Teal leaf and the four-legged knot stitch

I learnt a new stitch today that is most pleasurable to do: four-legged knot stitch (p76 of Country Bumpkins’ A-Z of Embroidery Stitches)

It has undertones of palestrina – probably why it appeals to me – and reminds me of a) a South African band called The Hairy Legged Lentil Eaters and b) America’s stars and stripes. Quite apt in today’s Obama-fuelled times.

I’ve used it as a filler stitch instead of the usual seed stitch in the third leaf, done in teal blues, of my Jacobean leaves embroidery. I like it. I like it a lot.

Two of eight

Another leaf completed. And after a couple of days in bed with fluid on the lung and series three of House MD, I have the energy to pick up a needle again. So three is on its way...

An inspiring palace

I had wanted to go to Hampton Court palace since we arrived in England and last weekend we finally got there.

It’s an amazing place, even if it is pretty much devoid of furnishings. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it definitely made us notice the detailed nature of the buildings.

The paintings and murals are obviously impressive. The sheer scale, attention to detail and time it must have taken to paint them make them so. But there are only so many similar scenes you can take in before your mind starts to wander.

These chimneys naturally made me think of brick quilts.




Being the end of summer, the gardens were a riot of colour. I’m familiar with knot garden embroideries, but it was impressive to see the real thing in full bloom.





And the detailed gates reminded me of reverse appliqué quilts depicting overflowing flower beds seen through wrought iron curlicues.


Definitely worth another visit.

Boring… boring… gone

I wrote what can safely be referred to as the most boring blog entry ever written last week. It was such a non-entity that I didn’t even bother posting it. If my mind started wandering by the second sentence… well, enough said.

I think it’s because I work with words all week. I’m so used to having to stick to a style guide and use certain sentence structures and go into minute detail about the subject matter that my brain subconsciously reaches into its left hemisphere when it sees words. But I’m only 35% left brain and 65% right – according to this test.

Okay, so I’d probably score differently if I took the test again – that usually happens with me and these types of tests – but my point is that this blog is supposed to be a fun and creative outlet about a major part of my life: making things out of fabric and/or thread. Even if I don’t always have something profound to say or a wonderful new project to share.

That said, I did have a wonderful (if only because of the time it took to complete) new project to share about two weeks ago.


I posted it on my flickr site and it rapidly shot to my most viewed image! So that was pretty inspiring. Inspiring enough for me to redesign my blog header, as you can see above, and put some other plans that have been on the backburner into motion. I have been thinking about doing these things for a while now, but all those lovely comments definitely contributed to my determination to actually get on with turning my daydreams into reality.

Right, wrong and room for innovation

I’ve just started embroidering a new design – the source of much excitement and daydreaming over the past week. I stole minutes here and there before work this week to prepare my design of Jacobean leaves, filling in the details freehand directly on to the fabric and working out which stitch to use where as I went along.

I stitched the trellis on Thursday morning – working the late shift meant I had an hour or so to spare before heading out. And delayed just long enough to make a cup of tea before picking up my needle again this morning to start outlining in stem.

And then I hit a snag. The jagged edges of the leaf don’t really lend themselves to stem stitch. But the longer sections look really good in stem. Conundrum. So I began improvising, using stem for the longer sections and straight stitches for the shorter bits. And then decided to switch to outline stitch for the left-hand side of the leaf so the stitching is mirrored on either side of the stalk.

Out of the blue, a memory from a goldwork course I went on a while ago with my mom popped into my mind. We both lick the ends of our thread to get it through the eye of the needle – it’s a move that I think is genetic, it comes so naturally. So my mom casually licked her thread and the ladies next to us literally gasped. We looked up, to be told that the acid in our saliva (which is actually alkaline, we checked) would eat away at our embroidery over the years and it would eventually disintegrate. Hats off to my mom, she simply told them quite politely that by the time her embroideries had disintegrated she wouldn’t be around anymore anyway, so what did it matter.

But it’s not the first time I’ve come across a “right” and a “wrong” way of doing things in the embroidery world. And I have to admit I’m not really a fan of dictation. I’m more a believer that the more room for innovation, the greater your chance of creating something truly magnificient.

Sure, the stitches are pretty much cast in stone, but what’s stopping us from climbing out of our floss boxes and coming up with new ones? Or randomly interspersing stem with straight stitch when the result is a beautifully jagged leaf edge?