Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Category: Blackheath Embroidery

  • Bayeux Tapestry – Diptych

    Bayeux Tapestry – Diptych

    In September 2025 when I needed to start thinking about the new project, I kept seeing the Bayeux Tapestry was in the news and that it was coming to the UK for a period of around 18 months and I thought, that is it! What you say? That was the new project that I was inspired to create, my version at least and obviously we couldn’t replicate the who 90 meters, but I created a smaller version of two wall hangings A5 each to create an A4 wall hanging in the form of a diptych.

    I remembered I had learned the Bayeux stitch back in the day at Blackheath Embroiderer’s Guild, when it was a Guild branch, we are now an independent group that meet in person and online to connect many new stitchers across the UK.

    I really enjoyed creating the project and expanding my learners at the same time. The turtle you see is created by one of my beginner embroiderer’s, she pushed the boat out to create the piece and I am so proud of her and what she had accomplished.

    The turtle is about, I love this piece and she loved it too, plus I enjoyed looking at her sketchbook that she created around learning the Bayeux stitch and the development of her design.

    When I looked at the Bayeux Tapestry online at the Bayeux Museum it was so intricate, as this was the current project at the time they were discussing where to go to look at it and it did have a temporary home in Reading. One of my learners who went, she created the boat and the horses, she travelled to Reading with her grandchildren. I do remember having a discussion with the learning manager at ACL where I work to see if I could put a bid in for money’s for my learners to attending the exhibition in Reading, but there were complications in securing the funding and so it became a no. Now that the Bayeux Tapestry has gone to London there is no way I will be able to see it as the tickets sold out on the first round to members. The British Museum have had to extend the dates and put extended evening times to lessen the ques and give the opportunity for people to see the Tapestry.

  • Blackheath Ladies Fascinator

    Screenshot

    I am learning a new photo editing programme called Gimp and I have successfully saved the above image to jpg format and blurred out the names of the Blackheath Ladies who attended the workshop in April 2021 from the screen shot.

  • CPD Teacher Training

    CPD Teacher Training

    It has been a very long while since I have written a blog and I am feeling quite nervous about it. May 2023 saw me have Covid for a week and I tested positive on my birthday, so where I was to see my sister instead I was on my own in bed feeling quite unwell, I was sleeping loads, had a high temperature with a fever running up and down my arms and the sensation of what I now I understand is fatigue. I had no idea I would develop long Covid and I had also no idea that I really needed to have given myself three months of sleeping between 10-12 hours each night to have gotten over the virus. Six weeks after the Covid infection and trying to push pass the fatigue I had written a blog and in slow motion I saw myself hover over the delete button and deleted my website. I pushed passed through the fatigue again and phone Ionas up and they recovered it, but the passwords they gave me didn’t work the next day, after two straight days being on the phone to talk to somebody about the issue I was too stressed to push through the emotions and so I let time slip by until I could cope with sorting out the website.

    Then James came onto the scene to help me and he has been truly a gift as he knows what he is doing and got me back in.

    So now we come to teacher training, I was on Teams attending the CPD training at ACL at Islington and I took the picture so I could later find this principle on Youtube, this session was about mirroring and how we get the learner to mirror the technique back to you or you mirror what the learner is saying. I now have secured a position as one of the sewing tutors at ACL, I teach embroidery. I love teaching embroidery and I have been told by my learners as well as my managers that I am a very good teacher, which is so encouraging to hear! And it is showing through the ideas I come up with as I teach my own designs and break it down into stages, I create power points with images and I video my demonstrations of teaching how to sew each embroidery stitch, they also have test, there are power points for embroidery equipment, I have learnt how to navigate Moodle so I can upload the power points for each week. Some weeks are blank which seems to be in the second half of the term as most of the techniques are covered, there is a final technique for this course for Embroidery Appliqués Flowerpots, but that will be released in week 10 or 11 as they will learn how to mount their embroidery onto mount card and then they can frame the piece.

  • Wendy Dolan Workshop with Blackheath Embroidery

    Wendy Dolan Workshop with Blackheath Embroidery

    I did the all-day workshop with Blackheath Embroiderers; it was a thank you from our group and in celebration of our second-year anniversary since we have become an independent stitch group. The Embroiderer’s Guild closed all its branches as it did not have the finances to support the branches, we were unsure if we would survive, but thankfully everyone involved took to the challenge of meeting online during the pandemic and we have not looked back since.

    You can see from the photos of stages of layering of fabric onto the linen that will eventually become a picture of a painting I did while I was in Silicily in September 20201, the stitching is taking on a life of it’s own and the original picture that I am working from is now only a guide to the colours and not actual shapes, I am loving how the piece is developing every time I stitch it.

    My first initial thoughts were to leave the green satin on the painted background, but when Wendy Dolan had a look at my piece, she suggested to put strips of organza over the satin as then it would soften the piece and she was right in her assessment.

    I am currently working on this piece in building layers of stitching up to create a meadow, but my piece was not of a meadow, but of a green sub and flowers over the wall that was in front of my balcony I was sharing at the time.

  • Designing the Blackheath Ladies Fascinator

    Screenshot

    This is when Blackheath Embroiderer’s Guild became an independent group away from the Embroiderer’s Guild who closed all the branches. We were forced to become an independent stitch group a long with so many other branches, a lot of branches folded and some survived; it was Rebecca’s foresight and action to transition us from an in-person group before the pandemic to becoming an online group during the pandemic. Thankfully we are now known as a hybrid group with the in-person meeting starting at 1.30pm and then online starting at 2pm. I was asked by Rebecca to design a bespoke fascinator for Blackheath and it was called Blackheath Ladies.

    I organised and sent out packs to the ladies and purchased the supplies for each lady to have enough for the fascinator. Doing this was part of my training for my own online live workshops and in the process, it taught me to be extra organised for the supplies. What was brilliant was I had some beads given to me a few months before and the supply was so great that it was too much for one person to use up in a life time and I was happy to donate a few of the colours to the ladies so they could sew beads onto their fascinator if they chose. I also learnt to teach this fascinator workshop again it would be ideal to market it to intimidate learners as the skill level would be too advanced for a beginner, especially in handling the satin and to thread the fine beads onto a beading needle.