Category: Stitching

Stitching is very useful when I want to think about a plot. I’ve totally fallen in love with the Bothy Threads Wrendale designs, and thoroughly enjoyed working on my first two last year.

Also did two special samplers for my children’s birthdays – a Shelley quote in a border of rosebuds for Chloe’s 21st, and a chemistry sampler from an Etsy pattern for Chris’s birthday last week. (Mathysphere – excellent astronomy pattern as well, but it means working on a dark background and that’s VERY hard on my eyesight. Very dark colours, or white on a white background, means a daylight lamp and maximum twenty minutes’ stitching.

I did a couple of birthday ones for other special people: firstly, this one for my friend Jo’s 50th (her three dogs – her younger Cockapoo is darker than the pic, but then the detail wouldn’t have shown up so I fudged it slightly).

Then one for my sister-in-law, of her cat. (This is a Bothy design. They’re SO nice to work with. Particularly loved the brightness of the colours in the flowers for this one.)

And finally, one for me – Shakespeare! It’s yet another Bothy (they are my favourite designer) and was great fun to do. I’m mulling about designing my own Thomas Hardy one in this kind of style. However. I’m on deadline. Back to work, slack me 🙂

 

One of the joys of summer in Norfolk is a poppy field.

So I wanted to include a poppy. It’s another from a cross-stitch magazine, designed by Joanne Sanderson. I enjoyed the richness of the colours in this one, and the outlining made a huge difference.

 

Next: a swan. This motif does several duties: memories of feeding swans with my parents as a child, the swans at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Yeats poem (which is one of my favourites) and Swan Lake. This is a Maria Diaz design, and again the outlining made a huge difference.

Next is one of my favourite places: the Globe. This symbolises my love of theatre and particularly Shakespeare, and I’ve been fortunate to see several productions here (Mark Rylance as Iago was a standout), as well as to an amazing production of Faustus in winter by candlelight in the Sam Wanamaker stage here. Going to the theatre/gigs was the thing I missed most in lockdown — streamed performances just aren’t the same. Best Shakespeare ever: for me that’s Ian McKellen in King Lear.  The design is from a Bothy Threads Shakespeare sampler; my son bought me the kit for Christmas and I’m looking forward to stitching it later.

 

Finally on this section, a guitar — another Maria Diaz design, though I changed the colours a little bit to make it slightly more like my own guitar. This one symbolises my love of music. (I couldn’t fit a piano and cello as well!)

 

Ouch – three months since I last posted! In that time, I have done some other projects – a wedding sampler which I’ll post after the wedding, and a sampler for my daughter’s 21st, which I’ll post later.

But updates on the big project.

Righty.

I’ve always been fascinated by peacocks, and I really enjoyed stitching this one. It’s a Lesley Teare design from a cross-stitch magazine, full of complicated fractional stitches and those backstitched swirls.

Next was the rose – I adore roses, and have quite a few in my garden. I remember my dad trying to grow a blue rose (Blue Moon); my mum’s favourite was a very deep red (Deep Secret). My late agent bought me a beautiful Brother Cadfael when my dad died, and I’m not allowed anywhere that sells David Austin roses without adult supervision, because they just come home with me. (Madame Hardy – well, obviously that had to be there. And Darcey Bussell. I have my eye on Emily Bronte and The Mill on the Floss. Of course it’s an arty garden!) This is another Lesley Teare design – ‘vintage rose’, and I loved the shades in this.

 

Next, the stained glass window. This represents my love of church-crawling – I did want to stitch my favourite view of Norwich Cathedral spire here, but couldn’t make it work. So instead I used a Bothy Threads (Derwentwater) design; the ‘panes’ of glass are in single rather than double thread, giving that lovely quality of light coming through.

I definitely wanted bluebells. A bluebell wood is one of the deep joys of spring; my favourite is probably Blickling Great Wood (because we can take the dogs), though I also love the ancient woodland at Foxley. And it took lockdown for us to discover that we had a bluebell woodland roughly fifteen minutes’ walk from our back door… This one’s from a cross stitch magazine.

 

Slight hiatus while I did a wedding sampler 🙂

Back on the big project: continuing the side borders as I go, and doing the first line of motifs, shown underneath a ‘leaves and flowers’ border (in suffragette colours!).

 

The spaniel is a design from Fido Stitch Studio, a Christmas present from one of my best writer friends. I did a larger project which was the spitting image of Archie; this spaniel has a slightly wider blaze, but is still much more like Archie than like Dexter (I do intend to stitch Dexter!).

 

The typewriter is a nod to my childhood; I’d always written stories in notebooks or on lined paper, but what I really wanted was a typewriter so I could be a PROPER writer. So I badgered my parents. (No, I didn’t want a doll’s house. I wanted a typewriter. And more books. Lots more books. There is no such thing as too many books.)

Eventually, on my sixth birthday, I got a Lilliput typewriter. It came in a hard case, and I can still remember the thrill of opening the case and seeing a proper typewriter. Metal, not plastic; and it was turquoise and white (so when I saw this Diane Machin pattern, it was clearly the right one for my sampler – though the turquoise I remember was more on the teal side). It didn’t have a proper carriage return lever – you had to push it from the side instead – but I’m fairly sure it had little metal buttons you could press and slide to set the margins, and gave a warning ‘ding’ when you were five characters away from the margin.

Oh, and the wedding sampler? It’s on parchment-coloured Aida; the design is from the Historical Sampler Company, and the bees were great fun to stitch. I’ve ordered a second (different) sampler kit from them, for an event later in the year.

More progress this week, to the point where I’m about a quarter of the way through. (I’m taking it off the stand later today and sneaking in another project.)

The border is quite time-consuming and fiddly (it needs concentration as it’s very easy to go astray on the backstitch), so I’m doing the side borders as I go; plus it means I won’t have to keep scrolling through the sampler.

 

This week’s additions: finished the alphabet, added the quote, and two butterflies.

The quote is one of my favourites because it’s so uplifting. It was written by Julian of Norwich – from chapter xxvii of Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving published book written in English by a woman, and the only known book written by an anchoress. In 1373, aged thirty and a half, Julian fell seriously ill. The night she thought she was on her deathbed, she received sixteen ’shewings’ (visions); she recovered, wrote her book and spent the rest of her life as an anchoress (i.e. she withdrew from secular life to concentrate on religious observance). I’ve modernised the spelling (though I was very tempted to keep to the original!). Stitched in Anchor 162 (surf med), and the attribution is in DMC 413 (pewter grey dk).

 

The blue butterfly is a Madeleine Floyd design (clipped from a magazine – I loved the feeling of movement). I’ve always been fascinated by blue butterflies, ever since I was a tiny child and saw the Margaret Fountaine collection at Norwich Castle museum; there are lots of chalk hill blues at Warham Camp, which I used as a research location for my book ‘A Will, a Wish and a Wedding’.

The swallowtail is from littlebeachhut.com; although we didn’t actually get to see any swallowtails during our research trip to Wheatfen Broad (same book!), we saw plenty of peacock butterflies. And I finally got to see a swallowtail at the Horniman Butterfly House in London (along with a blue morpho).

Started the ‘my favourite things’ sampler on 7 April 2021. Pleased with how it’s looking so far.

The top and side borders are based on a Textile Heritage design, though I’ve changed the colours of the jewels. Originally I wanted a border in green, white and violet (suffragette colours!) but couldn’t find one I really liked. This one is more of a medieval knot type, corresponding with one of my favourite literary periods, and the dog design at the corners (taken from a Celtic internet page) reminds me of the little dogs you see at the feet of a knight on an alabaster tomb (ticking another of my interests).

Close-up:

Notional details:

Borders and dogs, using DMC threads:

* dark gold 832 (golden olive)
* light gold 834 (golden olive vy lt)
* red 326 (rose vy dk)
* green 700 (green bright)
* purple 333 (blue violet vy dk)
* blue 3839 (lavender blue med)
* black 310 (black)
* white BS5200 (snow white)

The alphabet is from a DMC pattern – I really liked the font, and I also liked the idea of having flowers round them (similar idea to the lettering in medieval illustrated manuscripts, and the shape of the flowers is closely connected to the ‘jewels’ in the border).

The letters are stitched using Anchor – 168 (surf blue lt) for the main body and 169 (surf blue med) for the outlining. The flowers are stitched in DMC: petals 600 (cranberry vy dk) and centres 726 (topaz lt).