More cards, but a little bit of a different theme today – Somerset patchwork! Ribbons are wonderful, versatile things. You can wrap presents and decorate with them, embroider them to make particularly lovely looking flowers and cut them up and fold them over to may all sorts of fanciful shapes.
Ufffff… well, I guess I should start this post with an apology to both you and my neglected blog. Sadly I have not skipped off into some fibery sunset to develop new innovative chain plying methods, instead the reasons for my absence are rather more lame. Being the eternal optimist about time commitments, I had hoped that the last few weeks would just be standard levels of busy rather than ‘everything is on fire’ status.
This is a great shot of how my coffee table currently looks. Beads, beads, beads, a marked-up temari, embroidery cases and the V&A’s latest magazine that I thoroughly blame for causing the bead situation in the first place. They have a Fabergé exhibition coming up soon and so had the most wonderful jewel-encrusted piece on the front cover which left my inner magpie hankering for shiny things…
My craft frustration threshold has been feeling rather low of late. I seem to go through phases where every project I touch transforms into a mess of tangled threads and wonkily cut fabrics and please don’t ask how trying to stitch some curved seams went the other weekend. I will have to wait a bit to blog about one particularly glorious failure other the post will need a ‘strong language and description of scenes of great violence’ disclaimer over the top of it otherwise…
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Sadly all good things must come to an end, including the London Embroidery School’s Lace Series course but at least it ended with another nice technique, Limerick lace. Like a lot of laces, it was something I recognised, but never knew the name for and it was a really interesting experience to get the chance to work on a new ground fabric, net.
Do you remember that time when we used to go to classes? Where sewing groups would meet, exchange biscuits, gossip and the best way to stop unruly seams from rolling? Those halcyon days? Well, lucky me, because I recently got to head back to the basement of the London Embroidery School for a spot of Broderie Anglaise, where I started their Lace Series Course what seems like a couple of lifetimes ago.
It seems like a lifetime ago I was sat in the London Embroidery School’s basement studio stabbing myself repeatedly with pins while doing some lace appliqué. Their in-person classes won’t be resuming until end of August but in the meantime the team have been working very hard to bring you some online offerings, including some Instagram stitch-alongs and a mixture of free and paid classes on their Youtube channel.
Recently, they advertised an online monogramming course that caught my eye which, at the price of £20 for three hour long videos I thought was worth taking a chance on.
The Internet is a very dangerous place. You head online looking for a couple of embroidery hoops and next thing you know you’ve somehow found yourself with a new tape measure, some needles and… well… a whole new embroidery kit.
Last time, I’d managed to get all the preparation work done for starting the bulk of the embroidery on my Poinsettia Paperweight. This wasn’t too arduous as it was just preparing the fabric, transferring the design and getting the split stitch outlines of the petals ready. Now it was on the fun part – lots of silk shading!
After my recent ‘finish’ of the canvaswork pincushion (still needs constructing!) I wanted to get straight back on with some stitching, and with one project nearly out the door, no better time than to start on something new!
astitchornine 