Ruth O'Leary Textile Art

Beading

2012-01-27T19:59:00.000Z

I'm making rather slow progress on my new project, mostly because I'm not putting anything like as much work into it as I did the Banner. It's rather nice having a few evenings off! I am making some progress though, as you'll see.

In my attempt to do something as unlike the Banner as possible, I'm going to add some beading.

This is completely free, with no attempt at a pattern or overall design, other than more or less pointing in the same direction:

As you can see, it's just random, with bugle beads and seed beads in the same iridescent blue, and silver seed beads too, over the top of the free machine stitching.

The iridescent beads are very pretty, with quite a bit of variation in the colours:

There's quite an area to cover, with all the sections of the shell shape, so I could be on with this for some time!

A big day for the Banner

2012-01-20T19:28:00.000Z

The biggest day of all will be its dedication at Durham Cathedral on 20 March, but yesterday was the biggest so far. For the first time, all the parts of the Banner - the Banner itself, the silver bells, and the carrying pole with its mounts and fittings plus a harness to be worn by the carrier - were brought together.

This took place at Fashion and Design building at Northumbria University, which was a nice light spot for it. Several members of the Northumbrian Association committee, the other craftspeople involved and a few journalists were there.

The Banner was taken out of its calico dust sheet, the first time most people there had seen it:

The silver bells, made by Les Howe, were attached to the bottom:

It was then hung on the pole, made by Trevor Duncan - first the cross-piece:

Then the vertical pole:

You can see how the two parts fit together here:

The finial in the shape of St Cuthbert's cross was added to the top:

It was carefully picked up:

And carried outside, where the project's sponsor, John Cuthbert, already wearing the harness made by Ian Corrigan, got ready to carry it:

From the back, you can see how the pole fits through the loops on the back of the Banner, stopping it from flapping about:

It was a bit breezy, so I was glad I'd added them!

And here it is, as it was meant to be seen:

I have to say I was thrilled with how well it looked (and a bit relieved, if I'm honest), and everyone else seemed to be very happy with it too.

I was interviewed by several journalists, and pieces on the day appeared today in the Newcastle Journal, the Northern Echo, and the Sunderland Echo. It was all quite an experience!

And the winner is...

2012-01-16T20:22:00.000Z

...going to be announced in a moment. Before then, I'd just like to thank everyone who took the trouble to comment or email me with an answer, and everyone who has commented or emailed or read the blog ever. Your encouragement and support means a lot.

So, to recap, the competition was to guess how many hours St Cuthbert's Banner took to complete, and the prize was an extra Banner flower, mounted on some of the velvet I used for it:

The correct answer was...

802.5 hours

A lot of the answers were much higher than that, which made me think I ought to have put more work into it!

There was one answer that was very close indeed, with an estimate of 800 hours, so I am happy to announce the winner is songbirdgifts.

Congratulations SongBird! Email me with your postal address, and I'll send the flower to you as soon as possible.

Thanks again everyone!

Machining the shapes

2012-01-14T18:14:00.000Z

Now I'd proved to my own staisfaction that this 'shell' idea should work, I cut out the same shapes in felt (though missing out the biggest one this time):

For each one, I sandwiched it between a layer of cotton lawn, which will form the back and won't be seen, and a light blue silk dupion, that I already had in the cupboard:

I'm trying to do this project from stock, as it were, and not buy anything specially for it. It'd probably be good to try and get some of my stash used up!

I stitched around the edge in small running stiches, just to hold it in place:

Then free machine stitched over the running stitches in a very close together zig-zag in a matching blue:

That's not terribly well done, I'm afraid. I'm pretty out of practice for free machine embroidery, but never mind - the whole point of this project is to do something as utterly unlike the Banner as I can think of, so a more casual approach is good. Or that's what I'm trying to tell myself, anyway!

Here's all of them done, still in their hoops, apart from one, as I only have two 12" hoops and would need three for this, so one had to be swapped over:

This was fun! I used a free machine vermicelli stitch to fill in the shapes, trying not to make any points of overlaps:

I didn't entirely succeed, though I did enjoy myself!

All vermicellied:

I then stitched quite a lot more heavily over the top with a metallic silver thread:

That hasn't come out as clearly as I'd have liked in the photo, but it looks quite sparkly in real life.

Next, beads.

What's next?

2012-01-08T17:08:00.000Z

(Just a quick reminder - there are still a few days left to run on the competition, so if you haven't already done so, get your answer in now to win a St Cuthbet's Banner flower!)

As I got close to finishing the Banner, several people asked me the same question: what would I be working on next? And the answer? I had no idea! I was so focussed on the Banner that I didn't think at all about what I would do when it was finished, which is unusual for me as I normally have all sorts of ideas in mind, more that I would even have time to do.

But not this time, so once the Banner was handed over I was at a bit of a loose end. It was timed rather nicely with the holidays, so I had a lovely break doing no sewing whatsoever, but now it's time to have a go at something new.

But what? It'd be nice to do something quite unlike what I've been working for ages, so if the Banner was flat, in reds, yellows and greens, all hand-sewn, very detailed, and worked to a precise design, the complete opposite would be 3D, blue and silver, machine embroidery, and free-form. So that's what I'm going to do!

After a bit of thought, I've decided do something inspired by a Nautilus shell, though in sections, to make the construction easier.

To get the proportions, I drew a basic spiral, and measured each section:

The small sections were too small, so I doubled all the lengths.

To make sure this actually worked before going too far, I decided to make a mock-up in paper first. I drew a curved shape that will form each section of the final piece, scanned it, and used my computer to resize it to produce a series of shapes with a width of the doubled measurements from the spiral:

I cut these out:

Then one at a time, bent these round, stuck them together with masking tape, and attached each one to the one before:

Here it is with all the paper sections stuck together:

I think that proves the concept, though the final section is too big - when I start on the stitched version, I'll leave that off.

Competition: win a St Cuthbert's Banner flower

2012-01-02T17:23:00.000Z

Happy New Year, everyone! To get the year off to a good start and to celebrate finishing St Cuthbert's Banner, I'm running a competition, where you can win a Banner commemorative piece.

Here's the prize:

Anyone who's followed things this far will recognise this as a wood aven flower and leaf, exactly the same as the ones on the Banner itself, and on a piece of the same velvet.

As I worked on the Banner I recorded all the time I spent on it, and added it all up at the end. So, to enter the competition, all you need to do is estimate the number of hours it took to complete. The person who gets the closest wins, or in the event of a tie, one of the tying entries will be drawn at random. To give you all plenty of time, the competition closes on Sunday 15 January, and I'll announce the winner the following day.

You can either leave your answer in the comments below, or if you'd prefer, email me at info@rutholearytextileart.co.uk. Please do not leave any contact details at this stage - I'll be in touch with the winner after the competition closes to ask for them then.

Good luck!

St Cuthbert's Banner - presenting it to the Northumbrian Association

2011-12-23T11:59:00.000Z

With the Banner completed, it was time to say goodbye to it, and hand it over to the client, the Northumbrian Association.

Marion Bridgewood, the Association's Vice-Chairman and the person who's arranged and coordinated the entire Banner project (I'm not the only person involved, by any means), and John Danby, the Chairman, came to collect it:

I'm pleased and relieved to say that they were very happy with it!

The Association commissioned the Banner for presentation to Durham Cathedral; it'll now be taken to the Cathedral for safe keeping, until it's dedicated on St Cuthbert's Day, 20 March 2012. All being well, after that it'll be on display in the Cathedral itself, but I think discussions are still going on about the arrangements.

In January, all the project team, plus members of the Association, the Banner's sponsor, and representatives of the Cathedral will get together to put the Banner, the carrying pole, and the silver bells and fittings together for the first time - I can't wait to see it!

I'm going to have a completely sewing-free break for a few days, but I'll return in the New Year with a special competition to celebrate finishing my work on the Banner, so look out for that.

Before then, have a fantastic festive season, whatever you celebrate, and however you celebrate it. See you next year!

The front, fringing - and finished!

2011-12-22T11:29:00.000Z

This is a very exciting day - after months of work, the Banner is finally finished. Yes, it is, at last, completed. It's been a long haul, but I got there in the end.

There's still a bit of work to bring you up to date on first, though. The front of the Banner needed to be attached, firstly by stitching the seams to the canvas interlining, same as for the back:

Here, the front is now stitched to the interlining, but as you can't see any of the stitches on the front (I was very careful about that!), you'll just have to take my word for it:

The edges were folded under and pinned, ready to be ladder stitched in place:

I was so excited at being almost finished that I forgot to take a photo of the front stitched into place, but went straight onto adding the fringe along the bottom. This is a red and yellow bullion fringe, again woven specially to match the Banner's colours.

As this was the last thing to do, once this was on, the Banner was, incredibly, finished:

Wow.

Let's all savour the moment, and take another look, in better light and held up rather that lying flat. First, the back:

And the front:

It looks better held up as its own weight pulls it straight; once it's suspended from the pole along the top rather than just held at the corners, that slight bagginess on the top section will disappear.

I've been rushing to get it finished as members of the Northumbrian Association - the client - are collecting it before Christmas, and taking it to the Cathedral for safe keeping.

You know, I have to admit, I'm really pretty pleased with how it's turned out! What do you think?

To celebrate the Banner's completion, I'm going to make a Banner-related giveaway for a blog competition. More details soon!

The points along the bottom

2011-12-21T17:02:00.000Z

In the desciption of the lost Medieval banner in the Rites of Durham, the banner is described as "five quarters [of a yard] deep", with a red and gold fringe and silver bells along the bottom. Fiona, the designer, used the size, along with the rest of the description, to produce a basically square banner, with deep points 9" (a quarter of a yard; 23cm) long, from which bells will hang. It's these I'm doing next.

There are three full points, and two "half" points, one at each end. This means eight pieces of fabric lined and edged:

The silversmith making the bells provided three jump rings - I'll let him explain why:

I don't want to hang the bells from the fringe, but they need to hang at the level of the fringe, so I threaded them onto loops of ribbon, knotted to stop them falling off and getting lost before they were sewn in:

The half points were folded over, tacked, and the line to be machine stitched was marked on:

And the full points too:

If you look closely, you can see the end of the ribbon poking out of the bottom.

These were machine stitched, with an extra line of stitching across the bottom, to make sure that the ribbon with the jump ring was secure:

And all turned right side out:

The points aren't as pointy as I might have liked, but once the fringe is on it shouldn't matter, and you can see the ribbon loops and jump rings for the bells quite clearly.

When attaching them to the Banner itself, to get the spacing right, I tacked the half points in place at the edges first, then one of the full points in the centre, aided by the usual tailor's chalk marks:

With the other two points added, they were all back stitched in place with upholstery thread, and herringbone stitched along the top:

Then, as with the tabs along the top, I ladder stitched the fronts of the points to the main panel:

That's the back of the Banner finished. In fact, it's very very nearly finished all the way together...

The tabs along the top

2011-12-20T19:46:00.000Z

The Banner will be carried on a T-shaped pole arrangement, with the carrying pole up the back, and a cross-piece from which the Banner itself will be suspended. In order to do this, it needs loops or sleeves of some sort to hang from. It's these I'm making next.

I'm using six of these tabs, as I'm going to call them (apologies if there's a correct term I'm not using!), three on each side of the carrying pole, leaving enough room for the pole fittings. So, I needed six pieces of linen-lined velvet, cut to size and edged as usual:

Machine stitched, the seams herringbone-stitched for neatness, and turned right side out:

Using tailor's chalk, I marked on the back of the panel where they should go (the markings made sense to me, at least!):

The tabs were folded over to form a loop and tacked in place:

Then, using upholstery thread, they were back-stitched in place, plus for extra security, I stitched the sides down too, plus the usual herringbone stitching along the top:

This is not the neatest bit of stitching I've ever done, but going through so many thick pieces of fabric was not easy! Oh well, it won't be seen. Here they all are, stitched down:

I ladder-stitched the fronts of the tabs to the front edge of the panel, giving the finished view of the back:

Even thought the colours never come out very well in the photos, the eagle-eyed may notice that the tabs look slightly darker than the rest of the red. This is because the pile of the velvet is going in the opposite direction. I considered making the tabs from two pieces of velvet, so that the pile could go in the correct direction both front and back, but that would mean the weight of the Banner, which will be considerable, would be on a seam, and I really don't think that would be strong enough. So, I decided it would have to be one piece, with the pile going the right way on the front. The back, I'm afraid, will just have to be slightly wrong, and I'll have to hope no-one else notices!

Interlining

2011-12-19T17:21:00.000Z

Although the velvet is already lined, I'm going to use an interlining - an additional piece of fabric between the two sides of the Banner - to help support it. The velvet is quite thick and heavy, so having additional support will help spread the weight evenly and give it extra body.

As it is quite thick and heavy already, I need some quite substantial fabric for this, and have used 12oz cotton canvas. A pre-shrunk piece of the canvas (and it shrank a lot, should you ever want to use it yourself), was cut to size and edged, ready for use:

This was lined up over the back panel of the Banner, and then stitched into place. To support it properly, it needs more than just stitching round the edges, so using a strong thread and some pretty big stitches, I sewed the canvas to the seams around the central cross and between the border panels:

It's not at all easy to see in the photo, but the stiches are there, honest!

With the interlining well anchored, I folded the edges of the Banner panel over it, mitred the corners, and sewed them down with herringbone stitch all the way round:

So here's the back of the Banner, interlined and finished:

There are a few bits and pieces to do before the front can go on, but I have some time off work, so you should see quite rapid progress from here to the finish. Not long now!

The front of the Banner - finishing

2011-12-16T21:25:00.000Z

I still needed to do the same finishing to the front panel as I did to the back, so as before, I herringbone stitched the seams flat on the back to neaten things up:

And this time, I added a signature, stitching one of my woven labels onto the seam below the cross:

You never know, maybe a textile conservator of the future will find it one day!

The corner seams cut across the goldwork stems a little, so to make it all more integrated, I added a small amount of extra stitching over the seams:

So, here it is with what really was the last of the embroidery done:

All that was left to do was to add the braid around the central panel:

And it’s done!

Next – the interlining.

The front of the Banner

2011-12-12T19:51:00.000Z

Well, it's done - the front of the Banner has been successfully completed. What a relief!

Ably assisted by my mum again, I did pretty much the same as before, though this time I had to take care to centre the border panels as well as the central cross.

I had a tracing paper outline with centre lines marked on, and used this to line it up, making sure the cowslips were in the middle:

Once the four pieces forming the border were cut out and edged (and I forgot to take a photo of that bit - sorry), I marked the centre points of each one and the cross panel with pins:

so I could match them up to sew:

Everything was machine stitched exactly as before, so without further ado, here it is:

If I say so myself, it looks pretty spectacular!

The back of the Banner - finishing

2011-12-07T19:07:00.000Z

I'd got the back of the Banner put together, but that wasn't it finished - there was still quite a bit of work to do. Firstly, and the single biggest job remaining, I needed to sort out the back.

Even though it won't be seen, the back needs to be neat to make sure the Banner lies as flat as possible. As the fabrics it's made from are quite thick, this wouldn't be possible without doing something to neaten up the seams.

Here's the back as it was immediately after finishing putting the pieces together:

Not too pretty, is it! To tidy things up, I first pinned the seams flat:

Then used herringbone stitch to stitch them to the linen lining fabric, using a matching thread:

I was very careful to make sure that none of the stitches came through to the velvet, so this is completely invisible from the front.

With all the seams stitched down, the back looks much better:

It also helps support the piece, making it a little firmer; this wasn't intentional, but it's useful none the less.

So here's the front of the back, if you see what I mean, with the seams nice and flat and the corners trimmed:

It's still not finished though - I need to add braid around the central panel. I used a curved needle, and used ladder stitch to stitch it in place:

It really lifts it, doesn't it:

The braid has been specially woven to match the red and yellow colours in the Banner, and its chequerboard design also echoes the flag of Northumbria.

I'm still not quite finished, though. The Banner will be carried using a vertical pole with a crosspiece along the top (and more on that later). I don't want the Banner flapping around or swinging forwards, which would make it very difficult to carry, so I've added loops on the back for the pole to fit through.

These are in the same velvet with linen lining as the rest of the Banner, carefully marked so that the grain of the velvet is going in the same direction as that of the Banner itself:

These pieces were edged, stitched, had their seams stitched down, and turned right side out:

Then stitched to the panel, using ladder stitch again. The pole will be 35mm in diameter; I found a tube that was 39mm, so a little wider, but I thought that if it could pass through, the pole itself should be fine:

So here's the Banner back finally finished:

Now for the front...

The back of the Banner - making it up

2011-12-03T13:59:00.000Z

The time has come to start putting all the pieces together and make the Banner up. I'm doing the back first; it's important to get it right, of course, but I feel I have a bit more leeway than with the front, so I can get a bit of practice in.

As a reminder, the design calls for a central cross (front and back), with a wide red border. Here's the cross that'll form part of the Banner back:

I made a paper pattern the actual size of the central section, without any seam allowance. I marked it into quarters, to show the centre and mid points of each edge, so I could line it up correctly, with the cross centred and the edges square on the grain of the fabric:

Using tailor's chalk, I marked around the edge, where the seams will go, and the centre of each side:

You can't tell from the photo - in fact, it was pretty hard to tell in real life! - but I tacked over the markings both to hold the shape in place and to transfer the marked out edges onto the back, too.

I then cut this out with a seam allowance, and edged it with the overlocker:

I did the same with the four red velvet panels that will form the border. As the panels are plain I didn't have to centre anything, though I did take care that the top and bottom edges were straight:

It's a bit easier to see the tacking stitches this time!

Here it is cut out and edged:

I then tacked the first panel to the central cross:

If you look closely, you can see arrows marked on the linen lining. Velvet needs to keep the grain all going in the same direction or each piece will look an entirely different colour, and I don't want it appearing to be in a variety of reds. The arrows show which way up each panel needs to go, to keep everything going in the same direction.

So, machine stitched in place:

And the two sections joined together:

I did the same with the other three side panels, joining them to the central cross:

Now the really tricky bit: the mitred corners joining the side panels to each other. I pinned them carefully:

Tacked them (though that's very hard to tell here, I'm afriad), and marked a nice clear line in red pencil to machine along:

I couldn't get the foot of the sewing machine right to the top, so I'll need to put the last (or first) few stitches next to the central panel in by hand later.

So, I machine stitched that and the other three corners, and...

Success!

It's such a relief that it all worked ok, especially with the front of the Banner still to do. I can be quite confident now that it'll all turn out as it ought, though, which is a load off my mind!

There's still quite a bit of finishing work to do on the back first, though, and I'll tell you how that goes next time.

(Also, a big thanks to my mum, partially seen above holding it up, who came round and helped with moral support and cups of tea on what was rather a nerve-wracking day. Thanks mam!)

St Cuthbert's Banner - the final bit of embroidery

2011-11-30T15:53:00.000Z

Well it's been a long time coming, but I have finally done the very last of the embroidery for the Banner. As milestones along the way go, this is probably the biggest until I finish the whole piece.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Last time, I'd done the very last ferns (hooray!), so all that needed to be done was a few flower stems:

And a few more:

The group of wood avens at the end:

And the last few tendrils, completing the whole panel:

Finally, here it is with the grid removed:

And that's it - no more embroidery. But coming next, is putting all the pieces together, to make the Banner itself. This is the bit I've been working towards for months, so make sure you keep reading!

Goldwork stems and tendrils - left (and a bit)

2011-11-27T11:02:00.000Z

Things are really coming along now, with most of the goldwork flower stems and tendrils done. Here are the three ferns on the left (sorry about the slightly blurred photo):

Some wood avens and a pearlwort:

The rest of the flowers:

And some extra tendrils:

Moving on, here's the central cowslip, with its stalks:

And the three ferns on the right:

The last of the ferns ever! That counts as a red-letter day in its own right.

There really is very little to do now and all the embroidery will be finished. After all this time, it hardly seems possible.

The rest of the goldwork edging

2011-11-20T10:32:00.000Z

I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted - I hadn't realised it was such a long time ago. Sorry about that!

But if I haven't been posting I have been stitching, and have finished edging all the flowers. Another major milestone completed!

Last time, I'd finished all the flowers to the left of the cowslip, so next it was the cowslip itself:

Then the pearlworts:

The central wood avens:

A couple of ferns:

The remaining wood avens:

And their leaves:

And finally, the last ever fern! I kept that one to the end on purpose.

So here's the panel, with all the edging done:

The only things left to do now are the stems and tendrils. I can't believe how close to the end I now am!

Goldwork edging for the flowers

2011-11-08T20:57:00.000Z

Or some of them, anyway. As I was up the right-hand end of the panel anyway, I started the edging at that end. There's no need to reorganise my seating arrangements if it's not strictly necessary!

So, working more or less in reverse order to how I stitched them on, here's the first fern with its edging done:

Then the little cluster of three wood avens flowers and their leaves:

The remaining wood avens and the pearlworts:

Then finally the next two ferns:

That's all the flowers on the right done, so almost half way through.

And all of the flowers on the right

2011-10-30T16:16:00.000Z

Sorry for not having written in ages, but while I may not have been blogging, I have been sewing, and have applied all of the flowers to the right of the panel.

I started with the pearlworts:

Then a couple of wood avens:

Two ferns (and a stray wood aven - I forgot to take a photo of the ferns before I'd stitched it on:

A couple more wood avens and their leaves:

And finally, the last ever fern:

So that's all the appliqué done - another major milestone to cross off the list. I can start the goldwork next, and start edging all the flowers.

The rest of the flowers on the left

2011-10-22T18:49:00.000+01:00

I'm pressing ahead as fast as I can here, to try and get everything finished. As such, I've got quite a lot more done, and have now added all the flowers on the left of the panel.

So, since last time, I've added a couple of ferns:

A cluster of wood avens:

Some leaves to go with them:

And one last fern on this side:

It really is starting to feel like the end is in sight now - it's getting quite exciting!

Flowers centre and left

2011-10-19T21:10:00.000+01:00

I've been busy. I've made a good start with getting the flowers applied to the background, starting with the cowslip in the centre:

I find it a big help to get the centre flower in first - it makes it much easier to judge the placement when I can work outwards from it.

So, using the cowslip as a baseline, as it were, I added the first few wood avens:

And then some pearlworts:

It's already coming on, isn't it! A couple of ferns next.

Setting up the final panel

2011-10-16T18:11:00.000+01:00

The last lap, panel-wise. The final thing to do is to get all the embroidered flowers onto the background fabric, then do the goldwork.

So, to get things underway, I marked out the design with a reference grid:

Mounted the background fabric onto my big frame, and marked out a corresponding grid on it with tacking stitches:

Ready to go!

The final, FINAL sheet of flowers

2011-10-12T18:57:00.000+01:00

Well, the big day is finally here: I have finished stitching all of the flowers for the Banner. This is momentous enough to be documented in detail, I think, so here goes.

The last sheet of flowers to do is the cowslip that'll go in the centre of the top panel:

I outlined the cups at the base of the individual flowers in buttonhole stitch in Madeira stranded cotton 1409, and added detail in split stitch, using three strands of 1410:

I then filled in the rest of the cups in split stitch, using two strands of 1409:

I then outlined the flowers themselves, using Madeira 0105:

To give a sense of the 'inside' of the flower, I filled in the central section of each one in a slightly darker shade, 0106:

I then added shading, using one strand of 0106 and one of 0105:

And filled in the rest of the flowers with 0105:

I then filled in the little gaps that are too small and fiddly to cut out in red, Madeira 0510 (you can't tell when they're on the velvet background, honest!):

Then the same process for the leaves - the outlines, in Madeira 1410:

The leaf veins, in three strands of 1412:

And then filling in the rest, using a combination of 1411 and 1410, to give a shaded effect:

And that's it! No more flowers. Wow. I still have to add them to the background fabric and do all the goldwork, of course, but all the same, this is a major milestone. Not long to go now!

Wood avens leaves

2011-10-07T18:04:00.000+01:00

The last ever wood avens leaves. I like saying that!

I forgot to take a photo before I started, but I hadn't got too far before I remembered:

With the outline done:

The central leaf veins:

The darkest filling-in colour in the centre:

Shading into the lighter colour:

And finally, the lighter colour, filling in all the rest:

Amazingly, there's just ONE MORE sheet of flowers to go! It'll be quite a momentous day when that's finished.

Brocolitia and Vindolanda

2011-10-01T20:39:00.000+01:00

Well, it's October, so of course it was the hottest day of the year here. It's been very warm for the last few days; I'd taken a few days off work to work on the Banner, but it was far too nice to stay indoor stitching all the time, so I played hooky for a day and went for a trip to see some of the Roman remains in Northumberland.

I wasn't up for hiking and so didn't do Hadrian's Wall as such, but instead went to Brocolitia and Vindolanda.

Brocolitita, or Carrawburgh, was somewhere I'd wanted to see for ages. It's quite isolated, and is a beautiful and magical place, disturbed only by migrating geese and RAF fighter jets flying overhead. It's been heavily excavated, so much of what was there has been taken away to museums, but there's still the remains of the Temple of Mithras:

That's quite late Roman; much older is a shrine to a Celtic goddess, Coventina's Well. Nothing of that now remains, but I went in search of it anyway, over a path of stone slabs over a stream:

Following the stream along, I came to a series of pools, covered in beautiful yellow flowers, and I feel sure that was the site of the spring:

The flowers didn't seem to grow anywhere else, but on my way back I saw one plant, growing by the side of the stream, next to the path:

I wish I knew what it was - can anyone identify it?

After the (mostly) peace and quiet of Brocolitia, I went to the more touristy Vindolanda. In its heyday, this was quite a large fort with a village, or vicus, outside its gates, but is now in quite a rural setting. Excavations have been going on for years, with some spectacular finds, including the internationally-important Vindolanda tablets - hand-written documents and letters from around the time of the building of Hadrian's Wall, in 122AD.

The most famous of these is an invitation from the camp commander's wife to another woman on site, inviting her to a birthday party - the oldest surviving handwriting by a woman anywhere - but there are hundreds of others, listing troop numbers, shoppings lists, complaints about the state of the roads, requests for recommendations for an inn to stay at - all the everyday things relating to the life of the fort. They give a window into the lives of ordinary people in a way few archaeological finds can.

Most of the tablets are in the British Museum now, though there are a few at the very good museum at Vindolanda itself, along with a great deal else, but they don't allow photography inside it, I'm afraid. There's still a lot to see outside too, though, such as a recreated temple, house and workshop set in a very nice garden:

There's also a recreation of how an original tower on the Wall would have looked, seen here with some of the excavated real thing in the foreground:

From the top of the tower, you get a good view of the whole site:

While at the edge of the fort, you can see the rolling Northumbrian hills in the distance:

It was a lovely day out, and I can recommend a trip to these or the other local Roman sites to anyone visiting the North of England, though try and get weather as nice as I had!

Thread palette

2011-09-27T19:48:00.000+01:00

When I'm stitching, and especially when I'm stitching something with a few colours, I tend to have several threads on the go at the same time. In order to keep them tidy until I need them again, I use a thread palette.

This is not a technical item - for the Banner, I've been using a piece of plastic that came in packaging for something or other, with holes punched in it, and the thread numbers written on in pencil. I can then loop the threads through the holes, which stops them getting lost or tangled, and stops me from getting them mixed up:

While somewhat improvised, it's always worked fine, but even so, when I saw a mention on The Unbroken Thread of properly made ones for sale on eBay, naturally I popped over for a look. Even more naturally, I bought a set:

They're made from MDF, with circles cut out in two sizes; I suppose the bigger one would be better for wools rather than finer threads.

According to the blurb, thead numbers can be written on in pencil and rubbed out again, though I must admit that when I tried that it smudged rather, though not too badly.

As luck would have it, the one with the smaller holes had exactly enough for the various threads and combinations that I'm using, so it couldn't have worked out better!

I can see I'm going to get a lot of use out of these over the years.

The very last wood avens

2011-09-19T21:04:00.000+01:00

An even shorter post than last time, I'm afraid, as I've about run out of things to say about the flowers by now. So, in amongst the latest crop of domestic catastrophes (my oven burst into flame, and subsequent investigations have turned up some expensive wiring problems), I have managed to battle on with the sewing.

And here are the very last wood avens:

Not long to go now - just two more sheets of flowers.

Second-last wood avens

2011-09-09T21:40:00.000+01:00

A very quick post: there are a lot more wood avens on this panel, and I'm doing them on two sheets. Here's the first, with the green sepals stitched:

Then with the yellow petals:

And completed, with the central area filled in with French knots:

There are (obviously) six flowers on this sheet, but just five on the next one, and then that's something else that can be ticked off the list!

Final (and fewer) ferns

2011-09-01T18:34:00.000+01:00

Things have been really hectic at work leading up to a new product launch, which happened today, but which won't be of much interest to you unless you happen to work in the construction industry. Late nights at the office have meant rather less time for sewing, but I've done bits when I can, and am very happy to say that I have now done the last ever ferns. Even better, there were not only fewer of them than for the last couple of panels, but fewer than there ought to have been.

What do I mean by that? Well, you may recall that throughout I've been hopeless at either tracing or stitching the right number of leaves, and ended up with more than I needed. I saved these up, however, and the spare leaves make up most of two whole ferns:

All I needed to finish them off are a couple of trefoil tops and an extra leaf.

A also had a spare transfer for one fern (I miscounted an entire fern at one point), so I just needed to make new transfers for three full ones and the additional bits:

Going out with a flourish, I managed to miscount the number of leaves on one of them again, but at least I spotted this in time (or at least I think so; we may find I've gone hopelessly wrong one last time when I come to stitch them to the background).

Ironed on, framed up, and ready to go:

Outlined:

And finished! Hooray!

(By the way, apologies for the ungrammatical 'St Cuthberts Banner' label; the new version of Blogger insists that the apostrophe in the label is an '&' and won't allow it. Go figure.)

The last pearlworts

2011-08-25T19:50:00.000+01:00

Things are still very busy at work so I haven't managed to nearly as much sewing as normal, but I have done a bit here and there, and so do have something to show you.

As this is the final panel, I can start ticking off the 'lasts', starting with the last sheet of pearlworts. Here's the linen piece with the transfers applied, mounted on the frame and ready to stitch:

With their centres and sepals:

The buttonhole stitch outlines for the petals:

The first colour:

The second:

And the third, with the petals completed:

Finally, with French knots in the centres, to finish them off:

I thought I'd get the ferns out of the way next.

The final panel - making the transfers

2011-08-17T21:25:00.000+01:00

At last, the Banner's final panel, the top one. This is similar to the bottom panel, so no foxgloves and fewer ferns, but more pearlworts and wood avens.

For reasons now lost in the mists of time, when making the flower transfers, I only did the ones for the first three panels, not the final one. Why I didn't go back and do them I can't remember, but the upshot is, I need to do them now.

So, a little earlier in the process than normal, I cut out the working design for the panel and taped it to my drawing board:

To make the transfers, I need to trace the design with a special transfer pencil, that will iron onto fabric. However, a transfer is placed face down on the fabric to be ironed on, and so the resulting design on the fabric is a mirror image of the design on the paper. I want it to be the same way round, of course, so I need to trace everything twice.

With an ordinary pencil, I first traced the flowers, in batches, with enough each time to make up a sheet to be embroidered:

Here's one of two complete sheets of wood avens:

I then turned this over, and on a fresh piece of tracing paper, traced it again, this time with the transfer pencil itself:

I've got a pile of tracings made, so now I just need to retrace them to make the transfers to be used:

Things are very busy at work at the moment, so I don't think I'm going to have much time for sewing for the next week or two, sadly. I'll fit in some stitching where I can, though, so hopefully I won't go completely quiet!

St Cuthbert's Banner - all work so far

2011-08-13T11:53:00.000+01:00

I promised I'd show all the work done so far, and here it is! It's just laid out, not even pinned, so try and ignore the fact that it's not quite straight or smooth:

It's really starting to come together, isn't it. I must admit I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking - what do you think?

Just the one panel to go!

Finishing the stems and tendrils

2011-08-11T18:30:00.000+01:00

Just a bit more to do to finish the third panel. There's the tangle of stems and tendrils to the right of the cowslip:

Then the stems for the last three ferns:

Then finally one last flower stem and a couple of goldwork tendrils:

And that's it! Here's the finished panel, still with the grid I’ve been using to guide the placement of elements:

And finally, with the grid removed:

I need to take a photo of all work I've done so far - all three completed panels and a central cross. It should be starting to come together now, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks.

Goldwork stalks and tendrils

2011-08-07T17:36:00.000+01:00

My internet connection has miraculously righted itself, with no intervention from me or anyone else, which I think demonstrates that it was at my ISP's end all along, as I've been telling them. I'm a bit nervous about whether it's back for good, however, so I'd better write this post quickly, just in case!

While I've been quiet I've been making good progess with the various couched gold stalks and tendrils. There are the first three ferns, the ones on the left:

Then the stalks for a couple of flowers and a tendril or two:

A tangle of tendrils:

The cowslip and a pearlwort:

And the three central ferns:

So here's all work so far:

See, I really have been busy!

No Internet access. Again.

2011-08-06T14:14:00.000+01:00

I've lost my Internet connection again, and am currently engaged in a debate with my ISP over whether the fault is at my end or theirs (I think it's at theirs. They don't).

This means I can't upload photos or do anything useful, I'm afraid. I've got quite a lot to update you on, so please bear with me until things are fixed.

Sunderland Airshow 2011

2011-07-31T16:22:00.000+01:00

This weekend is the annual Sunderland International Airshow. This has been running for about 20 years now and gets more popular each year, with hundreds of thousands of people attending over the weekend, making it the largest free event in Europe.

We went yesterday, and found a spot about half way along, on the cliff top at Roker. Here's the view north up the coast, to Seaburn and Whitburn:

I don't know if you can make them out, but there were huge crowds all along the sea front.

There was plenty to see, as usual, and the weather was absolutely beautiful, as you can tell.

There were no serving military aircraft this year; presumably they're all otherwise engaged. My lack of knowledge about planes is total, so you'll have to forgive the vagueness, but here are a few highlights as best as I can remember.

This Cold War classic is the Vampire, though to me it looks for all the world like Thunderbird 2:

There were a few display teams, including this pair:

And these biplanes with wing-walkers:

I'm not sure of you can tell, but the people on top of the planes were upside down at this point!

This is think was a Hawker Hunter, but what mostly struck me was its jazzy paint job, which reminded me of the 'rocket' ice-lollies we used to get as kids:

This guy made me nervous - he kept going straight up, and then straight down again, in a rather jerky fashion:

This art deco beauty is a Catalina flying boat:

Isn't that just a gorgeous sight?

No UK airshow is complete without a Spitfire:

And finally, the star of the show, the Vulcan bomber:

You can really see its Concorde-like shape from the side:

A great day out, and I can thoroughly recommend you come along next year if you have the chance.

Edging a milestone

2011-07-24T20:16:00.000+01:00

For the first time, I've finished a part of the Banner. Just a small part, I admit, but it feels like a major breakthrough - from now on, more and more things will be 'the last', until it's finally all finished. The end is in sight!

Well, it is if you use a very long lens, anyway. Closer up, here's the various little flowers to the right of the panel edged in gold:

Then the three ferns:

And finally - hooray! - the last ever foxglove:

As its stem is already done, that's it finished - there's no more work to be done on it, and there are no more foxgloves to do. Wow.

So, here's all the right hand bits and pieces together:

And all work so far - everything on the panel with the edging completed:

Stems next.

Central goldwork edging

2011-07-20T17:30:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not having posted for ages. I have been busy, though, and have finished edging the flowers in the central section of the panel.

Here are the ferns surrounding the cowslip:

The cowslip flowers:

And its cluster of leaves:

I remembered to take a picture of everything done so far this time:

I know there are some small flowers that look pretty central too, but I'll do them at the same time as the ones on the left.

Goldwork edging

2011-07-10T20:36:00.000+01:00

With all the flowers in place, I can now edge them with couched gold thread. I like this stage - it makes such a difference, not just tidying but transforming the appliquéd shapes. With the gold edging, they look a different colour to when they have the white linen fringe.

I started with the little flowers, the pearlworts and wood avens:

Then the (second last) foxglove:

And the three ferns surrounding it:

I'm afraid I forgot to take a photo of everything at this stage, so you'll just have to use your imagination!

Our embroidery ancestry

2011-07-04T18:56:00.000+01:00

Slightly off-topic today, but I thought I'd share something I've been thinking about of late.

Recently, two of my favourite embroidery bloggers, Cynthia of California Stitching and Elmsley Rose, have been kind enough to cite instructions I gave here for lacing up finished embroidery onto a board, to stretch it and prepare it for framing or presentation in some way.

I've always found this a neat and effective way of lacing the back of an embroidery, but I didn't invent it myself. I was taught how to do it by a lady who was one of the most highly respected embroiderers in the North of England, Dorothy Watson. Although not one of its founders, Mrs Watson was a very early member of the North East Branch of the Embroiderers' Guild, later the Newcastle upon Tyne Branch, and remained a member of it for over 50 years, serving several terms as Chair, and was the Branch's Honorary President when she passed away a few years ago, when I was Chair myself. She led the Durham Cathedral Broderers, and taught embroidery and textile crafts for many decades; her work spanned traditional and contemporary styles, and was always flawless, and the number of stitchers, including myself, she must have taught and influenced is huge.

But someone must have taught her how to do these things, and someone else would have taught her teacher, and so on, down the years and centuries. Although there's no end to what you can do to express your own creativity through textile arts, the basic tools and techniques have existed for millennia, and have been passed on down the years.

Now, I'm passing on things she taught me through my blog to people all over the world, and other bloggers in California and Australia are passing it on too, to their readers, all part of a continuous line of embroiderers stretching from the far past into the future. I wish Mrs Watson had lived to see that.

I think we should all take a moment to celebrate our own embroidery ancestors, whether they were our grandmothers or school teachers, authors of books or blogs, and remember that it's up to us to pass this wonderful art on to future generations.

Happy stitching!

Right hand side of the panel

2011-06-28T20:31:00.000+01:00

The new boiler was installed today, which was a relief. Hot water! At last!

The Banner panel has also taken a step forwards, with all the flowers applied to the right-hand panel. There were a few pearlworts:

Some wood avens:

And the very last foxglove:

Then finally the last three ferns:

So here's the panel with all the flowers in place:

Back to normal

2011-06-25T13:40:00.000+01:00

I'm back online, I'm happy to say. Broadband access has become such a normal part of my life that I really miss it when it's not available. I can say the same about heating and hot water, too, which I have now been without for a week, after my ever-unreliable boiler finally broke down beyond fixing last Saturday. I'm getting a new one installed on Tuesday, which will be a relief; I'll be glad when this week is over!

All of this has been a bit distracting, but I have managed to get some sewing done, and have added all the flowers to the left hand side of the panel.

Starting with the foxglove, I added the goldwork stalk first:

Then applied the individual flowers spaced along it:

Next came three more ferns:

And a wood aven and a pearlwort:

So, here's all work on the panel so far:

Apologies for the loss of service

2011-06-23T20:43:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not posting, but I've lost Internet access (I'm writing this on my phone).

All being well, it should be fixed tomorrow, when normal service will be resumed. I hope.

A note on placement

2011-06-16T18:31:00.000+01:00

The two panels I've done already - the bottom and left ones - while clearly similar, have obviously different designs. The remaining two - top and right - are similar to the finished ones. And I do want to emphasise that: similar. The concept of the design is a scattering of wild flowers, as you might find in a meadow. As such it needs to have a certain freedom in it, to give a naturalness to the look of the finished piece.

So, while the layout of the right and left panels are similar, they are not, and are not meant to be, symmetrical. If the design was very controlled and demanded precise placement of its elements (as a lot of my own designs do), then I would be doing my level best to make sure that everything was placed as accurately as possible. As it is, though, I'm not referring back to the previous panels, but continuing to place the flowers where I feel they ought to go, using the marked up design as a guide.

I thought it best to explain that before I started, in case you think I'm just being a bit slapdash with the layout!

With that out of the way, let's get down to business. As before, I'm starting applying the flowers in the middle and working outwards to either side, so that means the cowslip is added first:

There are then a few ferns:

Then some wood avens and pearlworts:

And here's everything together:

I like this stage - things start to come together (relatively) quickly, and you can see real progress.

Panel number 3

2011-06-13T18:58:00.000+01:00

Time to set up the third panel, the right-hand one.

All the flowers are embroidered, so the first step to get everything ready is to damp stretch them:

If you spotted that one of the sheets of ferns has half a side of pins missing, you're doing a lot better than me - I didn't notice until the next day, when I came to take them out again. This is what happens when you do things late at night after a long day at work. Still, if this is the worst that happens, it's not too bad, and it acts as a warning to always double-check that things are as they ought to be.

As with the previous two panels, I'm placing the applied flowers by eye using a grid as a guide, so I needed to mark out the grid on the design:

And the fabric itself:

All ready to go!

Climbing hydrangea - and bees

2011-06-10T19:20:00.000+01:00

Now I've got my new camera, I've discovered I really like taking pictures of flowers. I was never very interested in it before, in my pre-camera days, but of all the trial and error snapping away that I've been doing, that's what I've enjoyed the most.

I'm pretty pleased with the results, too. This is a climbing hydrangea, which is growing up the side wall of my yard:

Sadly, the photo can't give you any idea of the beautiful smell from all the flowers, but with the windows open (when it's warm enough!) they make the whole house smell lovely.

The flowers are very popular with bees, too.

I wonder if it's the smell that attracts them, or something else?

Now that summer's here, almost, I think a few flower-photographing trips might be in order.

Cowslips

2011-06-07T21:27:00.000+01:00

The second-last-ever cowslip. Not much of a milestone, but it's something!

That's all of the embroidery for the right panel done, so now it’s back to applying all the flowers to the velvet. Once I’ve got this panel done, I’ll really start to feel that the end is in sight.

(Sorry for the very short and rather infrequent posts lately, by the way. I shall try and do better.)

The first milestone

2011-05-28T20:27:00.000+01:00

Today is an important day: it marks the first milestone in completing the Banner. And here it is:

It's a sheet of foxgloves, and yes, you've seen other ones before, but what makes this one important, is that it's the last one. There are four foxgloves on the Banner - two each on the left and right panels - and this is the fourth one. For the first time, I've done all the embroidery for a particular flower. No more foxgloves, ever!

Of course, it'd be better if it was the last of the ferns, but their turn will come, and for the first time, I really feel the end is in sight. We can start to count down a few more milestones in the weeks to come.

Four more ferns

2011-05-22T17:48:00.000+01:00

Another update for you: the remaining four ferns for this panel:

I'm pleased with progress so far - I've just got two more sheets of flowers to do (a foxglove and the cowslips), then that's it for this panel, and ahead of schedule too.

I haven't done them yet, though. Back to work!

Foxglove

2011-05-15T18:10:00.000+01:00

Firstly, I'd like to say thanks to Jacqueline at Needleprint for the fantastic post on the St Cuthbert's Banner project. It never ceases to amaze me how generous and kind everyone is and how much support you all give me, and I am truly thankful to everyone who takes the time to read my blog, comment or post themselves. Thanks to each and every one of you!

Back to business, though. I've now finished the first (of two) foxgloves for this panel:

The foxgloves never show up that well at this stage as they're quite light on a white background, but I think they're my favourites of all the flowers.

I'll try and think of them when I'm back to my least favourite ones: yet more ferns...

Wood avens

2011-05-08T18:40:00.000+01:00

Another quick Banner update for you: I've now finished the sheet with all this panel's wood avens on:

I've made a start on the next one I'm doing, the first of the two foxgloves, so I should have that to show you shortly.

It's coming along, isn't it!

Third panel update: five ferns

2011-05-03T21:15:00.000+01:00

As with the second panel, there are nine ferns to embroider, and here are five of them:

They look fine when they're applied to the velvet and nicely edged with gold, but (and I think I've mentioned this before, about a dozen times) they're a pain to do. They're small and fiddly and, frankly, a bit boring. So, it's best to get them over with, I suppose, and now I'm over half way through them.

You might have noticed that two of them, with seven leaves each, are bigger than the others, with six. Amazingly, this is deliberate. I may be speaking too soon, but I think I've finally got the hang of them; on the very similar second panel (and on the design), two of the ferns are bigger than the rest, so here I've stitched an extra leaf each. This also means that the four remaining ones are all six-leaf ones, so that's good!

Starting the third panel

2011-04-28T19:59:00.000+01:00

Back to the beginning again, with the third panel, the right hand one this time. First up, a sheet with all the pearlworts for this panel:

Can you spot the not-so-deliberate mistake? If you can, you're doing better than me, as I'd taken the linen off the frame and put it away in the cupboard before it occurred to me that I'd forgotten to do the central French knots. Back out of the cupboard it came!

I don't like doing French knots in the hand - they're far easier to do with the fabric in a frame, but it didn't seem worth mounting it back up for just a few knots, so I just did them like that anyway.

It meant the fabric now looks a bit crumpled, but that'll be sorted out when it gets damp stretched later on.

Sculpture in Gateshead

2011-04-23T18:11:00.000+01:00

As I was looking for a bit of practice with my new camera, my friend Steph suggested a trip to Gateshead riverside. Gateshead, on the south bank of the River Tyne, have made quite a feature of public scuplture, with Antony Gormley's Angel of the North the most famous, but by no means the only, example, and there are a series of sculptures along the river bank

It was rather a rainy day, but undeterred, we headed across the river from Newcastle. Walking down the path, the first piece we came to was Cone, by Andy Goldsworthy:

Goldsworthy's work in natural settings is always striking, and Steph's a big fan, so that was a good one to start with.

A little further along was Rolling Moon by Colin Rose:

I presume by the name that it's intended to evoke the passage of the Moon in the sky, but it also reflects the curved shapes of the iconic bridges over the Tyne.

A close up of the steel sphere:

Further down still is Goats, by Sally Matthews:

These slightly larger than lifesize recycled metal goats are foraging amongst the undergrowth up the bank:

Moving down to the road next to the river, we next saw the Thornbird Railings by Marcela Livingstone:

To me, they look like a flock of swallows.

Finally, on the way back, we headed past Rise and Fall, by Lulu Quinn:

This is filled with LED lights that light up in random patterns, but I never seemed to click the shutter at the right moment, so you'll have to take my word for that!

St Cuthbert's Banner: all work so far

2011-04-20T20:59:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, Cynthia of California Stitching suggested that I show all the work completed on the panel so far. This was a good idea, and with two panels now completed, this seems like a very good place to do just that.

So here it is (click on the image to see a larger version):

There a couple of points to note here: this isn't quite all the work I've done as there's a second central cross panel also completed (to go on the back of the Banner), but it's exactly the same as the one shown here. Also, I just laid the panels out for the photo, without centring them properly or anything; they aren't even pinned, let alone stitched in place, so the finished article should be rather neater.

With all that in mind, though, I'm still really pleased with how it's looking. This is the first time I've had everything out like this, so it's quite a relief that it's all working!

One thing I noticed in the photo that I missed when I was taking it is the shading of the flowers and leaves. Part of this is the deliberate shading with coloured threads that I've been doing throughout, but some of it is accidental - the applied flowers have a bit of depth to them, and in the light from the window coming from the top, they cast a small shadow. This was quite unexpected, but I really like it! I think it helps gives the flowers, and the whole piece, some life.

So, how do you think it's coming along?

Finishing the goldwork stems

2011-04-18T21:15:00.000+01:00

Just the stems and tendrils to add on the right now - that might not sound like much, but it's still quite a bit of work.

So here we go - the upper fern:

The lower one:

And the last one, on the far right of the panel:

The wood avens' stems:

Then the stems for the pearlworts:

And a couple of extra tendrils:

Then the stems for the two final flowers:

And the last couple of tendrils:

And that's it! That's the whole right section finished:

In fact, that's the whole panel finished:

With no more stitching to do, I can remove the tacking stitches forming the grid, leaving the embroidered flowers on their own:

I'm pleased with it - I think it looks good. I'm particularly happy with the way the foxgloves have turned out, I think.

I'm logging all the time I spend on the project in a spreadsheet, and after adding it all up, I can tell you that this panel took 177.5 hours to complete. I also have a schedule for all this, and unfortunately I went over my (self-imposed) deadline by a week. I've got some time off work soon, though, so I should be able to catch up again.

Just two more to do...

Central section stems

2011-04-16T16:53:00.000+01:00

Moving on with the stems, it's time to do the central area of the panel. First, the fern below the cowslip:

Then the one above it:

Then the cowslip itself - the middle stem:

The 'upper' one (it should actually be the one on the right, but I'm working the panel sideways):

Then the lower (left) one:

And finally a long stem for the single pearlwort:

There aren't any tendrils for the central section, so that's the lot:

Everything I've done so far:

Couched gold stems and tendrils

2011-04-13T18:32:00.000+01:00

All of the flowers have goldwork stems, plus there are some 'stems' that aren't related to any particular flower, which for want of a better term I'm going to refer to as tendrils. The one for the foxglove was done before the flowers themselves were added, so that they could be positioned on top of it, and I've done the ones for the first few ferns, but there are still a lot to go.

They're all done in the same way - a double gold thread, closely couched with a single strand of embroidery cotton - and all the remaining stems to the left of the panel will be couched using Madeira 1410. I started with a single pearlwort:

I'm not keen on the bend in this as I think it looks a bit awkward, but it's actually pretty close to the line on the design, so I'll claim it was meant to be like that!

The pearlwort has a couple of tendrils round it:

As does the top fern:

And between the foxglove and a fern:

The wood avens in the centre have their stems:

And so do the little pearlworts:

There are a few tendrils too, giving quite a complex tangle of goldwork:

Here's the left section, with all the couched gold stems and tendrils in place:

And as ever, here's all work so far:

It's really coming together now, isn't it!

Kate's Crow - and Kate

2011-04-11T19:49:00.000+01:00

You may remember that last year I made the Kate's Crow firescreen, as a birthday present for my sister, Kate. This was made well in advance as I knew that once I started work on the Banner I wouldn't have time for anything else, but yesterday was finally the big day.

It's been put away for months, so it was good to see it again:

Though not for long:

Time to unwrap that present:

Happy Birthday, Kate:

Goldwork stems

2011-04-09T21:02:00.000+01:00

With all the goldwork edging done, I now only need to add the flowers' stems and tendrils. To do this, I'm using goldwork again, couching a double length of imitation Jap gold no. 8 with a single strand of whichever green I used for the leaves or sepals. So, starting with the ferns on the left of the panel, I'm using Madeira stranded cotton no. 1411.

The ferns' stems go down the centres of the leaves, so I started by anchoring the gold thread in the middle of the top leaf, then adding small stitches on either side of the rest of the leaves, plus a couple more along the curved stem before it reaches a foxglove flower. It then passes over the flower, and there a couple more stitches catching the gold thread down on the other side:

This isn't the finished couching, but just an intermediate stage; the rest of the gold stem will be couched down with stitches along its length. I could just do this immediately (it'd be quicker!), but I want to get a particular curve to the stem, as close as possible to Fiona's design, so effectively tacking it into position first makes that easier to achieve. When I did the first stems on the first panel I tried to just lay the thread in place and couch it, but I found that it shifted too much. This way defnitely works better.

The stem needs to look as though it passes under the foxglove flower, but I've put it over the top; this is to get the curve right, rather than trying to match ends on either side. I'll cut the threads and take the ends through to the back, but they'd be a bit short, so I pulled the threads up in a loop first:

Before cutting them:

I then couched the rest of the stem with stitches a millimetre or so apart, including over the tops of the leaves themselves:

And pulled the ends through to the back, where I could stitch them down neatly:

I did the second fern in the same way:

And the third:

And the fourth:

All four ferns with their goldwork stems:

And all work done on the panel so far:

Final ferns and foxglove

2011-04-06T18:19:00.000+01:00

The last of the goldwork edging! Not much to do now, just one fern:

And another:

And the last one:

Then the second foxglove:

The ferns and the foxglove together:

And finally, all the goldwork edging done:

That's quite a major stage completed. Now I need to add the stems and tendrils, then the panel will be finished.

A few flower photos

2011-04-04T21:16:00.000+01:00

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a new camera!

I'm in grave danger of becoming a camera bore to my nearest and dearest, and now you, but I don't care - I just love it. For the record, it's a Sony NEX-3, which is sort of baby DSLR: SLR quality, but with the sort of hand-holding and automated functions you'd expect from a more basic point-and-click camera. Which is absolutely perfect for me - I'd wanted much better quality photos than I've been producing from my old, and pretty basic, camera, but don't have the first clue about shutter speeds and apertures and whatnot. With this one, you can set all of that stuff yourself if you so wish, but if the thought of that makes you want to burst into tears, it'll do it all for you. (Even better - I got a really good deal on it in the shop. Quite a bit of money off, and lots of freebies thrown in! It pays to haggle.)

I haven't taken it out and about yet, though I'm really looking forward to doing that. In the meantime, though, here are a few trial photos of flowers in my home and garden - click on the photo to see a larger version.

Firstly, an orchid on my dining room table:

Some primroses:

A late snowdrop:

And a few pics of a couple of pieris bushes. White flowers:

A mass of red bracts and green leaves:

Some of the bracts in close-up:

And bracts and flowers

I'm thrilled with how they've turned out, I really am. These are by far the best photos I've ever taken. I've always known how I wanted my photos to look, but they never did, so I was always disappointed with them, and came to regard photography as a means to an end - some images I could work up into a design - rather than an end in itself. All of a sudden, things have changed. I think I've found a new hobby!

Little flowers on the left

2011-04-02T13:05:00.000+01:00

Moving to the left of the panel, it's the turn of the little flowers to get their goldwork edging. First a pearlwort:

Then three small (in one case, downright tiny) pearlworts:

And one more pearlwort, all on its own:

All the pearlworts together:

Then the three wood avens, as part of the cluster:

Giving all the little flowers on the left:

And all the edging work done so far:

Not much to do now!

By the way, and taking the compression mangling that Blogger seems to do into account, I really do think my photos are improving. That's more down to having a better camera than anything I'm doing, though, I think.

Goldwork edging: cowslip and ferns

2011-03-29T20:52:00.000+01:00

I'm making good progress with the goldwork edging, with quite a bit to show you today. First, the cowslip in the centre of the panel. Here are the leaves, with the gold thread couched with Madeira stranded cotton 1410:

The smallest of the three flowers, using Madeira 0105 for the couching stitches:

And the medium-sized one:

As the flowers are quite a complex shape, I can't just go all the way round with one length of thread, I need to stop and start. So, here's the largest flower before I finished off the ends, to show how many small lengths were needed:

The ends were all pulled through to the back of the fabric and finished off neatly:

So here's the cowslip, nicely edged with gold:

This central section also has three more ferns, and I did them next. The one above the cowslip:

Below and to the right:

And to the left:

Here's the central section with the finished cowslip and ferns, and a couple of little flowers creeping into shot:

And all the goldwork edging done so far:

I'm over half way! There's still quite a bit of edging to do, but at least I feel I'm on the last lap. Of this phase, anyway...

Lots of little flowers

2011-03-27T21:35:00.000+01:00

Some light at the end of the photography tunnel, or so I hope: I've bought a new camera! It's a bit complicated, though, with lots of settings I don't understand, so it's likely to take me a while to get to grips with it. From this you can probably gather that the standard of photography isn't about to improve any time soon, but let's all hope that once I've worked out what I'm supposed to be doing that the pictures pick up.

Anyway, more flowers edged with goldwork. A wood aven:

And a pearlwort:

The wood aven and the pearlwort with the ferns and foxglove:

The biggest wood aven, next to the central cowslip:

And all the little flowers together:

Heading up to half way, all the edging done so far:

I think I need to find out how to use the flash!

Edging the foxglove in gold

2011-03-24T21:04:00.000Z

First, a quick note on photographs. I won't bore you with the reasons but some of the photos here are taken with a proper camera, and some, the ones further down, with my phone. This has not helped with their quality, so sorry about that, but hopefully you should still be able to see what I'm talking about.

Back to the sewing: the next flowers to get their goldwork edging are the foxgloves. I started with the biggest flowers and worked my way along, so here are the two largest ones done:

I know I mentioned it before, but it still amazes me how much of a difference this makes; the edged flowers look nice and neat, while the unedged ones look ragged and messy. It really demonstrates how well worth doing this stage is!

I'm couching the gold thread with the embroidery cotton of the same colour as the edge of the flower itself. So far, with the fern and the foxgloves, that's just been the one colour (Madeira stranded cotton 0101 for the foxglove), but the flowers, or rather the buds, towards the top have an edge in two colours, 0101 and 1409 (pale green). This means couching part of the gold outline in one thread, then switching to the other to complete it:

Here are all the small flowers and buds, showing the two colour couching stitches:

And the completed foxglove in its entirety:

Finally, an extremely bad picture of all the goldwork edging done so far:

Goldwork edging

2011-03-19T18:25:00.000Z

Now all the appliqué’s done, it's time to start edging all the embroidered pieces with gold thread. I like this stage - it makes a huge difference to the look of it.

As I was already at the right-hand end of the panel, it seemed reasonable to start the edging there, and work my way back along, which more or less means doing the flowers in reverse order to how I stitched them on.

To do the edging, I'm couching a single no. 8 imitation Japanese gold thread around the edge, using one strand of the same stranded embroidery cotton that I used for the buttonhole stitch around the edge of each piece as the couching thread. The stitches are quite closely spaced, about a millimetre or so apart, which gives an effect which tones with the colour of the applied item but still allows the gold to sparkle through.

So, starting with the last three ferns to be applied, here's one of them edged, using Madeira stranded cotton 1411 as the couching thread:

And another one:

Just as a comparison, here they both are with an unedged flower in between:

It makes quite a difference, doesn't it! The only thing I've done is couch the gold thread around the edge - I haven't trimmed the linen margin at all, for instance, though I admit that any odd linen fibres that were still visible after I’d finished the goldwork I poked under it with the eye end of a needle, to make sure everything was as neat as possible.

Adding the edging really does transform the appliqué, and really is worth doing - I always edge appliqué, whether with a couched thread or cord as here, or with a row of stitches (usually chain stitch) around the outside in a matching or toning thread. The way it neatens things up is amazing.

So, here are all three ferns, neatly edged, and making the rest of the flowers look rather messy:

Never mind, they'll all get their turn!

Foxgloves and ferns

2011-03-16T21:24:00.000Z

A double helping today, with the second foxglove and three more ferns all added to the panel.

As with the first one, I added the stem of the foxglove first, by couching gold thread:

Then added the top and bottom flowers, to help with the spacing:

And then added the rest of the flowers in between:

Here's the full panel, with all the flowers added so far:

Not far to go now, just the third-last fern:

The second-last:

And the very last one (well, for this panel, anyway):

That was the last bit of appliqué to do, so now all the flowers are on, and ready to edge:

Shortly after taking these photos, my old camera finally died. I've borrowed my dad's for now (thanks Dad!), but I as I need to get a new camera anyway, I'm going to upgrade and get something a bit better than the little point-and-click compact cameras I've had up to now. I live in hope that this might improve the standard of the photography here and on my website, but as this is likely to take a bit of practice, don’t get your hopes up too far just yet!

Maker Faire UK 2011

2011-03-12T20:48:00.000Z

I took a day out from sewing today and went to the UK Maker Faire in Newcastle upon Tyne, and I was very glad I did - it was fantastic!

Held simultaneously at two venues, I started at the Centre for Life. It was busier than I expected and I had to queue for a while for a ticket, but it was worth the wait. As you might expect, there were a lot of people making things, mostly though not all electronic:

There were also a lot of stands with individuals and groups of makers, who were all very happy to talk, even though my first question was usually, 'What's that?'

Amongst a great deal of other stuff, there was a geodesic dome made out of estate agents' signs:

The Thing-O-Matic 3D printer, here printing out a key fob:

An intricate copper wire and ball bearing thingummy:

And a reel-to-reel-to-reel old fashioned tape setup, recording, overlaying and looping sounds, like an improv Radiophonic Workshop:

There was rather less steampunk than I'd expected, but a couple of heroic representatives:

And, I was very excited to see, Tesla coils!

I've never seen these for real before, so somehow it came as a surprise that the arcs are three-dimensional - they clearly occupy a volume, rather than being in a flat plane. I don't know why I didn't expect that, but I didn't.

Outside, there was a marvellous scrap metal dragon:

He moved his head and neck, tail and wings (which don't show up at all here, sadly), and, thanks to the propane tanks in his chest, breathed fire:

He was impressive enough for a couple of Daleks to come along for a look!

Some token textiles - someone was yarn-bombing the area, with random knitting attached to trees, lamp-posts and street signs:

That was on the way to the second venue, the Discovery Museum. It was absolute pandemonium - the numbers of people attending by this stage was huge - not helped by Titan the Robot doing a turn and completely blocking the entrance:

This is a terrific museum, with an emphasis on science and engineering, but which somehow has a good textile collection too. This was not the ideal day for a proper look round, however, so I'll just settle for a peek at the Turbinia, the first vessel to be powered by a steam turbine:

And finally, the highlight of the day: Arc Attack. Sadly, none of my photos turned out at all well, so this really doesn't do them justice, but what we have here is a man in a chainmail suit (a wearable Faraday cage), playing the Doctor Who theme tune with a million volts of electricity:

It might be hundred-year-old technology, but it was still one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

The Maker Faire is on tomorrow too, so if you're in the Newcastle area, go and have a look.

A constellation of flowers

2011-03-11T20:51:00.000Z

I'm a little over half way through applying the embroidered flowers to the background fabric of this panel; as there's just the one cowslip in the middle, and that's already on, adding the flowers to the right end should take less time than adding them to the left.

Starting with the little flowers, we have the biggest pearlwort, near the centre:

Three little pearlworts, grouped together:

And one final pearlwort, on its own:

All the pearlworts:

Next, there's the big wood aven, also near the centre:

And a couple of smaller ones, quite widely spaced apart:

All together, they form a constellation of embroidered flowers:

Here's work so far on the panel; not far to go now!

By the way, have any other Blogger bloggers out there noticed a drop in quality on their photographs? The ones I uploaded may not be the best, but they're a lot better than they look here. The originals are bigger than this, and are being resized downwards automatically to fit on the page; the murk on the picture looks to me like an artifact of the compression process. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Three more ferns

2011-03-09T21:20:00.000Z

Just three more ferns to go on the left end of the second panel of St Cuthbert's Banner. A small landmark, but one to note none the less.

Here's the first one:

And the second one:

On Fiona's original design, the third one slightly overlaps the seam between the left and top panels (with the end chopped off here, when I cut out the panel design):

While I expect to have to add a few bits of goldwork over the seams, I don't really want to have anything major to do there, so I've shifted the third fern down a bit, so that it all fits within the panel space:

And that's all the appliqué done on that end of the panel!

Applying the first foxglove

2011-03-07T21:12:00.000Z

It's the first foxglove next, and I'm approaching this slightly differently to what I've done before.

Previously, I've added all the flowers, edged them in gold, then added the goldwork stems last of all. This has meant going around the flowers, or stopping and starting the couched gold threads, to make it looks as though the stems pass under a flower. This has been fine so far, and it’s what I’m planning on doing for most of the panel, but as the foxglove flowers are so close together, the amount of stopping and starting needed would make it unnecessarily fiddly and time consuming, plus making sure that the stem flows as though it was one continuous line would be quite tricky. It's much easier to do it first, so that it is one continuous line, and add the flowers on top.

So, here's the stem, tacked in place. As on the first panel, I'm using two stands of imitation Japanese gold thread no. 8; I've laid it on the background fabric in the curve I want, and couched it down at fairly wide intervals along the length, to keep it in place:

I'm using Madeira 1409 for this, the same shade of green I used for the little green cups on the foxglove flowers themselves. Still using this, I couched the gold threads down properly, with stitches a millimetre or so apart, and finished off the ends on the back:

The foxglove is made of a lot of individual flowers, and I need to get them evenly spaced, so as with the ferns, I stitched down the top and bottom ones first, to set the overall size:

Then, to get an idea of how to space them out, I laid the roughly cut out flowers on it and took a note of the spacing:

That seemed to work out ok, so I cut out the individual flowers, and laid them on the background too. To make sure things shifted as little as possible before I came to stitch them down, I anchored each one in place with a couple of stitches at the stem end:

After that, it was a simple matter to stitch them down, using the same threads as their outline, i.e. 1409 for the green bits and 0101 for the flowers themselves:

I'm quite pleased - I think they work nicely.

So, here are all the flowers added up to now:

Pearlworts and wood avens

2011-03-04T19:35:00.000Z

There aren't as many pearlworts and wood avens on the side panels as on the top and bottom ones, just one sheet of each. Half of these go to the left of the central cowslip, mostly quite close to it.

The first one is quite central, next to a fern:

Three more are clustered quite close together. Here they are cut out roughly, to get the positioning right:

And here they are applied to the background.

The smallest of the three is really tiny, by the way - less than a centimetre across.

There was also one lone pearlwort, over towards the edge of the panel:

So, all the pearlworts, three ferns and a cowslip:

There are just three wood avens to go on the left hand side, also part of the little cluster of small flowers:

And work so far: everything together:

Incidentally, someone asked me the other day if I'd cut out all the flowers already. The answer is no: I cut them out as I go along, just trimming them as I need them. There are two reasons for this: I don't want them to fray before I’ve started to stitch them on, and, and probably more of an issue, I don't want to lose any. None of the flowers are big and some are really very small indeed - it'd be all too easy to drop one down between the floorboards, or accidentally throw one in the bin with the off-cuts. Keeping them as part of their sheet until I need them is a lot safer!

So, here's what's left of the sheet of pearlworts, after I'd finished cutting out the flowers I needed:

This can now go back into the cupboard, until I need it again.

The first three ferns

2011-03-01T21:11:00.000Z

There are nine ferns on this panel, but I'm going to add them in groups of three, partly as that's about as much fern as I can stand in one go, and partly because it works out quite nicely that way.

I wasn't entirely happy with the curve on at least of the ferns for the first panel, so I need to take particular care over them. I've stitched fewer leaves for most of them this time, which I think will help: I'm not trying to fit as much in.

Here's the first fern, very roughly cut out and approximately placed on the background, to judge the spacing:

To make sure the size is correct, I added the top and bottom leaves first:

I then added the leaves in-between, taking care to place them so that the fern curved nicely:

Here it is in context, next to the cowslip:

Next, the second fern:

And the third:

And everything I've done on the panel so far:

Applying the cowslip

2011-02-27T18:56:00.000Z

Time to start adding the flowers!

I should just mention that while the finished panel will be vertical, it's mounted horizontally on the frame, so the flowers in the photos will be sideways on. I could turn the photos round, of course, but I thought it would be better if you see them them way I'm seeing them as I work. With most of them it doesn't really matter, but with some of them, it does look obvious.

Such as the cowslip. Each panel has one in the centre, and it seems to be a good place to start, and then work outwards. So, using my grid as a guide, I first added the bunch of leaves:

I'd meant to take a photo of each flower head as it went on, but I forgot, so I'm afraid you're going to have to skip the interim stages and go straight to all three having been applied:

It's a start, and applying the flowers is a lot quicker than stitching them in the first place!

For anyone who wasn't reading when I reached this stage with the first panel - don't worry that the cut edge of the linen around the applied pieces looks a bit rough. Once all the flowers are in place, they'll be edged with gold, and the linen edges will be concealed.

Starting the left panel

2011-02-23T21:22:00.000Z

Starting to put it together, that is, as the flowers are all embroidered. They did need to be damp stretched, though. Here they are, all pinned out ready to be dampened:

Now they're all beautifully flat, I can cut them up. It almost seems a shame, doesn't it! It'll be worth it, though, as the finished panel (and Banner, when I get that far) should be more than the sum of its parts.

Back to the second panel, though. It'll form the left side of the Banner, and should look something like the design here. As before, I'm applying the flowers by eye, but guided by a marked out grid.

For this to work, I need the grid on both the design and the panel itself. The panel will be vertical when part of the Banner, but will be mounted horizontally on a frame to work. To make things as simple as possible for myself, I need the design to be horizontal too. As it's too long for the full thing to fit on my drawing board sideways on, I cut out the panel I need and taped it to the board (don't worry - I have another, pristine, copy put away!). I could then draw the grid on in pencil:

Then there was the rather tedious but absolutely vital task of mounting the velvet panel on my biggest embroidery frame. I'd cut out and lined with linen all the velvet panels previously, when I was starting the first one, so that was one less job to do now.

The grid was already marked out on the linen on the back, so I tacked over it, to transfer it to the front of the fabric:

Now I'm all ready to start adding the flowers!

Second sheet of foxgloves

2011-02-20T18:25:00.000Z

I've now finished the second (of two) sheet of foxgloves. So for the usual before-and-after pictures, here's the transfer, ready to be stitched:

And with all the embroidery done:

I like the foxgloves, even though they're fiddly to do - the small flowers at the top are less than a centimetre (under half an inch) across. I like doing them more than the ferns, for example, and I think that's because they're more interesting. They're prettier, there's more going on in both the design and the stitching, and they look more natural.

There'll be a couple more of them on the right-hand panel, but for now, that's the last of the embroidery for the left one. I'm really pleased with this - according to my schedule, I needed to get all the embroidery done by 12 March, so I'm finished three weeks early! Putting the first panel together took me longer than I'd expected, but now I've made up some time I should still be able to keep on track overall, even if this one take a bit longer than anticipated too. That's the theory, anyway - time will tell if it works out like that.

The rest of the ferns

2011-02-14T12:19:00.000Z

I hadn't realised it's been such a long time since my last post - sorry about that. Time does seem to fly, doesn't it!

Since then, I've finished the rest of the ferns for the second Banner panel. Here's the transfer for them:

I made these transfers quite a long time ago, and it looks as though while doing them, I realised that I'd been doing too many individual leaves, and after the first one, started doing fewer. I wish I'd remembered that when I first came to stitch them!

Here they are stitched:

There's just the second foxglove to go now, and I've already made a start on it, so hopefully it shouldn't be too long before you hear from me again!

Cowslips

2011-02-03T20:43:00.000Z

The left Banner panel has a cowslip in the centre, the same as the bottom one, which again consists of three flower heads in different sizes, the smallest being about 2.5cm (1") across. All threads and techniques are the same as before.

Here's the linen with the transfer on it, framed up and ready to go:

I'd traced the flowers as they appear on the design, but I feel that with all the flower heads, it looks a bit heavy and some of the definition is lost, so I'm leaving one out in each case. These have a pencil cross through them, as a reminder to myself not to go ahead and stitch them in a fit of absent-mindedness.

So, with the little green cups at the base of each individual flower stitched:

Then the flowers themselves:

As with the earlier cowslip, I filled the little gaps between the individual flowers that are too small to cut out with split stitches in a red to match the velvet:

Finally, I worked the leaves, so here's the full thing, completed:

The embroidery for the second panel is coming along very well - I think I'm slightly ahead of schedule!

A cultural morning

2011-01-29T13:30:00.002Z

Taking a morning off from sewing, I went to see a new exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery at the gallery at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens. This is entitled 'Writers of influence', and ranges from Chaucer to J K Rowling, via Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolfe and Dizzee Rascal (plus many others). They're all fascinating to see, but the real star of the show, and what looks like making the exhibition a real blockbuster, is the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare.

This is the only portrait of him that has 'any claim to have been painted from life', as the caption put it, which is as good as we're going to get, and good enough for me.

This is quite a coup for the gallery as this is the first time ever that it's been displayed outside of London, and as something of a Shakespeare fan, I was determined to see it today, the exhibition's opening. There were a lot of people there, most hearteningly of all a bunch of teenage boys. They weren't on a school trip (it's Saturday), and they weren't there with their parents, they'd come along because they wanted to. Maybe our culture's in safer hands than we give it credit for.

Photos weren't allowed in the gallery, of course, but outside in Mowbray Park, I did take one of a rather different literary figure: the Walrus.

Lewis Carroll (also in the exhibition) had family and friends in Sunderland, and stayed here often. On one visit, he went to see the skin of a walrus, being displayed to the public by a sea captain (you had to make your own entertainment in those days). Sunderland had a massive shipbuilding industry, and he would have seen many men heading to work in the shipyards. They were wooden ships, and the men were woodworkers, or, of course, carpenters. So, The Walrus and the Carpenter, surreal as it is, was directly inspired by Sunderland people and things. Carroll's work was an influence on John Lennon, who wrote I am the Walrus. He's in the exhibition too.

The walrus skin was stuffed and was on display in the museum for a century or so before finally falling apart; when I was a kid the head, mounted on a plaque, was still proudly displayed over the door. That's had it too now, so a life-size bronze statue was commissioned in its stead.

Walking back through the park, I passed the statue of Jack Crawford, the 'Hero of Camperdown', and the boy who quite literally nailed the flag, or the colours, to the mast during a sea battle, giving us an enduring expression.

The inscription on the sculpture in the foreground reads:

'On open seas

or dry land

nail your colours

to the mast'

There'll be an exhibiton on in your local museum or art gallery or library, and it'll be every bit as interesting as this one and will tell you just as much about where you live. Go and see it.

Gibside Chapel

2011-01-24T21:08:00.000Z

You've been following me for some time now using split stitch to give (hopefully!) realistic shading to the Banner's flowers, but I've also used it for some small landscapes, including one of Gibside Chapel.

Gibside, on the outskirts of Gateshead, is now a National Trust property; most of the buildings are sadly now ruined, but the pretty Palladian chapel is still in good order, and the gardens and landscaping are beautiful.

As part of an outreach initiative, local craft groups, including the Embroiderers' Guild, were invited to spend a Bank Holiday weekend at the Chapel, giving demonstrations and answering visitors' questions. As part of that, I decided to stitch a picture of the Chapel itself.

I took a photo of the Chapel from the front, and traced the basic outlines to form the design, which I then ironed onto linen. Using the same split stitch shading techniques that I'm now using for the flowers, I could then fill in the areas for the sky (a rather sunnier blue than the reality!), the grass, including the shade under the trees, and most of the architectural detail of the building itself.

The trees and final detailing on the building were done with French knots, and some back stitch with a single strand of cotton for outlining.

Apart from a bit of artistic licence with the sky, I tried to keep the colours as close to the ones in the photo as possible; my hope was to produce what looked like a miniature painting, but in stitch.

Foxgloves

2011-01-18T20:55:00.000Z

We have a new flower! The side panels have a flower on them that the top and bottom panels don't, the foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). Foxgloves are most commonly purple, but a wild subspecies, D. purpurea, subsp. heywoodii, has ivory or pale yellow flowers.

Here's the basic design, transferred onto linen:

I'm not sure why I added those dots to the transfer as they're just going to be stitched over, but never mind. They do act as a reminder that something needs to go there! There are a series of flower heads, which will all be attached to the same stem, with the largest flowers at the bottom and the smallest buds at the top.

As the flowers in the wild are very pale, I'm using the palest threads in my palette to stitch them. This means that they don't show up too well against the white linen, so sorry about that, but they'll be fine on the red velvet backing fabric.

Starting with the cups at the base of the buds, I used my palest green, Madeira stranded cotton 1409, to both outline them in buttonhole stitch and fill them in in split stitch.

For the buds and flowers themselves, I'm using two shades, 0101, which is a pale ivory colour, and 0103, which is a very pale yellow. I've used these colours before on the Banner, for the pearlworts, so using them in combination again helps keep a consistent look. In case you're wondering why I didn't use 0102, while it's a very nice colour by itself, it has rather a peachy tone, which doesn't go at all with any of the other shades of yellow that I've used so far, or with the particular greens that I'm using either. So far, with the split stitch shading, I've always been careful to use two colours next to each other on the shade card, to give as soft a gradation as possible; even though 0101 and 0103 (obviously) aren't next to one another, both 0102 and 0103 differ in the depth of their shade from 0101 by a similar amount. In other words, 0103 is just as pale as 0102, just a slightly different colour, and one I think works better.

Back to the stitching. I used the ivory 0101 to outline the flowers, and I filled in the body of the side-on buds at the same time:

Foxglove flowers are relatively long and bell-shaped, and I want to give the impression that my flowers have an interior that you can look into. As of course they're actually flat, I need to try and achieve this with shading. To start with, I defined the inner edge of the 'bell', with buttonhole stitch:

Again using 0101, I filled in the top lip of the bell, above the buttonhole-stitched 'edge', and also along the bottom, real, edge:

The stitches along the top are parallel to the edge of the flower, while the ones along the bottom are perpendicular to it. This should help with the shading, and give contrast between the outside and interior of the flower.

I then used one strand of 0101 and one of 0103 to fill in the centre of the smaller circular buds, part of the interior of the bell-shaped flowers, and all of the exterior:

For some reason, this looks a much brighter yellow in the photo than it does in real life; it's actually much more subdued than this.

Finally, I used two strands of 0103 to fill in the rest of the interior of the flowers.

There's still something missing, though. Remember the dots on the transfer? Foxgloves have small spots on their interior surface, mostly towards the rim, in a slightly darker colour to the rest, and these now needed to be added. My first thought was to use French knots, and I started to do this, but it looked terrible, so they came out again (I should have taken a photo to show you how bad it looked, but I didn’t think of that until it was too late. Sorry). Instead, I added small stitches, just a millimetre or so across, in the next shade up, 0104:

So with that done, here are all the completed foxglove flowers:

I'm very pleased with how they've turned out - I think they do have a sense of depth about them. What do you think?

Half the ferns

2011-01-14T20:11:00.000Z

There are quite a lot of ferns on the side panels, and I'm afraid they're still not my favourite to do. The eagle-eyed amongst you when studying the Banner design may have counted up nine ferns on the left panel. If so, you either more eagle-eyed or better at arithmetic than me, as I managed to miscount the number on the bottom panel and stitched one more than I needed to. I was annoyed about this at first, until it occurred to me that it meant I had one less to stitch later on. So, carrying that one over, I just have eight to do now instead.

And here are half of them:

When stitching the previous lot of ferns onto the background fabric of the bottom panel, I was struggling to fit all of the leaves into the space, and in all bar one case, left one leaf out. So, I'm going to miss out one leaf per fern at the stitching stage this time, which is why the bottom one is crossed out. I thought I'd better leave myself a prominent reminder, or I'd end up stitching them anyway by mistake!

So, having found a way to save myself a bit of work at least, here they all are:

There's still another four to do, but at least that's half of them out of the way.

Next, it's a brand new flower, the foxglove.

A sheet of wood avens

2011-01-11T21:29:00.000Z

There's just the one sheet of wood avens for the left panel, and here it is:

There aren't any here of the largest size that we had on the bottom panel, but there is one of the tiny ones, which is very fiddly to do.

As before, they're outlined in buttonhole stitch, filled in with split stitch, and have centres in French knots. Here they are, completed:

Some rather disappointing news is that the Spirograph panels failed to sell, so I'll be getting them back, as the gallery need the space for their next exhibition. Oh well, maybe next time...

The Dragon

2011-01-09T10:40:00.000Z

At the top of the page, as the big headline image behind the name of the blog, is the Dragon. He's quite possibly my favourite thing I've ever made, and I don't know why it's taken me until now to tell you about him. Here he is, looking splendid:

He's 3D and entirely freestanding, and is in goldwork, using coloured threads to couch the gold thread down; the idea was that this would look like scales. His underside and the underneath of his wings are couched with a plain thread, so they look gold rather than coloured.

The original design was actually based on a cut-out-and-glue-together mobile from a book (Dragon Mobiles by Anne Wild); as this was meant to be hung up rather than standing it needed a little adaptation to make sure it was level, but not too much, plus some areas, like the wings and legs, needed to be made in two pieces rather than the one used in the mobile, to give a front and a back.

There are quite a lot of individual parts, each of which was stitched separately. They were then cut out and mounted onto thin card (for the flat bits), pelmet Vilene (the wings, which were also wired), or a flexible plastic (the underside, which forms quite a complex curve). All the sections were then ladder stitched together, then pearl purl was couched over the seams, to hide them.

He's a few years old now, and as he's been shown quite widely and hauled in and out of boxes, he's starting to show his age. The main problems are with his ankles, which have got quite weak; the card inside must have bent, and once there's a fold there, it'll always bend at that point. I think surgery may be required - I need to open his legs up and splint them somehow.

Because of this, and because I don't want him to get tatty, he's now retired, and no longer goes out, except for very special occasions. Here he is relaxing at home, in his spot on a bookshelf:

I've made a few 3D items (such as the Dodecahedrons) and I'd like to explore this further when I get the opportunity, but I don't think I'll ever made something I'm as fond of as my goldwork Dragon.

Starting the second panel

2011-01-04T21:15:00.000Z

Back to the beginning and starting the second Banner panel. For no particular reason, I'm doing the left-hand side one next, which you may be interested to hear introduces a new flower. More on that when the time comes.

Mostly, however, it's flowers you've already seen using techniques I've already described in detail. As such, I'm going to be going into rather less detail this time around, unless something worth mentioning comes up. I'll keep you up to date with progress, though - you won't be missing anything, just not getting the blow-by-blow account.

I also thought I might write the occasional post on non-Banner matters, such as previous work of mine, or even touching on the 'inspirations' idea lurking in the sub-heading in the top banner and I'm afraid largely ignored thus far.

That's for the future, though. For today, pearlwort flowers. There's just the one sheet of them to do for the left panel:

And completed:

That dark speck to the lower left is blood, which I also managed to get all over the embroidery frame before I even noticed I was bleeding, but not on any of the flowers, which was a relief. It's a dangerous business, sewing!

Looking back - and forwards

2011-01-03T17:46:00.000Z

Happy New Year! I hope it's a peaceful and prosperous one for everyone.

In reflective mood, I've been looking back at what I achieved, on the embroidery front, in 2010, and I must admit to being pretty pleased with it. There's no knowing what the future holds, of course, but it could turn out to have been a landmark year for me, with a couple of major steps forward. Time will tell.

I started the year by finishing a project - Kate's Crow:

This is (or will be, very soon) a birthday present for my sister, Kate, and it immediately became a favourite of mine from all the work I've done. I'm glad it'll be going to a good home! I designed the firescreen frame, but it was made, beautifully, by Little Newsham Forge, and it was a very exciting day when I saw the completed piece for the first time.

I had ideas for a small exhibition sometime later in the year, and after my first ideas just didn't work out (and I'm still not telling you what they were!), I decided on a series of three goldwork hangings using designs based on Spirograph spirals. These ended up as panels rather than hangings, and look quite dramatic:

Just for fun, and as a bit of break from miles and miles of goldwork, I made a couple of appliqué cushions, which I rather like:

A friend said they look "very designery"! I think this is a good thing...

The Spirograph panels and the cushions went on to take a starring role in one of the two big events of the year - being invited to submit work for the opening exhibition of a new gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, the North East Art Collective. Here are two of the panels and the cushions on display there:

The awful weather put a bit of a dent in some of the gallery's plans, but with Spring just around the corner (I sincerely hope), it'd be great to think that this could bring my work to a wider audience.

The year's big story, though, was the return of St Cuthbert's Banner. This is the biggest and most prestigious commission I've ever had, and it's both an honour and a pleasure to be making it, even if it has rather taken over my life. The year ended on a high, with the completion of the bottom panel of the front of the Banner:

So, what does 2011 have in store? A lot more to do on the Banner, which won't leave much time for anything else, which in a way is a shame as there a couple of things I would very much like to do for the Embroiderer's Guild - a Regional exhibition and a Branch project - but I doubt I'll be able to, sadly. Though maybe if I aim small I can squeeze them in. We'll see!

And we'll see what else turns up too. Who knows what I'll be looking forward to in 2012!

...and to the left

2010-12-30T17:58:00.000Z

Same again, but to the left of the cowslips this time. A few stems added:

A few more flowers linked up:

Leaves and ferns joined together:

All done:

That's the lot for the bottom panel. Hooray! Here's the full panel, completed:

This still has the layout grid on, of course, but with that removed, all that's left are the flowers, as they'll appear on the the finished Banner:

You can't tell in the photo, but the tacking stitches for the grid have left slight impressions in the velvet. I think this should largely solve itself and the pile of the fabric bounce back, so I'll leave it alone for a while and see how it gets on, but I may have to intervene. I've got ideas on what to do if need be, but does anyone have any tips?

I must admit that I'm pleased with how it's turned out - it's as close to a pretty tricky design as I could get, and I think it works well. It's quite a relief!

Back to the beginning now, though, and the start of the second panel...

To the right of the cowslip...

2010-12-27T18:22:00.000Z

I hope you all had a happy and peaceful holiday; I had a lovely day with family, followed by a complete day off, doing nothing whatsoever. Bliss!

Back to work now, though. I've got a few days off the day job, so I want to get as much done as I can before I go back in the New Year. Things are coming along nicely, though, with all the flowers to the right of the cowslip edged (and yes I know I said I was going to start in the middle and work out, but it somehow didn't happen like that!)

Here are a few more flowers done, with stems linking the wood avens flowers and leaves together:

Then another fern and a pearlwort:

And the two larger wood avens:

And then some twiddly bits linking things up:

And finally, all of the right side, completed:

Curved stems

2010-12-23T16:33:00.000Z

Other than the cowslips, all the stems on the panel are wavy or curved. I applied all the flowers more or less by eye, aided a lot by the grid, and that's what I'm doing for the stems too. Well it's worked so far! All the same, I'm not a make-a-start-and-see-where-it-leads-you sort of person, and I like to have a pretty good idea of where things are to go.

For this stem, I started with a couple of couching stitches at the top of the thread, next to the flower:

Using Fiona's design as a guide, I laid the thread on the fabric, and moved it about until I was happy with the line it took. Unfortunately, it wasn't just going to sit there and wait for me to stitch it down - it needed to be held in place. So, I added a handful of stitches all the way down the thread:

Here it is with half a dozen or so stitches down the length of the thread:

This was enough to hold the shape of the line as I went back up the thread, couching it down with stitches spaced about a millimetre apart:

And with a couple more stems added:

For the first time, I actually quite like the fern!

Cowslip stems

2010-12-22T12:26:00.000Z

The flower stems are quite flowing (well, most of them), so I've decided to start from the centre again and work out, to get the flow right. This means beginning with the cowslips, which are actually the only flowers with straight stems.

To work the stems, I'm couching two strands of the same imitation Japanese gold thread that I used singly for the edging. I want the colours to remain consistent, so the couching thread is the same green as whatever I used for the leaves or flower sepals. As ever, though, the cowslips manage to make this more complicated than the other flowers. The cups at the bases of the flowers are the palest shade of green I've used, Madeira 1409, while the leaves are a shade darker, 1410. As the stems run from the flowers to the leaves, which one do I use?

Both!

Starting at the flower end, I couched the gold thread down with stitches quite close together, using the pale green thread:

I want to shade into the darker green as I go down, so I added a few stitches further and further apart, to about a third of the way down:

I then filled in the gaps and finished couching the gold thread with the darker of the two greens, so that they shade into each other:

The other two stems are very short, so I just used the one colour, 1410, for them.

So here's the cowslip, with it's stems added:

The rest of the stems on the design are curvy, wavy lines - I'll start them next.

Edging the rest of the flowers

2010-12-20T17:53:00.000Z

I've been stitching for hours, trying to get caught up on the bottom panel of the Banner. My (self-imposed) deadline for completion was Saturday, so I'm afraid I've missed it already. Still, I'm doing the best I can, and I hope to get at least partially back on track over the next couple of weeks.

As part of that, I've got all of the rest of the flowers on the panel edged. Here are a few done to the left of the cowslip:

And a few more:

And then the wood avens flowers and leaves:

And then the very last fern:

So here's the full panel, completely edged:

That's a big step forwards, but it's not finished - there are all the stems still to add...