Wedding gift

My best friend recently got married. We both knew I wanted to make something for her as a keep sake/ heirloom that she could treasure.

I wanted it to be traditional in the 'sampler' vein with traditional and slightly kitch motifs, like ribbons and swooping starlings.

She gave me a piece of the wedding dress silk to work with, which was an honour and a challenge. And here's the result...




There are a variety of stitches, satin, cross, back stitch and laid and couch stitch.
I was particularly pleased with the laid and couch stich, I used metallic thread and worked up really nicely in that stitch.


I forgot to explain that she wanted it attached to her purse that she would carry all day. It was tricky attaching it to the bag, some slip stitches seemed to fix it, although it won't stay for daily use. Luckily it's going in a frame from now on.

Thanks,

Roz

Frank

I'm a massive Amy Winehouse fan, or at least I was, nowadays she seems to be more about the tabloids than the music. She's one of those people that I really want to love but she keeps doing things that annoy me (recently she got a boob job which I think is a shame), I hear there's going to be a new album out next spring so fingers crossed I can start loving her again, because really her music is brilliant and she's such a talent. Anyway here is a very early embroidery of mine in ode to her and her fabulous style!...

The hair is satin stitch. I was so new to embroidery that I'm not sure what stitch you'd call the yellow area, I remember it took me ages to finish because it's so haphazard, almost like a brickwork pattern I suppose?! Anyway I loved doing her little tattoos and it remains one of my favourites, can't wait to do another one!

some of my work

I was going to try and make my posts in some sort of chronological order so that I could demostrate my progress but I've been a bit short of time for scanning so I'll just wade straight in with some of my work...

This is the piece I'm probably most proud of, it is of my boyfriend, Tim, I made it from a photo I took of him. There are a variety of stitches. The outline is back stitch, the hair is sort of messy satin stitch. The background blue of his shirt is(are?) tiny cross stitches and then for the pinstripe I stripped the thread down to 1 strand so that it would be more subtle. It took quite a long time to made but I’m really happy with it. I like the unfinished look to it. My main aim was to get a sense of movement to it which I hope I achieved with the lines on the shirt. Now I’m going to attempt to post a picture – I’m new to blogging so fingers crossed!

The whole thing is probably not more than 15cm tall to give you an idea of the size. I copied the outlines on the photograph and then used a light box to transfer the simplified version to cotton. I hope you like it!

So, I’ve never blogged before and I don’t believe for a moment that my life is interesting enough to warrant a blog but the world is a big place full of many people with many interests, so it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that someone might be interested in this I suppose.

I love embroidery. I love doing it myself and looking at (and hopefully) buying other peoples. I did a bit of embroidery as a child, a stitch-a-long sampler with my mum, giant plastic needles and wool. The I did a little bit of cross stitching as a teen but was teased a bit, so I ditched it in a moment of teenage insecure weakness.

It wasn’t until just over 2 years ago that I rediscovered it properly. I work in a major art museum in London and they had a wonderful exhibition on Louise Bourgeois, who works in many mediums. In the shop my best friend Rosie saw this pillowcase (above) and really wanted it but the price was a bit steep. So I decided to recreate something similar for her for Christmas.

To cut a long story short I embroidered a tiny blue bird in the corner of a pillowcase, I liked it so much I decided to put something else in the other corner, and then something else in the other corner this carried on and spiralled into lots of embroidery. Hearts with anchors and skull and a rose, all kitsch tattoo inspired stuff.

And thus began something of an obsession really. I try to embroider most evenings and I’m just completely fascinated with the medium. My interests lie on the slightly more contemporary side but I also hugely appreciate the old styles. What I love most about it really does have the most personal touch. I love buying old pieces from charity shops and wondering where it came from and who made it. I went to an exhibition called ‘Byzantium’ earlier this year at the Royal Academy and there was an embroidery which was 900 years old, can you imagine?! The stitching was just incredible and intricate. I’d love to think some of my embroideries might be around in 900 years time (!).

I'm sure no one will read this, but if you stumble across it, I promise to get some pictures up at the weekend