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!