.

As you can see, she a very regal looking lady dressed in pale Periwinkle Blue encrusted with beads and that’s edged with White Ermine which is achived by stitching with specialist fluffy 'Whisper' thread. 
Her hair is upswept and adorned with tiny violets and a beautiful beaded coronet.

You have to agree, she looks every inch an ice maiden against the White background of 32 count Belfast fabric she’s stitched on.


The finished design measures approx. 29 x 46 cmc.

Threads

DMC  Mouliné
White     208
341        356
414       415
550       552
667       746
754       758

762       792
793       839
895        904

948       3045
3046     3371
3750

Specialist Threads
101 Platinum (#8)
Whisper  w88:  White

Mill Hill Beads
00146     Light Blue Ceylon
02026     Crystal Blue (Silver lined)
40479     White Opaque Lustre
42010      Ice White (Silver lined)

Celtic Spring - Lavender and Lace

July 2004              

The second design in the Celtic Sisters collection from Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, for Lavender and Lace, Celtic Spring is every bit as opulent as the first of the sisters.

Apparently Celtic Christmas was originally intended to be a one off design but Marilyn was bombarded with requests for this kit after mentioned the possibility of doing one on a stitching news group.  There’s actually five in the series now, one for each of the seasons and the Christmas one, so it gives you some idea of how popular these beautiful beaded designs actually are.

The word ‘Spring’ dominates the top of the piece, with matching beaded sections down either side, as with the Christmas design.

The Celtic lady wears a long flowing gown of regal Lavender and Twilight Blue, highlighted with delicate threads of gold and beads around the bottom and on the train.   
She carries a bouquet of Yellow roses and a coronet of tiny yellow flowers adorns her beautifully shaded blond hair.

The chart suggests stitching on 32 count Cream evenweave fabric but I decided to stitch mine on the same muted Green that I stitched Celtic Christmas on as I thought it complemented the shade of Lavender.

This was another project that took months to stitch and despite having a long time to think about it I really agonised a bit when it came to the framing. 
I had seen some beautiful Silver mouldings that I really loved but I wasn’t sure it was going to work with the gold in her dress
In the end I decided to go for it and it looked beautiful.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look beautiful at the moment though. 
You’ll may have noticed that there’s a big crack across the glass…………….silly me let it slip when I had it down to clean and it  fell against the corner of my dressing table,  so now it’s waiting to be re-glazed.

Catch The Wind

April  2003

Sometimes you see a cross stitch charts and you know straight away that you want to stitch it but for some reason you feel that the colours the project is stitched in just aren’t right for where you plan to hang the finished piece.

That’s exactly what happened when I first saw a picture of ‘Catch The Wind’  in a magazine. 
It’s a Marilyn Leavitt Imblum counted cross stitch design from her Butternut Road line.

I really loved the picture but the colours were just too dark for the walls of my craft room where I wanted to hang it, so I set to and had a go at changing the thread colours to fit my décor.

In the end I decided to stitch on Pale Blue evenweave fabric and stitched the little girls dresses in pastel shades of Yellow, Green and Blue. 

When it was finished I had it framed in a Blue frame with a Yellow mount which complemented the stitching and matched my Lemon walls.

Cross Stitch Magazine - World of Cross Stitching

November 2002           

I was so excited back in 1997 when a brand new magazine was launched that was dedicated to cross stitch, the aptly named World of Cross Stitching!

I brought the very first issue and have been buying it ever since because as well as being packed with beautiful projects to stitch as you would expect, it also has a wealth of helpful hits and tips and the most inspiring stories written by readers and designers alike.

Now jump to the start of 2002 when there was an article in the magazine about using computers to scan photographs and make them into cross stitch charts.  This is done all the time now but back then it was something completely new in stitching.

Because it was going to be ‘the next big thing’, another craft magazine was giving away a free CD Rom of Jean Greenoff’s program Cross Stitch Creator  so I decided to give it a go and stitch a picture of my cat Emily that I had a the time.

Emily was the first cat I’d ever had because when I was a child I got a severe allergic reaction if I even walked into a room where a cat had been previously.

Despite  this  I had always loved cats and as soon as I got my own place I decided it was time to see if I could possibly live with a puddy cat of my own.
I went to a nearby rescue centre to see what I could find and came home with Emily, a three year old Tabby who I had for seven very short years before she became ill.

She was cutest and most affectionate cat I had ever known and when I would sit stitching in the evenings she would sit on my lap, not making it easy if I’m honest but I couldn’t throw her off, bless!
Anyway as I said, I decided that she would be my first subject using this new technique  and I got my brother to take a digital photo of her for me because  didn’t have a digital camera at the time.

I scanned the photo and imported it into the Jane Greenoff program and hey presto, I had a fantastic chart with amazing detail and even a shopping list of threads by my chosen maker which translated to 27 shades of Brown’s and Beige’s and more than fifty thousand stitches……..daunting or what?

As always, Emily sat on my lap as I stitched…..it was almost as if she wanted to make sure I was doing her justice, Lol, and by the end of September I was ready to get it framed.

Now up until this point I had never really been one to show of my work and say…hey, look what I’ve made, but I decided that I had a little story of my own to tell and thought I would write to The World of Cross Stitch and share the story of Emily and how she would sit and watch me stitch. 

I'd have been over the moon if they had added the picture to their stitcher's gallery but when I didn’t hear anything for them I gave up hope that that would happen...........then out of the blue, I received a letter from them.

Apparently I had been chosen as their ‘Stitcher of the Month and my story and picture would be in the March 2003 issue of the magazine.

My fifteen minutes of fame!

As ‘Stitcher of the Month’  I won a fab prize too………this beautiful Siberian Tiger kit, which I’m ashamed to say is not even only half done and joins the part finished sampler in my footstall.