Crewel Work finished

At last I've finished this piece. Guess where I ran out of wool.

Blackwork Leaves

As part of my C&G course I am doing a study of the History of English Embroidery. I am up to the Elizabethan period and had to design a piece of blackwork. I used leaves as my inspiration and wanted the piece to be on white felt so pinned a piece of linen over the top to act as a guide.





I removed the linen when it was complete.

City & Guilds

Sorry if I've been a bit quiet recently but my course started last week. So been deep in research all week. The History of English Embroidery Bede to present day. Thought I'd done quite a bit already, but there's still so much to do. It's fascinating though. I've seen pictures and actual artefacts that are fantastic. how girls as young as 8 and 9 produced such fantastic work I don't know. I've actually seen some restored Blackwork that is in the EG collection, it's wonderful.

As well as that I've got a commission piece to experiment with and I've got a new toy - an embellisher, so been playing with that. More about that later - I hope.

July/August

Well the last month has really flown by I don't know where the time has gone. We went to London where we visited Wisley, I went to Hampton Court and the V&A to do some research.

When we came back we went over to Maryport to a Blues festival, that was great. We saw Van Morrison, though I don't have a picture of him, just the one on the T-shirt I bought. Did like Mike Harrison though.






I've almost completed Calico Gardens, the original. It's being made into a memory book. The pages have to be inserted and a few flowers stitched to the bottom 'grass' area.

I've also signed up for my C&G course so that's me committed for the next two years. So have been busy starting some of my research projects. Yes more than one.

Decisions made

We're now at the end of a busy week. I've made a decision to go back to my studies. Having had a year off and after a couple of experiences recently I realised I was now ready to go back to my City and Guilds studies.

I completed L3 Certificate in both Embroidery and Patchwork and Quilting in 2006 after 4 years study. I decided not to go on to Diploma level because it involved a lot of research and paper work. While in London I started to do research 'just for fun' on East African Textiles. As reported earlier in my blog I've also been on a course with Marcia Crookes and my love of making papers was revived. We had Sheila Smith talking to us about Nuno felt at the Guild on Saturday which really fired me again. So everything seems to be shouting at me to get my fingers out again.

So where's the problem you ask? Do I go back to Ashington (Kirkley Hall) or go down to Durham with Tracey Franklin and Julia Tristron and pay twice the price? At first glance you might say there's no choice, it's an expensive course anyway so go with the cheapest. However I know Tracey and Julia will not pull courses due to lack of funding as we are paying the full wack - no college politics to deal with!

Talked to DH yesterday after visiting both sets of tutors. I loved the exhibition at Ashington, however my heart says go to Durham. We did the maths and despite paying a lot more it worked out at about £20 per workshop which is still a very good deal.

I don't have to make a final decision until August but the sooner I make it the better