Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Category: Hand Embroidery

  • Wings

    Wings

    In 2024 saw big birthdays for three members of my family, myself included. I never made myself anything, but for the other two members, I wanted to make something special for each of them. It is in the last few years that I have come back to my hand embroidery, once I got the diploma in hand embroidery at the Centre of Excellence, it opened the door for me to successfully secure my teaching position at Islington Council within the ACL department. I have been in the position as the embroidery tutor for over 18 months and I am flying high and having the best time!

    My sister got a hand embroidery piece with green fly, straight and feather stitches and then ribbon and organza overlay, flowers secured on with buttons on top of the green foliage for her big birthday, but what about my nephew? I knew I did not want to do another hand embroidery piece as they are time consuming and yet at the same time so calming to do to take my mind off things. I had a deadline of going away to America and I knew for my nephew I wanted to do something different, so I looked on his website and Instagram and I was reminded of The Breathe Key. It is a guided series of mediation and deep breathing techniques to centre the body into a calm state, once I looked at the colours of turquoise, I knew that was it, I had my inspiration.

    I did not plan anything in the sketchbook as I worked directly onto the fabric. I did not have any turquoise fabric; all the satin had been used to make the fabric flowers that were selling at Greenwich Market before the pandemic. I did however have calico and water colour, so I did a water colour wash in turquoise and painted that over the fabric, this was coming out quite big to about A3 or just under it. What do I put on top of the watercolour? I went through my box of old pieces of calico of hand embroidery or painted fabric and I found it, a calico piece painted with bronze, blue and it is either silver or grey acrylic paint. I cut the piece up into stripes and played around with the placement of the shapes onto the fabric, pinned it down and then decided I wanted to do complete this piece with machine embroidery. I used the Bernia 1000, which I love, but the machine was not loving the rayon threads that my sister bought for me one birthday many moons ago, but the rayon is nice and has a nice shine so I preserved. I am glad I preserved as the piece evolved into a semi-circle and then I realised I needed something to fill in the bottom space. As I was in deep flow I also realised I needed something other than machine embroidery so I looked through my button box and found some beads and a button in a clear plastic bag that was intended to be made into a piece of jewellery, although the initial links had been put on they had not been linked up to make the said item. I took a few of the beaded wire over to the piece that had been machine embroidered and positioned them on; I was happy with the result and I felt satisfied; I took a picture and then proceeded to hand sew the beaded wire to the piece. I was so happy with the results! It was only until I had given the piece to my nephew that I remembered I had not taken any closeup pictures of the piece after it had been laced, thankfully my nephew sent me over 45 shots.

    Saul’s birthday was in August and as I am still in recovery from cfs/long covid it was not until March 2025 that I was well enough and during the school holiday’s that I had the extra capacity to travel to see him to hand the piece in person. I did not want to send the picture in the post.

  • All that follows for a live online course

    All that follows for a live online course

    I had the opportunity to set up a course for a client who asked me to teach her embroidery. I choose to teach crewelwork for beginners as stitching with yarn is a much faster process that stitching with embroidery thread and it is always good for the client to see a fast approach in creating something tangible in their hands. It is like the hook to getting them started and falling in love with the process of slow stitch.

    As I came to set up the table to deliver the course, I remembered I had a plastic stand for a price list and another plastic display unit that I had used when selling my products at Greenwich Market and I used both to create a stand to place the camera handle. You may be thinking why am I writing about this and the reason is that I have set up a YouTube channel to create videos of the products that I am teaching on and my first video on Sewing with Samines has quite a few thuds in the video and having a discussion with a friend about this issue he suggested that if the microphone is part of the video camera and too close to me when I am demonstrating I may need another video camera. So I wanted to see how this worked, unfortunately due to the client having to go to an emergency meeting this morning I did not get the chance to see if this would work. So, I will start the process again when I next meet up with her.

    So lets get back to the display units, I had an idea to anchor with a bag of pasta and lentils to put under the display units to anchor them as they were toppling over and it also good for me to see how I need to set up future meetings going forward.

  • Week 7 embroidery appliqué flowerpots

    Week 7 embroidery appliqué flowerpots

    I am teaching embroidery appliqué flowerpots and I have created a 10/11 week course so the embroidery learners have something to get their teeth into it, I decided to teach 10 stitches, but I think it may have been too many and I have already made a mental note to teach six or less stitches for next term. In this terms work I have broken each stage down and have given the first week to sketching their design within the given brief. I think keeping the learners on track within a chosen topic helps them develop a critical eye of creating and keeping within a brief especially if a client asks them later down the line to make them something, as too many choices in the beginning can be overwhelming and that’s when learners can decided learning embroidery as with any other skill feels too hard.

    Over the first term we have covered creating their own designs, three or four weeks covering different stitches and they take their samples home with them to practice and another week learning how to pin fabric onto the main fabric, which is calico and sewing the appliqué down, appliqué is a technique used within embroidery and crazy patchwork. The lesson on Wednesday was to start them off on their main project as in week 11 they will be lacing their pieces up. Not all the learners have been coming each week which is a frustration as I have to chase them to find out where they were, (that’s is if they have communicated), this part of teaching is not my favourite, as it is much needed effort on my part and while I am in recovery of long Covid it’s not the energy I want to expend. For the learners who do communicate on why they were late or could not attend gives me an openness of heart towards them and it shows me they value the embroidery classes.

    Yesterday I delivered my first live online class for ACL, it went well, three learners attended and one had technical difficulties and so they dropped out. I didn’t take an adequate break and I suffered for it afterwards. I closed my eyes and felt my body sink into deep sleep, it took quite a while to regain energy to force myself out of home to take some fresh air. I couldn’t stay out too long as I knew I needed more rest and then came home to sink back onto the sofa. My energies were so low I didn’t have enough to stand and play with the cat. I am much better at taking breaks when teaching in person and now I need to transfer this to when teaching online. As you can see from the photo above of the sample shown and demonstrating from that the picture was taken today. My table is still in a bit of a mess which for me is not super helpful as I do like to create in order and not when everything is all over the place.

    What I have relearnt going forwards for the live online classes is to write down an equipment list I need for the class so everything is at hand, as when I was tidying away the table to teach I tidied the pins away not thinking I needed them.

  • 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.

  • Flower making workshop

    I had the opportunity to attend Lora Avedian’s workshop with Blackheath Embroiderers in June, she showed us her techniques of how she makes her flowers. It was a great exposure to a different technique that does require a smocking machine and if you didn’t have a machine, (they can cost about £200) then you can hand smock and would take a lot longer. I remember trying a smocking machine when studying for my City & Guilds Embroidery, I didn’t take to it.