Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Category: Hand Embroidery

  • 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.

  • 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 the silk shading book. When I got home I quickly messaged Emma who I have met through the Art of Embroidery group on Facebook, (she has kindly agreed to mentor me in embroidery). Emma then messaged back informing me that one of her pieces is in the exhibition, (as she studied at the Royal School of Needlework) I think I may have to take myself back to the exhibition to look for it.

    At the end of the tour we had the opportunity to go into a room that had more embroidery in as well as a continual video about stitch and one of the pieces on display was of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. The RSN had embroidered her in blackwork which is a technique in embroidery, that was first thought to be bought to England around the time of King Henry Vlll by Catherine of Aragon and I can understand why the RSN would stitch the Duchess of Cornwall in blackwork, as when Prince Charles comes to the throne, the Duchess will be then known as Queen Consort.

  • Mindful Stitching

    Design and Stitch go hand in hand

    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 asking me for chairs, I did have to say no to one woman who wanted the other table as I was busily working and needed the space, thankfully she moved on.

    I was in the process of stitching this piece, but have had to lay it down while other tasks have emerged. I had started stitching this piece after finishing some design development on my birthday in the Orangery, (do you remember the rainy day?).

    As the day drew late into the early afternoon, I realised I had to be at my next place where I was gonna meet up with friends. I arranged for people to start coming at 6pm, but I got there at 4.15pm and realised I had loads of time, so I sat with a fruit cider and carried on stitching while waiting. 

    Although the day didn’t start as well as it could have, the evening did finish well and with a positive ending, as I was surrounded by friends who came to celebrate with me.

  • 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 my wrist, as I improve in strength and mobility I am seeing the results of my hard work and that I can stitch for longer without it hurting. It still hurts if I have overdone it with other tasks and jobs that need doing, each day I see a little more progress and this gives me the encouragement to keep on going.

    So I encourage you to keep going with your stitching, because if at first you don’t succeed that is when you need to say okay I can do this, I will give myself a break and then get back to it either that day or the next and with every yes of pushing through you will get to your end goal as well.

    This needle-case has been recycled from a pair of mens jeans, this time cutting up the legs as they gave me the right size to work with. Stitches used are seeding and spilt stitch.

  • Cable Stitch

    Sampling

    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 stitch. 

    I decided to go with Mary Thomas book as the correct source as it was published within the 1930s and the 100 embroidery stitches by anchor was published sometime in the 50s or 60s, so you can see my dilemma. It didn’t help matters either with the internet searches as the RSN (royal school of needlework) has called cable stitch, cable chain stitch. 

    My sample shows the cable stitch on the right from Mary Thomas and the left side of the photo has a stitch that would have been called side stem stitch.