Stitching Idyllic by Ann Bernard
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/entire-northern-ireland-village-knitted-wool-crochet-cloughmills-county-antrim?utm_medium=atlas-page&utm_source=facebook.com
I tried to copy and paste the article for you but it did not work well. It is amazing what can be accomplished when a group of ladies gets together and decides on a project.
Life on this planet, earth, is changing rapidly. Every day seems to be a crisis and for many of us, it is only the early days of this pandemic. I send best wishes to all readers and hope that you will stay safe and well during the next few months. It is not easy for anyone and it will hurt us all in different ways.
To help our courage and mental health, I suggest that during this crisis, that we share how we are coping. We can also share how we are spending our time. Many of us will use the time of isolation as a time to be creative.
What stitching are you working on? Do you have questions about your project?
My current project is mundane. I work these glasses cases when in a group and the focus is more on chattering than on stitching. They are ‘busy hands’ work. The kits originate with the cruise companies and sit, unstitched, in stash collections, all over the world.
I will also tell you, that I am no longer young, or even middle aged. The passing years now qualify me as ‘old’. My vision has deteriorated recently and even this project is hard on my eyes. Thanks to the professional and excellent care I have received, I am able to see adequately for all normal activities. In a previous lifetime, I would have been blind decades ago. A profound thank you to medical research and the skills the doctors have developed.
Send me your suggestions for coping with this pandemic. Please also send me a photo of your current creative project together with a brief write up of who you are. We would also love to see how your project progresses.
email me at ann@annbernard.com
Let us communicate and support each other.
Lucky Sidney and Australia. Though they deserve some ‘luck’ after living through the recent months of bush fires. They have the opportunity to see the Magna Carta (An Embroidery). It commemorates the signing of the Magna Carta 800 years ago.
It is the charter of rights and freedoms and formed the base of the Constitution of England and many other countries. It was drafted by the Barons and reluctantly signed by King John who subsequently tried to get it suspended.
Magna Carta (An Embroidery) is a 2015 work by English installation artist Cornelia Parker.
The artwork is an embroidered representation of the complete text and images of an online encyclopedia article for Magna Carta, as it appeared in English Wikipedia on 15 June 2014, the 799th anniversary of the document.
The bulk of the text of the Wikipedia page has been embroidered in various prisons by inmates under the supervision of Fine Cell Work, a social enterprise that trains prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework.
One never, ever knows, at any time in ones life, just what event will lead to something unexpected.
In 2000, Carol Hofmeyer, a doctor and an artist, retired to the beautiful area of Eastern Cape in South Africa. AIDS was rampant at the time. In contrast to the rural beauty, the local people were suffering from un-treatable AIDS. As the young adults died, they left orphaned children. The elderly women had to take over caring for them. Across Africa, there were millions of orphaned children.
In the village of Hamburg, Carol Hofmeyer started to teach the women how to sew as a means for them to earn a living. They designed panels showing the abundance and beauty of their area and contrasted it with the devastation caused by AIDS.
In 2003, the Keiskammen Trust was established which combined the Art Project and AIDS Treatment Program. This short movie is worth watching. You will see the Altarpiece, the details and and an explanation. You will also see the beauty of Eastern Cape and the treatment of the AIDS Pandemic. The ‘mini glimpse’ included here is only a blink of the total.
The Stephen Lewis Foundation was formed in 2003 specifically to fund and support the needs of the families in many countries affected by AIDS.
Guelph GoGo Grandmothers is one of 250 groups in Canada that raises funds to assist the grandmothers and young mothers. They are also involved in education, and with other issues, Our local group, founded in 2006, is very active in raising money. There must be thousands of other groups world wide.
An assortment of gardens picked at random. It is amazing how creative stitchers can be when they have the information and the inclination.
The half price offer on my ebooks ends on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 12.00 EST (noon).
Post a comment and I will send you the download code for this offer. There are two ebooks,
Hand stitch Recognizable Spring Flowers and Hand stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers.
Offer ends on Wednesday, January 15 2020 at 12.00, noon EST
Hand Stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers is another book that is full of ‘tricks of the trade’. It features another 23 flowering plants that use a variety of basic stitches in creative ways. There is nothing very difficult to any of this, it is just ‘knowing how to go about it.’ As you will see, from the two flowers/plants excerpted from the book, that, once you know how. it is just a matter of doing it.
You will realise from previous blogs, that the plants and flowers can be used in any way you wish.
Lavender, Delphinium, Veronica and Liatris are all worked in Herringbone Stitch.
Lavender is a bushy plant with long, delicate stems and leaves. The blue/mauve flowers form long spikes with a knobby texture. It looks to be related to Veronica but the structure and colour of the leaves are different.
Stalks and Leaves: Green 988 (2). Flowers: Blue/Mauve 340 (1) + 210 (1) = 2.
Stalks: Stitch some stalks in Straight Stitch adding a few shorter straight stitches as leaves to fill out the base of the plant. Add some flowers to the stalks. Create bends or curves in the stalks by displacing the stalk to one side with the point of an awl or with another needle. This is done while the flower spikes are being stitched. Add until a lavender bush of the size and shape you wish is achieved
Flowers: Use one thread each of the blue and light mauve. Stitch with Open Herringbone stitch. Start at the upper end of the stalk and cover the desired length of the stem. Note that the stitching is narrow in width and that the stem forms padding for the flower spike. Start stitching just above the tip of the stem, or start slightly below the tip for a flower spike that is not yet fully open.
Water Garden, stitched by Ann Bernard (original is 4″ x 6″)
Lavender, Veronica, and Alyssum are featured in this garden.
Purple Coneflower
The Purple Coneflower grows in clumps and reaches a height between 2′ and 4′. It blooms from mid summer into the autumn. Each flower opens with pink/purple petals and a flat centre similar to a Shasta Daisy. As the flower ages and the seeds in the centre ripen, the petals droop down to become vertical and the centre becomes larger and domed, eventually becoming cone shaped. One plant can have flowers in different stages of development. The birds and bees love this plant.
Stalks: Green 987 (6).
Leaves: Green 702 (2) + 988 (1) + 987 (1) = 4.
Petals: Pink 3609 (2), 3608 (3), 3607 (1). Explained in Petal directions.
Centres: Brown 433 (1) + 938 (1) = 2. Orange 721 (1 doubled in the needle) = 2.
Stalks: Using long Straight stitch the centres of each of the flowers with a small Cross stitch in either of the two brown threads.
Petals: Stitch a few Straight stitch petals in each bloom using 3609 (2). Add more petals using 3608 (3). Note that the petals are uneven in length and that the petals are darker towards the centre of the flower. Overstitch the base of the petals with one thread of 3607.
Centres: 433 (1) + 938 (1) + 721 (1) = 3. Overstitch a few horizontal Straight stitches across the central brown Cross stitch. Using 721(1) doubled in the needle = 2, overstitch a few French Knots on the centres using a fine needle for this such as a Crewel 9 or 10.
Leaves: 702 (2) + 987 (1) + 988 (1) = 4. Detached Chain stitch with the catch stitch towards the stalks of the plant. The upper leaves are stitched with 702 (2) + 988 (1) = 3. The foliage on this plant is fairly dense with the leaves being an oval with a point at the tip of the leaf. The angles of the leaves vary considerably.
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And then there are the Dandelions which is the most looked at photo on this blog. Stitching these is so easy it took a genius to figure it out!!!
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Most, but not all of the gardens are stitched on medium weight quilting cotton that has been photo printed. The instructions for this are included in the book.
The flowers are divided into stitch groups such as Herringbone, French Knots, Detached Chain, Straight etc. To interpret each flower, the stitch is adapted in a specific way.
Preparation of the fabric, photo printing, finishing and mounting the completed piece on foam core board are all included in the book. This makes it an ideal book for technical reference as well as for creative use of stitches. Experienced, as well as new stitchers, will find valuable information included in both books.
For a short time only, send me a comment and I will send you the code for a half price download of this ebook.
Tell your friends so that they can become subscribers to Stitching Idyllic blog.
Happy New Year. Ann
The New Year, and a new decade. Happy New Year to everyone!
For you and for your stitching friends, here is the deal. Read this blog, make a comment, and you will receive a code that will allow you to download my ebook on Hand Stitch Recognizable Spring Flowers for half price. To help you decide that this is essential/desirable information, here is a peek at the contents of the book.
Framed by Indalo of Fergus, Ontario. Gone to a new home as a gift.
As well as discovering how to stitch 23 different spring flowers, trees and bushes, the book includes basic stitching information that I have seldom, or never, found in other books. Which is why I have included it in my books. Not everyone is born knowing how to embroider; some of us have to learn.
Preparation, is vitally important. Good stitching skills do not achieve excellent results without the basic essentials being correct. You will find fabric preparation, choosing and mounting it on a frame, choosing the right needle size, threading it, starting and ending threads. All the flowers, bushes and trees are stitched using four stitches and variations. They are – Straight, Detached Chain, Buttonhole and French Knots.
It is amazing what can created by using simplicity — creatively!
It is all here in this book and none of it is difficult. Read this book, get out your imagination and stitch. Or, read this book and use it to create a garden of your choice. This is how most stitchers use the information.
First, A Review.
I can thoroughly recommend Ann Bernard’s Stitching Idyllic for Spring Flowers. Ann brings her training at the Royal School of Needlework to the fore by devising a whole new way of embroidering spring flowers with ordinary cotton floss.
Her method of combining different hues of 4 or 6 strands at a time for flower stems and flower heads results in lovely raised effects which make the effort of stranding (which I originally thought tedious) very worthwhile, and gives the impression of many stitches whereas your one bold and stranded stitch is fully expressive by itself. This technique for the flowers and stems – which aims for true colours in nature – at once gives a wonderful shaded and depth effect.
I’ve been an embroiderer for many decades and I was delighted with the results I achieved just doing a practice piece. Using only her techniques, I then embarked on an embroidery, of my own composition of spring flowers. Her directions ‘take you by the hand’ and lead you through flower sizes, growing habit, and colour to make them quite realistic. I completed my own piece of work without my usual agonies as a result, and I was very pleased to produce recognizable flowers. The directions are thorough and the diagrams very descriptive.
I would recommend this book for any stitcher whether novice or experienced, as there is much to learn for very pleasing results.
Sincerely, Edna Mumford
An excerpt from the book.
Threads: Stranding (Stripping), Mixing, and Saving:
The thread used is DMC Six Stranded Floss. Using the correctly coloured thread for the flowers and leaves in your final garden is vital. This conveys the identity of the plant and flower to the viewer. Form and perspective can be distorted but the colour has to be correct. This requires a large number of different threads but, except for the greens, very little is used of most of them. While experimenting on your sampler, any yellow will suffice to try out the technique for daffodil blooms. There is a Thread Conversion list at the end of this book.
Further Prevention of Tangles:
To pull a length of thread from a skein of DMC thread, hold the skein at the wrapper that has no colour number. One pull will give you about 12″ of thread, which is a convenient length for stitching on your sampler. Two pulls will give you a length that is relevant for stitching your final garden. The leaves and stalks use up a lot of thread.
Refer to the photograph below, noting that:
It can be difficult when you have your thread wound onto a card but this should help you decide which end is which. Thread is made of two strands twisted together. It can be hard to impossible to thread a needle against the twist. If all else fails, try threading the other end. Self threading needles are available. A Needle Threader is a useful tool but do use the finest needle you can thread for stitching. The quality of your work will be higher.
STRAND, or STRIP, YOUR THREAD. They are the same thing no matter where you live.
This is of profound importance and is a wise habit to develop. It creates a stitching thread that is untwisted and maximizes fabric coverage. It will achieve a much improved finished product and may decrease the number of stitches you need to make.
How to stitch one of the 23 flowers included in this book.
Daffodils
The bright yellow of King Alfred Daffodils makes them the most familiar variety of the daffodils. As our goal is to create plants and flowers that are instantly recognizable, we will stitch bright yellow daffodils. Note that a daffodil has long straight leaves and stalks, and that the flowers have six petals and a trumpet. We will stitch them frontal view for now. Later, we will return to daffodils and add curved and bent leaves and the flowers in side view.
Green: 320, 987, 989, 895. Yellow: 444, or 307, or 973. Gold: 972.
Leaves and Stalks (fig. 1 below): Use 2 threads each of 320 and 987 and 1 thread each of 989 and 895. These 6 threads of green are now stranded and mixed and make a blend of greens more like daffodil leaves and stalks than any one of them would be if used on its own. Stitch a few Straight stitches to indicate some stalks. The stalks need to be in proportion to the flowers and are about 1″ long in the sample pictured below. Start in the centre and stitch stalks first towards one side and then stitch the other side. Take the short cut between the stalks on the reverse of the fabric as in the diagram (this is the procedure for all the stalks for every plant). Store that thread by bringing it to the front of the fabric a short distance away.
Flowers: Four threads of any of the yellow threads, stranded but unmixed, to stitch the flowers.
Triangle Stitch: Stitch the inside triangle first with stitches about ¼” long (Fig. 2). Add the second and third triangles outside the first one (Fig. 3). Overstitch a Reverse Triangle the same size as the last triangle (Fig. 4). Note that the points of the reverse triangles are midway along the sides of the first triangles. Increase or decrease the number of the triangles to alter the size of the flower.
(Overstitch – stitch on top of previous stitching). Stitch a few flowers at the top of the stalks (Fig. 7). Store that thread and retrieve the green one. Add some more stalks to your plant or group of plants. Then, retrieve the yellow thread and add more flowers. Continue until you have enough flowers to please you. Using the same green thread, add more Straight stitches to fill out the plant with leaves. The leaves of daffodils grow taller than the flowers. Add a few short Straight stitches above the flowers to indicate this. Add more Straight stitches to fill out the plant with leaves.
These diagrams make stitching Daffodils look difficult. It is not. Just place Straight stitches as indicated and you will have no problem. It does take a little practice to make the flower the size and shape you wish, but that is why you have tried them first on your sampler.
Centres: Gold 972 using 1 or 2 threads. Overstitch a small reverse triangle in gold thread for the trumpet of the daffodil (Fig. 5). Your sampler does not have to be a completed work of art. Stitch enough of each plant and flower so that you know how the stitches work, the length of stalks and leaves, how the flowers are created, and how their size can be altered. Once you know this flower, move on to the next plant, Narcissi.
Stitched size is 1 3/4″ wide x 1 3/4″ high.
If you have started reading this book here at Daffodils, you have cheated yourself out of a wealth of information. The earlier sections include the ‘tricks of the trade’. This is a short cut to being an experienced stitcher without spending years to actually become one.
Write a comment on Spring Flowers and I will send you the Code for one half price, copy of this ebook. It will be available for a limited time only.
Lilian Henrikson, who created and stitched A Garden of Spring and Summer Flowers, posted the blog from this site to her own blog. To her delight, she received Comments for around the world.
Two extra flowers stitched by Lilian. On the left, Hollyhocks. To the right, Sunflowers.
Sheila McCoy, who is a well known embroiderer in Canada, has sent the previous blog to Inspirations. This is a magazine and weekly newsletter site in Australia. Thank you Sheila.
Remember, you saw it here first!
Here is an original piece of embroidery. There was no inspiration except for her imagination and the pencil drawing of her plan. Lilian Henrikson used all the flowers in both of my books, Hand Stitch Recognizable Spring and Summer Flowers, and, she included some she created herself. What was remarkable, was that Lilian never once asked for any guidance or interpretation of the instructions, which to me, meant that the instructions were complete. It is good to know that the books cover the subjects completely. It is also good to know that it is possible to create and add flowers of one’s own. You may not think that you would ever do that but Lilian did and, so can you! That is, if you wish to do so.
It started as a sampler trying out some spring flowers. You can see snowdrops, crocus, daffodils and narcissus here in small numbers plus a forsythia bush.
From there it grew to include groupings of flowers. Note that Lilian stitched lots of daffodils, many hyacinths in different colours and some primulas.
Here are the hyacinths again plus some tulips and iris. At the top, an unusual spring flower called Crown Imperial Fritillaria. It is tall and striking, and smells terrible.
Lilian moved on to summer flowers. Here are delphiniums, shasta daisies, several roses and orange cone flowers. Next to the holly bush (red) are asters, below is alyssum, the blue are gentian, the orange are cone flowers, the light blue are hydrangeas, and the pink are a feathery spike flower but the name is unknown
A close up of the portulaca which are my favourite in this garden. These are the first ones I have seen other than the ones included in the book. The colours of these flowers is vivid and different as is the stitching technique.
At the top left corner are hollyhocks and in the top right are sunflowers with lupins and peonies in between.
This is the completed Spring into Summer Garden. Lilian planned the pathway which makes the eye wander onwards. One should always pay attention to the scenery when walking through a real life garden.
It has been framed in dark green which sets it off nicely and does not detract from the embroidery. The glass protection reflects the lights and I was unable to get a satisfactory picture of it completed.
Here is Lilian who is obviously pleased with her achievement. And, she likes flowers -also obviously! She says she should have included a bunny somewhere!
This took many months to complete as Lilian is a busy person and mostly stitches for one afternoon a week. This is OK because I know that it took me many months to years to work out how to portray the 46 flowers, bushes and trees.included in both books. She comments that the project was fun and that she never got bored with repetition. Stitching kits can be really boring because of repetition. Quantities of repetition. It is not you, it is a fact of life and of kits.
Would you like to purchase a copy of both Spring and Summer Flowers ebooks at half price? Post a comment to this blog entry and see what happens.
The next blog will be a close up look at the contents of my two books. The half price offer will be included. It will be in time for you to consider this for a seasonal gift to yourself or someone else who enjoys stitching.
Our son and his family experienced a dryer fire a couple of years ago. No one was injured but they lost a lot of possessions including their hand stitched coasters. This is the set of four to replace them.
The stitching is black-work. There are multiple designs to choose from on Pinterest and in books. It can be worked in other strong colours if you do not like the traditional black. The design disappears into the fabric if you use light or medium shades of colour. An alternative technique is cross stitch.
Unstitched Acrylic coasters can be found on line at Etsy and Herschners. They come with fabric only or a with fabric, a cross stitch design and threads. This specific shape does not appear to be currently available but hexagonal ones are. These are stitched on 14 count Aida cloth using one thread of DMC floss.
Here are the other three designs. Accuracy is essential for blackwork stitching. I hope that you will not find any errors in these!
Black -work originated in Spain and was brought to England by Katherine of Aragon who was the first wife of Henry Vlll. This marriage lasted around 25 years. It was their failure to produce a healthy male heir that led to divorce and his remarriage to five subsequent wives.
Note the packing sequence of the cardboard inserts as this is the sequence of assembly. You may need to use some extra glue to secure the cork base to the acrylic coaster.
You still have time to make a set of coasters before the festive season is upon us. Enjoy!!!!