new Elizabethan embroidery

I started work yesterday on a new Elizabethan embroidery, which I had designed while holed up in the house on Tuesday. The project is for a class proposal.

My first step was to go a few suburbs to the local embroidery shop which stocks Au Ver a Soie threads. I arrived and found the front window of the shop looking empty.

Little panic. They haven’t closed, have they?!

I got out of the car and walked up to the front door where there was a notice explaining that they were shut for two weeks for renovations. Big sigh of relief!

However, it didn’t solve my problem of wanting to purchase some new silks. The note of the door said that they were still doing mail orders, but that doesn’t help me because *nowhere* on the internet can I find a visual, photographic colour listing of Soie d’Alger threads. Not even on the Au Ver a Soie website. As I don’t know what colour I want – I’ll know when I see it in comparison to the threads I already have – I can’t order via the phone or over the internet.

I’ll just have to wait until they re-open.

I have a copy of Jacqui Carey’s book, Elizabethan Stitches, to which I am referring. I am confused by her description of Elizabethan trellis stitch. She has completely different instructions than are used in what she calls “modern trellis stitch”. She supports this by providing examples where her version is used. I think this is fine as she is supporting her claims with historical examples. It is obviously a different stitch.

However, she seems to be discounting the use of so-called “modern trellis stitch”. I can see a stitch that I would think clearly is the “modern” version depicted in several places on historical examples within the book, particularly the cover (on the little bird). I find this confusing, to say the least. Maybe I will see if I can contact her to ask her about it. It could be a different stitch entirely, but it does seem to me to be trellis stitch, and what Jacqui would refer to as “modern trellis stitch”.

Despite this little confusion, the book is magnificent, with lots of wonderful close ups of historical examples, many of which are discussed in great detail. If you’re at all interested in this style of embroidery, the book is a must-have. Jacqui is a very thorough researcher, and this comes through in the detail of the book. The book is available in a number of places, but particularly directly through Jacqui on her website.

Some years back at around this time of year I made my first Elizabethan-style embroidery (shown right), and loved it. It was a new thing for me, and something I did when I was just coming out of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Apart from the fact that I enjoyed making it so much, it is special to me because I feel it heralded that I was getting better. I couldn’t have done something like this when I was sick, because I wasn’t up to designing, and nor was I up to actually embroidering.

I’m looking forward to enjoying this new project just as much!