Happy New Year to all my blog readers!
I have now finished my Elizabethan embroidery. It is unlike anything I have ever stitched before and I had so much fun doing it. This all came about because of a sort of personal challenge from Mary Corbet for me to include plaited braid stitch in my left handed stitch dictionary.
If I was going to include it, then I had to know plaited braid stitch back to front. So that meant doing a lot of it, and I wanted to make it worth my while, and make it into something pretty or useful. So this is the finished embroidery. I have ummed and ahhed about what I will make it into, and have decided that I will make it into a bag – sweetbag style. I did consider framing it and sticking it on the wall, but we’re running out of wall space, and besides I want to show it off! So it will be a bag that I will wear when teaching to keep my scissors, threads etc in as I wander around the teaching room. And I can wear it to any shows that I attend. What a show off I am!
Therefore, plaited braid stitch WILL definitely be included in the book (I know I’ve already said it would) but now it HAS to be, because I’ve invested all this time and effort in making this piece.
I did learn a lot from it too. About the thread thickness, and about the spacing of the stitches. And about starting off on angles, and things like that.
And as a by-product, I now have lots of experience with detached buttonhole and trellis stitch.
I am unsure as to whether anyone else would want to make this project too. Because I could write the instructions and make the project available at some point in the future… Or even teach it… So please let me know if you’d be interested.
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Oh WOW! Gorgeous job, Yvette! This is so beautiful! And the braid looks fantastic. Brialliant idea to finish it as a bag, too. I think it’s well-deserved “showing off”….
MC
Thanks Mary. Such comments coming from someone so accomplished are very kind!
I say WOW, too. You deserve to be a show off having stitched something so lovely. I’ve not attempted this stitch yet but have been interested in it since reading about it on Mary’s blog and The Embroiderer’s Story. What thread did you use? I’d be interested to know what you used for the flowers, as well, the colours are gorgeous.
Well done, CA
Note to self: Read the back threads before asking dump questions 🙂
I came directly to this post from your link in Stitchin Fingers and was so wowed by your beautiful embroidery that I had to comment striaght away. Now I have read your earlier posts and found the answers.
Now I am going to add you to my RSS feeder. 🙂
CA
Oh Wow-I’dlove to take a course on this piece. Please let me know when and if it will be come available. An online class would be great.
Hi Carol-Anne,
Thanks for your very nice comments on my work. I’m glad you found the answers to your questions. 🙂
Thanks for visiting!
Hi Anonymous,
An online class… now there’s an interesting idea…
I’ll be finishing off my left-handed stitch dictionary before I do anything about it though. First things first! I have to will myself not to get sidetracked!!
This is absolutely absolutely beautiful!!!
Gorgeous 🙂
Hello Evette from Uk!
I absolutely adore your embroidered Elizabethan work…true works of art,
I agree ..use it ( shame to not have with you to show off) be careful no-one steals it though!
Would love very much to learn the braid making as this interest me having a Marudai oak loom for braid making myself.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Pam UK
Hi,
I simply loved the embroidery and now want to try something like this soon. Very well done
Fantastic piece and I would LOVE to recreate it…What a gorgeous achievement.
You have done an incredible job with your Elizabethan embroidery project. The tension and evenness of your plaided braid is just perfection. I would love to publish the photograph in my Guest Artist Gallery on my website.
Hi Jane,
I’d be honoured to have a picture of my Elizabethan embroidery in your Guest Artist Gallery. Thanks!
That's beautifully worked! My embroidery teacher at school, Barbara Snook, wrote a number of embroidery books including a stitch dictionary. Plaited braid was in the dictionary, but she confided to us that it was the one stitch she'd naver managed to do, she'd just re-written the instructions from looking at other books. I had to have a go after that, and I did manage it in the end, but it wasn't nearly as neat as yours. Sighs with envy….
IF you contact the Society for Creative Anachronism? I am sure they would love to have classes or workshops or any how to information. My time period is Elizabethan an I would love to learn how to do these stitches!
Cilean, I will be teaching some of these techniques at a class at Beating Around the Bush in Adelaide, Australia, next year. Photo and information via the link below.
http://vettycreations.com.au/white-threads/2013/10/31/beating-around-the-bush-2014-adelaide-australia/
hello!
did you write your leftie book? love to have one. let me know the particulars
margaret
Hi Margaret, Yes I did write the left-handed embroidery book. You can find all you need to know on my website: http://www.vettycreations.com.au/left-handed-book.html
Is this pattern/kit available? I am a big fan of your books. Do you have any plans to write one on Elizabethan embroidery?
Hi Pam, no there is no pattern or kit available for this project. It was a project I did while recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I don’t have any plans to write a book on Elizabethan embroidery. These days I try to write the books that preserve old and often “unheard of” (outside of the place they are from) forms of needlework. There are many books on Elizabethan embroidery and so I’ll leave it to them, and concentrate on the things no-one else, or few, are writing on.
Fantastic ..: an online class would be great