easily distracted by shiny things…
Posted in embroidery, knitting, writing on Jul 22nd, 2011
How exciting – I’m in a magazine! The magazine in question is a brand-new digital publication by Kate Davies, whose blog I’ve been following and whose knitting patterns I’ve been queueing for some time. So you can imagine how excited I was when she asked me whether I’d be willing to talk about smocking, and [...]
Posted in dolls, embroidery on Jun 21st, 2011
Hopefully this parcel has arrived at its destination by now – I don’t want to spoil a surprise! These little dolls are for Paul’s cousin and her husband, who are now the proud parents of identical twin girls. Catherine and Elizabeth are thankfully known as Katy and Beth for short – otherwise I’d have had [...]
Posted in embroidery, inspiration, sewing on Jan 27th, 2011
The trouble with buying men’s shirts is that the sleeves are always too long. I buy them because it’s quite difficult to find women’s shirts that fasten with cufflinks, unless you can afford to shop at somewhere like Thomas Pink. Then it can be difficult to find pretty or interesting cufflinks, but fortunately it’s extremely easy [...]
Posted in embroidery, sewing on Jul 28th, 2010
Another embroidery for a another friend’s daughter – born just two weeks ago. This one’s very simple – a nice flowing chain stitch, on silk. I found it harder to embroider on silk than cotton, because the fabric’s not as stable. Even if you try very hard to keep an even tension, the fabric still [...]
Posted in embroidery, sewing on Mar 22nd, 2010
Slightly larger than actual size (they’re about an inch across), here are three Dorset Buttons that I made at the weekend. I was too tired to make the waistcoat that these will eventually be sewn onto, so I figured that making the buttons was at least a start. I followed a tutorial in a 1935 [...]
Posted in embroidery, FAQ, sewing on Sep 16th, 2009
Just a quick reminder that this weekend is my smocking workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life. Today is the very last day that you can sign up – in fact you’ve got about an hour and a half left if you want to secure a place! The course runs from 2:15-4:15 on both [...]
Posted in embroidery, sewing on Sep 1st, 2009
This is my latest embroidery, for Catherine Elizabeth May who was born just less than two weeks ago. The font is Bickham Script Pro, and one of the things I liked about it (along with most of the fonts that I buy) is that it has proper ligatures. A ligature replaces a sequence of single [...]
Posted in embroidery, sewing on Jul 6th, 2009
This is what I’ve been up to all weekend – working panels of smocking on the front, back and sleeves of one of my tunic dresses. From top to bottom, the stitches are Trellis, Wave, Honeycomb, Chevron and Van Dyke. I’m really, really pleased with how the smocking’s worked out. Unfortunately, I over-estimated how much [...]
Posted in embroidery, sewing on Jun 19th, 2009
Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour in the Reading Room at the Museum of English Rural Life, having a look at a couple of books about smocking that had been put to one side for me. The books were Smocking: A Practical Beginner’s Guide, by Audrey Vincente Dean, and Smocking: Traditional and Modern Approaches by Oenone [...]
Posted in bags, embroidery, sewing, wedding on Jun 8th, 2009
I don’t like showing other people’s wedding things in their entirety before the wedding, so this is just a little snapshot of Laura’s beaded wedding bag. The ivory silk dupion was already beaded and embroidered. I removed some of the clear beads, and replaced them with red ones. You can also see the pretty flower [...]