A while ago, I’d done a beginners tambour beading class, where I’d become hooked on new ways to add all things shiny to my work. As a day was not nearly sufficient time to fully appreciate all the joys and techniques of tambour, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a follow-on workshop to learn some more.
Another day at the Royal School of Needlework for me, to do battle with the beast that is my Jacobean crewelwork.
At the end of the last class, I had rather a lot of homework that mostly involved meters of raised stem band. While I had managed to get some of it done, there was still rather a lot to go and, as tends to happen with these things, life somewhat got in the way.
When I started this blog, I honestly anticipated it would just be read by a handful of beleaguered relatives and friends and web crawlers. Much as I really wanted to be able to contribute something to inspire and help other people, just in the same way so many other people have helped me, I expected the blog to sit in some cold, dark corner of the Internet, being populated in obscurity.
It came as a great surprise one day when I received an email from a reader, asking a little more about my experience starting out studying with the Royal School of Needlework. That reader was the lovely Catherine over at Hillview Embroidery who is now zooming away with her Jacobean crewelwork, featuring the world’s most adorable oversized squirrel.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make any purchases on the sites linked here, I receive a small commission that helps support the blog. You can find more on my Affiliates Policy here.
It’s New Year’s Eve and traditionally the time for decrying all the disasters and misery of the past year and making promising about slinking into the next year with perfectly coiffured hair, two dress sizes smaller, speaking six new languages whilst simultaneously completing an MBA and running an ultramarathon.
I’m not entirely sure whether to write 2016 off as a year of disastrous underachievement. There are still five billion works in progress that haven’t really progressed as much as they should, there are still projects and designs that haven’t made it off the pages of sketchbooks and the stash monster looks like it may be making territorial gains.
Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links, so I receive a small contribution if you make a purchase through my links. You can find out more about my affiliates policy here.
Durham isn’t often a city I end up passing through, which is a bit of a shame as it’s home to one of the nicest embroidery studios I’ve ever seen, belonging to Tracy A Franklin.
Tracy is a Royal School of Needlework-trained embroider whose work is mind-bogglingly amazing. You can see some of her pieces on her Instagram page here. Her studio is tucked away in a lovely little area by the river called Fowler’s Yard, which is home to range of creative studios and stores, with a conveniently located wool shop for your knitting and fibre needs.
I was very fortunate as Tracy was kind enough to find me space on one of her classes so I could learn all about doing creative metalwork.
What do criminals and crafters have in common? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, quite a lot! Their definition of the noun ‘stash’ is as follows:
stash, n.1 slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
1 a. Something, or a collection of things, stashed away; a hoard, stock; a cache.
The meaning of the verb ‘to stash’ isn’t much better either:
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you sign up to the course from this blog, I get a small commission. However, any recommendations and opinions are my own. For more information, please click here.
August was supposed to be the month of working on some of my big projects, like my two large embroideries, but it seems to be the case that life is very much what happens when you’re busy trying to make plans.
It’s an exciting bit of news to hear that there’s a new local craft shop on the scene, and even better when it’s not just a shop but home to a café with a mouth-watering menu and enough workshops to keep any craft addict happy for at least a good few months.
Make at 140 is the latest addition to Plymouth’s craft scene, situated just between the city centre and historic harbourside. It opened its doors in November 2015 as a ‘creative space to craft, make and create’, run by Lizzy, who has a wealth of experience in button and jewellery design.
Although most of us love our local craft shops, the unfortunate reality is it is often easier to buy online. Finding brick and mortar suppliers for weaving cottons seems to be particularly challenging which is a nuisance when you’re not too familiar with the naming conventions for thread weights and have no way of seeing them or comparing them.
To try and help with this, I’ve put together an assortment of threads, from the Güterman sewing machine thread to flat silks, along with the wraps per centimetre to give you some idea of how all the different threads compare.
There’s a quotation I can never quite remember, allegedly from a Chinese philosopher, about how if you really want something to be a success you need to put the same amount of effort in at the end as at the beginning. How many of us eagerly dive into projects with high standards and expectations but by the time the last stitches are going in have lost all semblance of enthusiasm?
For embroidery, the final steps aren’t the last few bits of satin stitch, but the process of mounting the piece. Even if you’re breathing a sigh of relief about finally being free of doing two thousand French knots and ready to throw the piece in the back of the cupboard, it’s a process that is worth taking the time to do.
When I finished the ‘Roses Heart’ piece, as it was going to be a gift, I really wanted to make sure the mounting looked professional and well-finished. However, I wasn’t relishing the thought of trying to mount and frame it myself. Poor craft time-management and life chaos meant I didn’t have much energy to devote to running around looking for frames and mounting board either.
Thankfully, help was at hand in the form of the fabulous Deborah Wilding who had agreed to take me through the whole process, from cutting the mount board to getting it into the frame. Deborah graduated from the Royal School of Needlework’s Future Tutors Programme in 2015 and teaches a large number of RSN classes, as well as privately.
astitchornine 