White Threads

Upcoming classes in Sydney

In the next couple of months I’ll be teaching some classes here in Sydney. I’d love you to join me for either of these classes!

Up first is a class at Mosman Needlecraft on 9th and 10th March. I’ll be teaching the Portuguese Whitework handtowel from my book. If you’d like to participate in this class, please contact Mosman Needlecraft.

After that, I will be teaching the biscornu from my book Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães at The Embroiderers’ Guild of NSW at Concord West. The class will be on two Saturdays, about a month apart (27th April and 25th May), giving you a good chance to get more of the drawn thread work done as homework between classes. If you’d like to book into this class, please contact The Embroiderers’ Guild. Places will fill quickly in this class – pretty much all classes at the guild headquarters do!

more whitework stitching

When I went away overnight the other day, I suggested that I would get about 1.5 hours of stitching time each way, there and back. I calculated wrongly – actually it was more like 2.5 hours each way! However, due to the fact that I kept making mistakes, I didn’t end up having very much to show for all that stitching time! I kept having to undo large sections of what I’d done, when I’d find that there was a tiny mistake WAAAYYY back, and that large slabs had to be moved…

I often say that the sign of a good Hardanger stitcher is someone who is willing to undo lots of it to get it right. I think that also applies to the style I am now working on.

I think this therefore should tell you that the embroidery style that I am working on is definitely counted!

After returning from my trip away on Tuesday, there was time to visit The Crewel Gobelin, my semi-local needlework shop. I had dropped in there a few weeks ago to buy some Au ver a Soie, only to find that they were closed for renovations.

Well, I am pleased to say that the newly painted, newly reorganised shop looks great! Julie, the new owner (who was working there for several years before she bought the shop from Margaret, and is just lovely) from what I remember, has a background in window dressing, and it certainly shows. The shop looks more spacious and very fresh. The staff are as helpful as ever, particularly the lovely Gill!

If you are in the area of The Crewel Gobelin (Killara, Sydney) then do drop in to visit and check out the shop. (No affiliations, just a long-term, very happy customer!)

Last night I finished the embroidery for the first project for the new book. I am very pleased with it. I learned a lot by doing it, particularly about designing this style of embroidery. The design changed quite markedly from my first draft through to the final product.

I had previously wondered whether this might be the first book I’ve ever done where I might be able to send a pattern and materials off to a model stitcher and get them to do some of the embroidery for me. However, with the number of changes I made during the process of stitching, I don’t think that that will be possible. So as usual, I will have the pleasure of doing all the stitching myself!

a lovely weekend of stitching

I spent parts of the weekend doing some new stitching. It is a style I am exploring as a possible book subject. I am loving every minute of working it! Of course, I am not going to tell you what it is any time soon (I’ll be keeping that particular cat in the bag for a lot longer yet!) except that yes, it is whitework. What a surprise! 😉

I designed my first piece the other day and set about stitching it. I have already learned that what looks good drawn out on the computer doesn’t necessarily work so well when you stitch it! There has been a fair amount of unpicking already and reworking. I’ve now found another bit that I am not happy with that will have to come out and be re thought through.

It has been a very interesting learning experience. As I stitch I am mentally noting all the tricky bits that would need particular explaining in order to teach it.

I also did a bit of house painting with my husband on Saturday, and yesterday The Gymnast (previously known as Rainbow Girl) and I went to see the gymnastics at the Australian Youth Olympics Festival, here in Sydney. We saw junior teams from China, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia competing. It was an excellent competition and we enjoyed it very much. Of course, I did some stitching during the breaks!

I’ll be away overnight tonight, so it is unlikely that I will post tomorrow. However, I’ll have about 1.5 hours of stitching time on a train both today and tomorrow, so I can’t complain about that! I’ve just got to get all today’s orders done before I go. I’d better get started now!

Researching old embroidery styles

As you will know from reading my recent post about having itchy feet, I’m wanting to learn a new-to-me style of historical embroidery for the purposes of writing a new book. So how do I decide which one to pursue?

For me, the process often starts with going to my local embroiderers’ guild and trawling the library. I did that last time and that’s where I first saw Guimarães embroidery. I haven’t done that this time.

This time I headed straight to the internet, mostly because I started my researching in the period between Christmas and New Year, when the guild wasn’t open! I worked my way through likely countries, and searched using both the word search (country name, combined with “needlework” or “embroidery” or “folk costume”) and image search sections of Google. Of course, the image search is always so much more exciting! If possible, I translated the terms “embroidery” and “needlework” into the language of the chosen country and searched for them as well. That often gave me different results.

I then headed to Pinterest and searched again, using my chosen search terms. Pinterest, being purely visual is a great way to do this sort of research!

All the images I found that were of interest were pinned onto a “secret” Pinterest board. I use a secret one for this so that anyone on Pinterest can’t see what it is that I am researching. I usually only tell people what I am working on when I am much, much further down the track. Using a Pinterest board automatically links the image back to its source so that I can easily find the source again if I need to – it is so useful!

Usually in amongst my research I come across one style that really stands out to me as being unique. I assess the style to see whether there is enough unique technique or style within the embroidery to write a whole book on it. If there is, then I really get stuck into that style. If I have any contacts within the country of interest, I email them with my questions. If there are any blogs or websites, I read everything I can, using Google Translate where necessary. It doesn’t provide wonderful translation, but it is usually enough for me to get the gist of what it says.

If I come across any existing books that are likely to have information on the style (even if they are in another language), I try to see if I can get them via interlibrary loan, or purchase them second hand.

At some point in the process, I tell my husband the country of interest, and he goes off and starts researching all the places that he would like to visit in that country! In the past few weeks I have presented him with several possibilities, and you can be sure he has looked up every single UNESCO world heritage site in those countries! He really loves organising what we’re going to see on our holidays, so I leave that to him.

Then I see if there are museums in the country that hold items showing the style. I contact them and make appointments with the appropriate people, to visit them when we visit the country. If there are artisans still working the style, I try to make appointments with them too. They are the ones I can ask technical questions of, about how to stitch, the order of work, the fabrics and threads etc.

I always try to learn what I can before I visit the country. If possible, I like to have already tried the style. It means that I have more idea of the questions I want to ask about the technicalities of stitching. I also like to ask about traditional motifs and the history of the style.

While visiting the place where the embroidery originates, visiting museums to see historical examples, talking with the curators there and other experts, seeing artisans actually working the style (if it is still done), and exploring and photographing the township/city environs to get a feel for the culture, are my main aims.

If I am allowed, I photograph as much of the embroidery as I can. While these photographs usually can’t be used for publication, they form a very valuable image reference for me.

And then I come home and get stuck into creating the book!

Mountmellick and Hardanger

I had a wonderful day yesterday teaching Mountmellick embroidery to a group of lovely ladies at Hobbysew, Penrith. We did the small honeysuckle doily from our book Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature. They did a great job, and some were very vocal about how much they were learning and enjoying the class.

Look how comfy these chairs are!

I have never been to a class before that provides such amazing chairs to sit on. Most places I teach, we get plastic chairs (like the type they have in schools) or slightly more luscious padded ones. Well, the chairs for yesterday were in a different class completely: they were ultra-padded! It was a very comfortable day.

Last night I was rifling through a drawer of fabric to find some evenweave linen, and delightfully, I happened upon a partially complete Hardanger embroidery. It was definitely one of my designs, but I must have begun stitching it prior to having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (when parts of my memory got wiped) because I don’t remember doing it at all! It was a lovely surprise, and I really like the design! The Gymnast said, “That’s very nice, Mum, but it would be even better if it was finished.”

I estimate that I probably started it some time around 2007, because it is very similar in style to another one I did around that time. I will have to go through my old files on my hard drive to see if I can find my chart for the design. Who knows what else I might find while I do that…!

Mountmellick class

It’ll be short and quick today. I’m off to teach a Mountmellick embroidery class in Penrith. We’ll be embroidering a small doily. I’m sure I will have a lovely day sharing embroidery with others!

I hope you have a great day too!

Italian needlework blog

Today I am going to direct you to the blog of a friend of mine. I’ve mentioned “Jeanine in Canada” as she is known, before, but her blog is so excellent that it is definitely worth mentioning again!

Jeanine’s blog is called Italian Needlework, and that’s exactly what it covers. Jeanine writes her blog because she is so enamoured with Italy and the needlework they do there, that she wants to share it with others.

Jeanine writes on the many different types of embroidery and needlelace that are done in Italy, many of which are whitework (which is why I enjoy Jeanine’s blog so much!). Because Jeanine speaks Italian fluently, she has great working relationships with many Italian embroiderers, who are often so very pleased to answer her many questions and help her in her understanding of their precious regional styles of embroidery. This gives her writing a real authenticity.

Jeanine’s blog is worth exploring just to see what you can find there. You could start with the most recent blog posts and read backwards. Or you could use the menus down the side of the blog and choose an area of interest. She also has many links to the Italian embroidery blogs she reads. (Even if you don’t read Italian you can use Google Translate or something similar to translate the pages for you.) If have an interest in a particular style of Italian needlework, search for it on Jeanine’s blog and it is highly likely that she will have written about it.

So if you’ve never been to visit Jeanine in Canada, I suggest you do it today.
http://italian-needlework.blogspot.com.au/

The Gymnast

To start off this post, I’d like to announce: henceforth Rainbow Girl would like to be known as The Gymnast. 🙂 I’m not sure how well I will manage to stick to this, but she has requested, so I will try to oblige. I am a little sad to be moving on from the Rainbow Girl moniker, but little girls who like rainbows do grow up and I guess they’re entitled to something a little less young-girl-y.

With that out of the way… On the weekend The Gymnast and I went away for a gymnastics training camp with some of the other girls from her squad and their coach. There were gymnasts from many different clubs there, and they had about 6 master coaches. The days were extremely long, and our girls’ coach was a little concerned that the long days with few breaks were going to be a bit hard for them. However, they all really enjoyed the experience, and learned new skills and worked on older ones.

A highlight of the weekend for The Gymnast (I keep going to write Rainbow Girl!) came on Saturday afternoon. Her last rotation for the day was on beam. The master coach, who is a former Chinese national team coach, was very impressed with one of The Gymnast’s skills called a straddle press. She was SO impressed that at the end of the day, they called all 60 gymnasts participating over to the beam area. From where I was in the viewing area, I just thought that they were going to make some housekeeping type announcements.

She then asked The Gymnast to demonstrate her straddle press for everyone to see, and said that in the 9 years that she’s been coaching in Australia, it is the best straddle press that she’s ever seen. The Gymnast was so proud, and I was so shocked! I must admit, though, that it was the best one I’d ever seen her do!

The best straddle press seen in Australia since at least 2004!

The Gymnast demonstrating her straddle press

In case you can’t actually see what she’s doing very well, I will attempt to describe it. Her hands are placed on the beam, her straight legs are stuck out to the side in a v shape, then she’s lifted up her bottom nearly to the level of her shoulders. She balances there, completely steady, with toes pointed for basically as long as you ask her to. What makes The Gymnast’s straddle press so good – I think, but have no idea really! – is that she can get so high. Most other gymnasts get just a little way off the beam (maybe a few to several inches), but certainly nowhere near as high as she does.

Please indulge me with this purely “proud mother” post! It did also serve a purpose in announcing the moniker change!

itchy feet – Eastern Europe

I’m getting itchy feet again. I want to go somewhere and learn about a new-to-me style of historical whitework. And this time, I think I want to look at Eastern Europe – the Baltic states, the Balkans and all the countries in between. With so many different regional styles of costume, there just HAS to be some whitework in amongst all of that!

I know that people from Estonia, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, Czech Republic and even Russian Federation (if we go a little bit further east) visit my website. I think that most of you come here looking for Rakam embroidery magazine from Italy. I mentioned it at least once before and that’s the page most of the visitors from that part of the world seem to hit!

If you are from a country, ethnic grouping, or historical region in Eastern Europe (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, FIROM/Macedonia and any other ethic groups or regions within those areas), I would absolutely LOVE to hear from you about your embroidered regional dress – particularly if there is whitework involved. I’ve seen some amazing white on white smocking from Croatia, some lovely openwork from Poland, some counted whitework from Estonia and lots more. While there are some absolutely exquisite redwork, blackwork and coloured embroidery styles, you know me, it’s the whitework that REALLY catches my eye!

If you are worried about your English skills, please don’t worry. Most of the time I can get the gist of what people are trying to say. And if you say it in pictures (links to images on the internet?) then there should be even less of a problem! Besides, I don’t speak any language other than English, so I am full of admiration for people who have another language other than their mother tongue.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Finishing techniques class?

I know this is going overboard, but this is my second post for the day!

I’m working on class proposals for a needlework conference. Would you be interested in taking a class on finishing techniques? Would you like to learn techniques to help you finish your small needlework ornaments and articles perfectly, neatly and exactly?

When I was at uni, one of my lecturers used to call me “tricky fingers” because of all the finicky things I could do with my hands (I did a very practical course which involved making things!). These skills have been well employed in my needlework finishing and I’d be happy to pass on some of my techniques to others.

If you were interested in such a class, what would you hope it would cover? I have a good list of ideas, but if there’s something specific that you would like to learn, then please let me know.