merezhka and mountmellick

I had a wonderful day yesterday teaching merezhka to a lovely group of ladies in Springwood. They did a great job and produced some beautiful embroidery.

A couple of the ladies in the group had already bought my book Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery and worked the large scale sampler (we were doing a project of small scale technique in class) prior to the class. One of them raved about the instructions in my book. She said that they were so detailed and couldn’t be more clear. She said (my memory of her words) “you know how sometimes there are steps missing and you don’t know what to do next? Well, there were no steps missing in Yvette’s book.” I asked her when she was going to write her comments down!

Because this lady had already done some merezhka, she had already been thinking about it, and had a list of questions for me. Could she use filet crochet or filet lace patterns for merezhka? Yes. It would require a bit of thought to figure out how the closed and open bits would translate, but yes. Could you work merezhka in a circle with stepped sides, rather like you can with hardanger? Yes… you could. I’ve never done it, but you could.

I also discussed sources for merezhka patterns with another lady. Another suggestion that I had was for monochrome cross stitch patterns. To adapt these, wherever there is a cross, you could work a layering, and wherever there is blank fabric (no cross), you would have the gaps between layerings. I reckon it would take me a good while to adapt something like this – to get my head around how to adapt it – but it certainly could be done.

Last night I was surprised to find an email in my inbox with a scan of a completed embroidery. Yes, someone had already finished theirs last night, and it was beautiful. Thanks for sharing it with me. I always love to hear of people being so enthused that they finish their class project as soon as possible.

One of the other ladies in the class regularly teaches embroidery, and has been telling all her students about my books, particularly The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion and The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion. She gave them a huge plug by saying “We think these are even better than the A-Z books.” Wow! What a fabulous thing to say. Thank you!

My train journeys to and from Springwood were smooth, and I did get quite a lot of my Mountmellick done. I was surprised how tired I didn’t feel at the end of the day. I’d say it was because I was able to relax on the train home, with some enjoyable embroidery. They’d like me back later in the year to teach Mountmellick embroidery. I’m keen!

Thanks for a great day ladies!