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.
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.
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!
Thank you all so much for your incredibly kind comments on my blog the other day. I honestly was really touched by you all taking the time to be encouraging and sympathetic. I don’t know if it was the sheer loveliness that got me really wanting to stitch again or maybe that post was blowing off the last bit of the cobwebs for me to emerge out of the cave I’ve been hiding in. The best part is, here is all the embroidery for my lovely canvaswork piece finished with another great story of human kindness to go with it.
As well as the wonderful local architecture and the delightful Museum Appenzell, there is another historical textile treat outside of the main village, the Appenzeller Volkskunde-Museum, which also affords you the opportunity to enjoy the local, rolling hills and scenery. This is the folk museum dedicated to the local working culture and heritage.
On the north east side of Switzerland is the canton of Appenzell (well, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden if you want to be exact). Confusingly enough, the capital of Appenzell Innerrhoden is a village also called Appenzell, which is the largest village in the canton with a population of a whopping 6000 people.
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