Yesterday Lisa, visiting from Canada, and I visited the Love Lace exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney. I had SUCH a wonderful time.
The first thing was that Lisa is a lovely girl, and I really enjoyed talking with her, sharing our similar loves of needlework, and expressing our horror of the same sorts of needlework disasters. I think we could both probably be described as needlework snobs! It was great to get to know Lisa better.
And the exhibition itself was really interesting. Parts of it were fascinating and inspiring, and parts of it were just plain weird! If you’re expecting the exhibition to just be pieces of lace, then you’ll be disappointed. (Though you can find that at the Powerhouse Museum in their excellent Lace Study Room.)
The first piece I saw from the exhibition was the Lacie Lorrie, an old rusty truck, with cutouts all over its chassis, creating a lacy effect. It was amazing, and really gave a taste for how unusual parts of the exhibition were going to be! The one that repulsed us the most was some bodily organs knitted out of human hair…
Amongst the weirdness though, there were some absolutely exquisite creations. Ones that come to mind were a set of lacy porcelain bowls, some felted dresses, a gorgeous white dress with hand-embroidered appliques from India, some beautiful Christening gowns from Canada, and some amazing jewellery. I LOVED the cyclone wire fencing panels with wire bobbin lace motifs worked into them. They were the last exhibit in the show, and they were simply amazing!
It is NOT a traditional lace exhibition, but it IS incredibly inspiring. DO go and see it if you have the chance. (You should have come with us!)
Thanks, Lisa, for suggesting we get together when you visited Sydney, and thanks for a lovely day!
Added later: links to images of each of the mentioned exhibits.
The second class that I will be teaching at Beating Around the Bush is a Portuguese Whitework Handtowel.
Portuguese Whitework Handtowel
With Yvette Stanton
Monday 16th and Tuesday 17th April 2012
From my upcoming book “Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães” comes this exquisite whitework handtowel, featuring a style of embroidery from Guimarães in the north of Portugal. With drawn thread work and a profusion of bullions and eyelets, this is a lovely mix of counted and surface embroidery.
No need to be scared of bullion knots; you’ll come away from this class highly proficient at working them! The method I teach for working bullions is different than the method many people use, and often using this different method gives great results that were previously unachievable for many stitchers.
For many, this will be the first chance you will have to discover the delights of Portuguese Whitework, and believe me, I am completely enamoured with it!  It is a delight worth discovering!
Skill level: all levels. This project includes both counted embroidery and surface embroidery. Make sure you can count well – magnification will help!
Kit Contents: 38 count linen fabric, pearl cotton, needles, copy of “Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães” by Yvette Stanton
Please bring with you: 15-20cm embroidery hoop, magnification (highly recommended), wash-out marking pencil or HB pencil, embroidery scissors
Kit Cost: $85.00 AUD
To book in, please go to the TryBooking website.
Today I am interrupting the Beating Around the Bush class descriptions to remind you that tomorrow a visiting Canadian stitcher and I, will be visiting the Love Lace exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney, and that you are welcome to join us.
We’ll be meeting in the foyer just before the ticket desks at 10:15am tomorrow. If you’re planning to come, let me know, so that we can look out for you.
I thought I might spend a bit of time over the next few days giving you more information about the classes I’ll be teaching at Beating Around the Bush.
 Elizabethan Strawberry Roundel
With Yvette Stanton
Sunday 15th April 2012
This charming strawberry ornament features Elizabethan embroidery stitches such as buttonhole filling, reverse chain stitch and plaited braid stitch. Working with silks, paillettes and good quality imitation gold threads, this project will introduce you to the delights of Elizabethan embroidery. In red, green and gold, it would make a lovely Christmas decoration.
Many people admire plaited braid stitch but are scared of attempting it themselves. In this class, you’ll learn how to stitch it, with personal instruction from both me and my written instructions.
Skill level: intermediate stitchers (not complete beginners). This is because we will have a lot to get through in the one day, so instructing complete beginners would suck up a lot of my time, meaning the other students would miss out on me. Because I want everyone to have equal access to my tuition, stitchers with some experience – even if they’ve never done THESE PARTICULAR stitches before – are welcome in this class.
Kit Contents: Linen fabric, cotton backing fabric, silk thread, imitation gold thread, pailettes, needles, padding, card, instructions
Please bring with you: 10cm embroidery hoop, magnification (recommended), wash out marking pencil or HB pencil, embroidery scissors
Kit Cost: $23.00 AUD
To book in, please go to the TryBooking website.
On Friday I received my copy of the latest issue of “Inspirations” magazine. In it I have a new Hardanger project published. The project was a collaboration between me and Janie Hubble.
At the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair last year I found some lovely scrummy Cottage Garden Threads colours and felt that I just *had* to use one in a project. And so I quickly designed a Hardanger on my computer one night after the show, and started stitching it on the train on the way in to the city the next day.
 I asked Janie, who I was sharing the stand with, if she’d be interested in collaborating on it with me. Janie makes beautiful fabric covered boxes. She happily agreed and so our Hardanger-topped box came about.
My only photo of the embroidery is where the fabric isn’t totally flat, but I guess its better than nothing. Its not mounted on the box lid because I then sent it off to Janie for her to do all that, of which she did a lovely job!
There are much nicer photos of the project – they’ve called it “Treasure Chest” – on the Country Bumpkin website and in the magazine!
If you’d like to make it, you’ll need to avail yourself of Issue 73 of Inspirations magazine.
Yesterday here in Australia, it was Australia Day, and for that we get a public holiday. (Australia is often known to Australians as the land of the public holiday, however, having spent time in Ethiopia, I now believe that Ethiopia is the true holder of that title!)
We spent the day with friends, eating great food, enjoying lovely company, doing a jigsaw puzzle. It was a wonderfully relaxing afternoon, and we enjoyed it greatly. Back to the grindstone today – more website.
Last night we took our girls out for a huge treat (a treat for us too!). We went to see Opera Australia’s production of The Magic Flute at the Sydney Opera House. It was amazing! As you can expect, apart from the opera itself, I was transfixed by the costumes. Wow! Full of colour, shapes and pattern. It was fabulous! We’ll have two very tired little girls today, but they were so thrilled to be going, and really enjoyed the performance. Fortunately today is a public holiday (Australia Day) so we don’t have to do very much – no gymnastics training for one thing!
Now, if you’re wanting to do any classes with me this year, for Beating Around the Bush, the needlework conference being run in Adelaide at Easter time, two of my classes have changed. Beating Around the Bush is a fabulous event, and last time one of the things I loved best about it was simply being with so many other people who also love embroidery.
My one day class is now going to be an Elizabethan Strawberry Roundel, replacing the Hardanger class.
Replacing the difficult and unusual stitches class will be your first chance to do a class in Portuguese Whitework with me! We’ll be making the handtowel out of my upcoming book “Portuguese Whitework”.
The Mountmellick lily cushion class remains the same.
I would absolutely love you to join me for these classes! Bookings for Beating Around the Bush can be made at the Try Booking website.
I’m still plugging away at the website. I’ve been using Dreamweaver this time around, as I bought it since the last upgrade of the website. I must say that I am enjoying using it. Previously I handcoded everything, writing it in html. This was not the easiest thing to do, but I struggled through and had made a passable website!
But NOW… oh, how I love the freedom of Dreamweaver! It is allowing me to do things that I had previously only dreamed of (or never even dreamed of!).
I love the templates facility. I created my page, with its new header with drop down menus (oooh!!) and then converted it into a template on which to base the other pages. Then if you make a change to the template, you can also automatically apply those changes to the “child” pages as well. Wowee!
It is still slow going, but putting the old pages onto the new templates will hopefully mean that global website changes in the future are going to be a much easier affair.
I had hoped that the new website would be finished by the end of this week, but given that I’m now Mum’s Taxi, that won’t be happening! Maybe the end of next week, after the kids have gone back to school?!
I spent Saturday working on the Vetty Creations website. I need to add information about the new book, and that’s going to require quite a bit of a re-jig.
I made some changes to some files, and on trying to access White Threads this morning I was told I was getting a server error. I realised that the “things” I had done while fiddling with my .htaccess file probably weren’t a good idea. Back to the file and deleted the changes, and voila, the blog works again!
Sorry that its been offline since Saturday…!
This week the husband is back to work, so I’ll have a bit less time working until the kids go back to school next week. But I’ll try to get the website redone as quickly as possible, so that you can all place your orders for the new book!
Its still summer holidays here, though school goes back in a couple of weeks time. Yesterday we went to see the Harry Potter exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, here in Sydney. The oldest three of us are Harry fans, and the youngest of us – not much of a reader – knows just a little from what we have told her, and also from having had most of the first book read to her (we’re not quite finished yet!).
I really enjoyed the exhibition. There were quite a lot of the costumes on display, which was excellent to see. One thing about them really bothered me though: there was no technical information about the costumes. No information about the fabric, the techniques used, the designers and craftspeople. This information was not even included in the catalogue. For an exhibition that is being shown at a “design” museum, I felt that this was really disappointing and quite an oversight.
Three costumes, all displayed together, really stood out to me: two elaborate robes for the two different Dumbledores, and one set of elaborate robes for Professor McGonagall. Professor McGonagall’s robes were in a dark greeny-black-ish fabric, which had some really fabulous fabric manipulation. There was an interesting cross hatch of folds of the fabric, for the sleeves particularly, but also other sections. It was the same fabric as the rest of the unmanipulated fabric, and the contrast worked really well. I loved the texture and pattern created by the fabric manipulation. I would be very interested in learning the process behind it, but alas, that sort of detail was not included…
Because we had to stand a little way back from the exhibits, I could not really tell how the ornamentation on Dumbledore’s garments was done, but possibly there was some hand embroidery there. Once again, I’ll never know. 
Loved the exhibition though.
For anyone who is thinking of joining us for our day out at the Powerhouse Museum to see the Love Lace exhibition on Thursday 2nd February, we’ll meet at the entrance to the museum, just inside the doors. That way if it is hot out, or wet, we’ll be sheltered. Please let me know if you’re planning to come, so that we can look out for you.
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White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations quality needlework books and embroidery products. You can see turn-the-page previews of my books at
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