Category: Embroidery

Embroidery, General, Uncategorized

And the Next Two.. 14th November 2022

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I will readily admit that I bought this piece of lace as I couldn’t identify it. My research is still ongoing!

It’s a perfect piece, I doubt that it has ever been sewn onto a dress. It is a tape lace, the tape being looped into the design and then stitched and embroidered with needlelace stitches into place. The tape is about 3mm wide, so the work is very fine.  It is possibly called Vermicelli lace and from Armenia. My piece is 7cm x 1.30m.

The last piece that I purchased at the Decorative Antique Textile Fair in London in October is this silk shawl.

It is from India, silk fabric with silk embroidery using straight, running and seeding stitches. It is 54cm x 1.30cm.  It is a  Bengali Kantha shawl. It looks great hanging from the end wall in my studio, where the sun does not fall. Believed to have been made in the 1940’s.

We are heading into Winter here, the days are shortening and the darkness creeps further into each day. If the sun shines I nip out to the studio to test colours and to take any photographs, making the most of what light there is.

I am beginning a Collaboration with a fellow Book Artist and Printmaker and next time I post I will start to write about it.

Embroidery, Exhibitions, General, Uncategorized

It’s all in the Story – 17th October 2022

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Last week we went to London for a few days, the date was chosen so that I could visit the Antique Textile Fair in Chelsea Town Hall. It’s been a while since I have visited such an event and it didn’t disappoint. 

I bought four pieces, so two this time and two next. All different and none in my usual time period of the C17th, still I couldn’t not come home without them!

The image shows a bundle of Bucks Lace, I suspect from the interwar years, but I’m basing that on the cost of each yard, 2/6p (12.5p). There are two yards of lace, two inches high The designs really didn’t change much. The bundle has its original label attached from Mrs Armstrongs Lace Factory, which operated a cottage industry throughout the surrounding areas. The lace was attached to the original purple paper with tacking stitches. My story with this piece of lace was that I was born very near to Olney, a village in Buckinghamshire, where the lace came from.

There had been a domestic lace industry in this area since the C16th, gradually dying out post WW2. Mrs Armstrong was really Harry Armstrong, he thought that lace would be better marketed by a woman. He operated from 1906, until his death in 1943.

I can’t see me ever opening the bundle, which has remained so for many decades and which is so good to hold in your palm.

The other piece is from the Leek Embroidery Society, 6cm x 12cm. This society was started in 1879 in Staffordshire to promote high quality silk embroidery with gold work. It was closely allied to the Arts and Crafts Movement and William Morris and was made for both Ecclesiastical and Domestic venues.

The small piece was attached to a card and I immediately recognised the pencil writing of Joyce Doel. In the 1980’s and 90’s we were both Chairmen of neighbouring Embroiderers’ Guilds and she traded in all sorts of antique and foreign embroideries and indeed it was through her that I began building my own collection. Happy Memories.

Book Making, Embroidery, Exhibitions

Wanderings – 28th June 2022

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The North Yorkshire Open Studios is now complete, held over two weekends it dominated the beginning of the month. It was most enjoyable and lovey to welcome many people to my studio. Thank you to all that came.

There is always the clean and general tidy up before such an event and I had decided to undertake a major clean and sort out following it and so I did. There were things that I didn’t know that I had! and several things that have given me ideas. So while time consuming it was worthwhile.

I feel a little unfocussed at present with no major themes emerging so I have, as I always do, fall back on my notebooks. I had earlier in the year brought out of my collection a piece of mid C19th hexagonal cotton patchwork and then my son brought me a packet of chocolates from Paris, hexagons again. I have never done a hexagon book or box, so why not.

I made the box template

Then the reducing in size hexagon folds

Then the completed book with a lace embossed side and the other side with painted tissue paper. There is red machine stitching through the middle. The box is covered with painted silk paper a darker shade of grey/blue.

I did take part in the Turn the Page event in Norwich, as part of the TEN exhibition. I was not able to go, but by chance my son was there and took this photograph for me.

I have decided to give myself time to dabble and to pick up miscellaneous ideas and to see where they lead me. I have no events planned at the moment, so it feels good just to wander and to see where I end up.