Hand 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…

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  • 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.

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  • Fashion and Textile Museum  

    On Wednesday 29th June I had the opportunity to go to the Fashion and Textile museum for a meeting and one of the perks was to be able to visit the RSN exhibition. I visited this exhibition at the beginning of June when we celebrated the Queens Jubilee, this time I had the opportunity to attend the talk and hearing a little bit more of each piece and the development of the RSN, it’s the 150 years anniversary of the school. One of my objectives for the day was to buy either the crewel work or silk shading book authored by the Royal School of Needlework and I settled upon…

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  • Mindful Stitching

    A couple of Mondays ago I went to Kew Gardens for my birthday, it was the first time on my own as I normally meet up with various peeps during the day, although I did have birthday celebrations in the pub later on. I was a bit emotional during the morning and so I never registered that it was going to be a heavily rainy day, to the point I had to draw and later stitch in the orangey, it was very noisy with lots of families taking shelter. As I was so engrossed in copying from a colouring book in developing designs I never saw the sea of faces…

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  • Preloved Jubilee Needlecase Design

    How will you use yours? Both these photos are of the front of the needlecase, I will show you how to sew the needlecase and bag it out, but before we get to that place you need to decide if you want all your seeding stitches in your circles to be red, white or blue, or maybe you want to do a combination of red and white for the circles. This is what I love about teaching, making my samples and giving the options to adapting the pattern to how you dear reader want it to be. As you know I have been doing physio to get strength back into…

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  • Cable Stitch

    In March 2022 at the Blackheath Embroidery group we were all given a stitch to work on and explore the stitch with different threads or thickness of threads within the embroidery skeins. My first sample of cable stitch got me into a tizz as within two different embroidery books that I have on my shelf at home, cable stitch samples were completely different. Mary Thomas shows cable stitch where by you start off with the thread around the needle as you were about to do a French knot and then do a chain stitch, but in the embroidery book of 100 stitches cable stitch by Anchor is called cable chain…

  • Preloved Jubilee Needlecase

    Why I created Preloved Jubliee Needlecase. As we know it’s the Queens Platinum Jubliee this year 2022 and aren’t we happy that she has been on the throne for the past 70 years, I wonder what it’s like for her to have seen so much change in the span of a lifetime. I knew a few months ago that I wanted to make a handmade embroidery needlecase, but I had been waiting for my wrist to improve so I could do a major piece of stitching without it hurting, I have been doing physio each day, thankfully I have improved enough in my range of movement to drop down to…

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  • Cable Stitch

    I have been given cable stitch as a fun activity to learn and sample for Blackheath Embroiderer’s group.  The strange thing is that cable stitch in Mary Thomas book of embroidery stitches is also known as cable chain stitch, other publications show cable stitch as cable chain stitch and cable stitch in other publications show it as a side to side stitch. Looking through crochet and knitting images of cable stitch,(yes they are different) show a similar stitch to embroidery, (they all have curves within the cable stitches), so I did find it a little odd when coming across this discrepancy and why I think it is odd.  Mary Thomas book…

  • Anyone for Aqua?

    I swooped my swim for aqua aerobics on Wednesday 9th Feb, as I have been cat sitting for a friend in Peckham and as I was on holiday it felt right to do something different, so I went along to Peckham Pulse. Lorraine the instructor was brilliant and worked us hard and I was thankful that I have been swimming twice a week for physio reasons for my ankles, knees and wrist.  On Tuesday 8th I had tried a salsa video session and it flared up fatigue in both ankles and knees, with the aqua I experienced sharp pains in my knees, (I have been experiencing this since the accident)…

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  • Valentines Heart Pin After The Session

    This is my workshop space, top picture is before the workshop and the picture below is during the workshop, I got to go to my happy place, which was sewing embroidery stitches into the centre of the Valentine heart pin to create a unique and creative piece. Anna who attended the workshop said she was quite happy having a private session as she had all the attention and she was happy that she could finish her heart pin within the two hour session.

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