Chrimbo Trees, Chrimbo Trees, Chrimbo all the way!

I thought I would have a crack at making Christmas ornaments for the Perfumed Waters Swap, and some for my tree, and for mum in law's tree, and a few little pressies.

I like small fast projects that can be done in a few days.

These little Chrimbo trees are done on silk velvet in Goldwork embellished with crystals and sequins from the Fabulous Trim shop in Walthamstow Market. I used free colouring in book pages for the designs.

I like the way the bright check purl on the one on the left looks like tinsel!

I also do like the way they all look together, though they will be cut up, and stuffed and turned into individual ornaments.

Maybe next year I will make a more sophisticated Plaque, using posher crystals and more gold, and leave them all together. But this year I have too many bits and pieces planned for different people.

Embroidered Reticule 18th Century design

I finally finished the reticule I was making from the 18th Century silk shading and goldwork design, and I am very pleased with how it turned out!


The original design was taken from Gail Marsh's 18th Century Embroidery Techniques.

I used 2% gold and gilt threads from Mace and Nairn, and LOTS of Paillettes (18th Century for tiny gold plated sequins). I love Paillettes. They are so much classier than sequins!

I also used my lovely Handweavers Studio silks. The fabric was some silk twill I got from Ebay for a quid a metre. I have 36 metres of the stuff, and I use it for all sorts of things. I backed it with white linen to embroider it whech gives it some substance. When making up the bag I flatlined it with cotton drill to help it keep its onion shape. The bag lining is the same gold dupion as the piping.

To make up the bag I followed these excellent instructions.

I looked all over the web for the purse frame, I love the peacocks! I think it came from U handbag too,
but they don't have it any more.

And because it was for Queenortart, there HAD to be piping. I don't quite have her touch with piping, but she liked it anyway.

She chose the onion shape, and I believe it works well with the design.

There was much squee when I presented it to her at consequences.

And it was so simple to make that I beleive more purses and bags may be in my future. In fact I'm considering using the little bird design I posted last to make a spectacle case for the mother in law for xmas.

Belle Epoque Ball Gown

Okay, I have finished the Frock of Doom. I started wanting to do something loosely based on a dress which Florence Farr, my character for the 1897 game wore in an extant picture.

I used the Truly Victorian Belle Epoque Evening Bodice and Grand Parlour skirt patterns, and made them up preety much exactly as per instructions, just adding a black chifforn overlayer to the sleeves.

However, I did not get it finished for that game, so I wore one of my Artistic Reform Teagowns to the Ball, which actually worked much better for the character.

So there it sat, needing hemming, pressing, buttons, buttonholes and final Jhooshing for nearly two years.

At this year's Consequences (freeform gaming convention) there was a big Victorian game on the Satruday night so I sent my casting form in with the picture of Florence and a request to "just cast the frock!"

And I got Princess Alexandra. I had to buy myself a Tiara!

The hem took ages, it's about 8 yards around! And I hate the buttonholer on my machine, so I did all the buttonholes by hand. I like the way they look.

And I LOVE the little Swarowski Crystal buttons up the back.

I changed my idea for the lace. I was going to use a deep vintage chantilly, but when I compared the laces I had, it looked a bit too lingerie (perfect for an actress, not regal enough for Princess Alex, and the narrower modern machine embroidered lace with cream on black was just perfection.

Anyway, here be pics!

Small, but Shiny!

This year I am trying to embroider things for Xmas starting with the Perfumedwaters Xmas ornament swap.

I was a bit stuck for inspiration for this one, as designs need to be small, quick, stylish, and most importantly be adaptable for lots of bling!

Until I found these charming lighthearted little free designs by Andrea Zuill




I have some tiny bits of lots of goldwork materials sent to me as samples by Benton and Johnson, and some Paillettes and smooth passing left over from other projects.

And I had an Anemone mini-topic from Mulberry Silks and some fabulous silk Duchesse Satin left over from a frocking project, and the colours worked together.

So the lucky recipient will be getting a very luxe ornament indeed. The gold threads are made from real gold, plated over silver, and then hammered out very thin. So are the little god spangles. (They cost 10 p each but they add such shine!)


























It is worked in a combination of stem stitch, satin stitch couching, straight stich, (for the feet) Feather stitch (guess) and fly stitch for the little breast feathers.

Finally for extra sparkle I added some beads which I didn't use for the TYger Tyger bag.

I like it. Andrea's folky style is interpreted through my love of bling and luxe materials.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

First off, the big silk shading embroidery arrived at it's destination and was well recieved.

So I was between projects. (Not quite true, there is a belt with a repeating design I am working on as a surprise for a friend, but she's not expecting it, and I kind of can't face embroidering the same flowers in the same two colourways sequentially).




Perfumedwaters (LJ community mostly dedicated to perfume) swappage to the rescue. My swappee loves tigers, apparently so I decided to whip up a quick little beaded tiger design to go on the pocket of a large shopper bag.

Google image search to the rescue, I found a colouring-in page of a stylised Tiger, courtesy of http://www.louiseelliottdesign.net/Download.html which has the cutest animal pictures, which I stylised even more to adapt to embroidery rather than colouring in. I love his little face.

A few beads and some braid from the Big Trim Shop (formerly the Tiny Trim Shop, and it still doesn't have an official name though they are obviously doing well enough to expand) down Walthamstow Market where they have a wall of beads and sequins and another of every trim imaginable (by someone who has really lived and taken substances), and a raid of stash (for the natural cotton drill, and embroidery threads) and I was happily stitching.

I got quite creative with the braid, deconstructing it to add to the variety of beads and trims I had to play with, and layering the flower elements with sequins and beads

I'm rather pleased with him. He took a couple of evenings, and he was fun to do!

I'm less pleased with the workmanship on the bag. My Serger was playing up, and the seams are all bubbly. The top seam was so bad I had to quickly bind it with ribbon (the thing has to go off tomorrow). Apologies for creases, I did iron him, but then I realised I had forgotten to take pics and had to unpack him, snap him and rewrap him.

The Wedding Present Embroidery is all finished!

I'm sorry I didn't post progress pics, I took them but I was kind of up against it to get it done in time for my brother's wedding.

Probably didn't arrive in time anyway thanks to Royal Fail.

But here it is, the secret obsession that has taken up much of my spare time for the past four months!

Apologies for the wierd colour of the pics, I photographed it in various different lights, and it still doesn't look as pretty as it does in real life.

The real thing is almost A4.

The thing itself


Top detail

bottom detail


The forget-me-nots. They are four differnt colours ranging from cornflower blue to a pale blueish mauve. If you ever look at a spray of forget-me-nots the very top ones are mauve or pink!


The top flower. It's abrighter pink that the bottom flower.


The bottom flower.

The bottom forget me nots


Detail of the leaves. I'm not massively impressed with the way the stems join on to the leave, the satin stitch and the long and short stitch don't seem to meld very well.

Ok, so here is how I mounted it ready for framing.

When I took it off the slate frame it was kind of puckered! So I found some instructions for mounting embroidery. You take acid free foam board and pad it with polyester batting, to give a nice smooth surface and pad out any lumps and bumps. OOOPs, no polyester batting. So I figured that they must have used this method prior to the invention of polyester batting so what would they have used. Fabric? Several layers of? So I chose cotton muslin as the loosest weave fabric I could find, and used about eight layers. I think it worked fine, and I prefer it to polyester batting on general principals.



Then I stretched the embroidery over the padded board using pins.


I kept stretching each side repeatedly until all the puckers were smooth.

Then it was time to lace the emboidery over the frame so the pins could be removed afterwards.



Now I'm wondering what to do next! But I have a frock to finish for consequences and a couple of half finished smaller projects so I sould keep busy.

Some progress and a dilemma

I atarted with the small blue forget me nots, as I wanted to get into my stride in a simple part of the design. Initially I did the first little leaf in silk shading, but on that tiny a space I thought it looked wrong, with the medium mulberry silk, which is quite thick compared to the 60/2 silk I usually use, so I redid them in Satin stitch. I think the purity of the satin stitch looks nicer, and makes more of the sheen of the silk so I unpicked the first leaf, and re did it in satin stitch.



This is what I had completed by the end of the day. The thicker silk works up much faster! It takes a bit of getting used to, but I like the effect, it's more like a genuine piece, if you look at 18th century embroideries, or pictures of work by May Morris, it is done in very similar looking silk.

And this is what I have completed since. The silk shading looks nicer on the larger leaves, but I still like the contrast of the satin stitch next to it on the small ones. And I love the colours!


Heres one final gratuitous close up of the bottom leaves.


Next time, I might try photographing this outside, as it is really hard to get a good close up without the camera casting a shadow, or the flash only illuminating part of the design.

Anyway, I'm rather pleased with my mulberry silks, though less pleased with my stem stitch!