Canvas Practice Continued . . .

So, I had a lot of fun with the 1.5" squares of the stitch samples.  They went really fairly "fast", so I decided to challenge myself with a little composition.  I figured it would be good to test these stitches out in non-square shapes.  It was good that I thought to practice this, and Chloe, thank you for your suggestions on what to practice too!  

I decided to use my design from my RSN Certificate Goldwork as I liked the design and it had some good solid areas to work with.  I have done all the leaves in cottons (mixes of solid DMC's and variegated Valdani embroidery floss).  On 3 of the leaves I used the same stitch for the whole leaf and just focused on shading with the stranded cottons.  For the other 2 leaves, I attempted to transition from one stitch to another.  

Further plans:  Blossoms will be white and maybe a wee bit of pink or gray for shading in cottons.  I was planning on doing the background in wool but not certain what color yet.  I thought the shine of the cotton on the lily of the valley would be nice contrast with the wool background.  

Sampling Away . . .

More Samples to come as I am getting lots of suggestions of stitches to try out!  So far, I have tried Florentine, Hungarian, Diamond Satin, Parisan, Milanese, 2-layer Oblong Cross (one sample worked in 2 layers and one sample worked top to bottom overlapping previous row), Smyrna Cross, Rice, Encroaching Gobelin, Straight Gobelin, and Upright Gobelin. 

In addition to trying out the actual stitches, I am also experimenting with mixing different threads and practicing my shading.  I've tested different mixtures of Appleton's Wool, DMC cotton floss (solids), Valdani Cotton Floss (variegated), Valdani Silk Floss (variegated), EdMar Rayon Embroidery Thread (variegated), Gutermann machine thread, and Mettler machine thread.  It is really interesting to see the textures of the threads mixing.  For some of the samples, I think the color mixing takes away from the stitch pattern and for others I think it enhances it.  Lots more samples hopefully to come!  

Getting ready for Britain

This summer I'll be going back to Durham, UK to do my last module on my Royal School of Needlework Certificate of Technical Hand Embroidery.  I am so excited about it!  I'll be doing canvaswork, which is a type of embroidery that quite honestly I am not terribly familiar.  I have not done a lot of counted embroidery.  So, in order to prepare for my course, I've been reading a couple books that Tracy recommended to me, Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray and  Dictionary of Canvas Work Stitches by Mary Rhodes.  I also started sampling stitches yesterday and so far I really, really like this technique!  So far I have stitched 1 square experimenting with Straight Gobelin and Trammed Gobelin and 5.5 squares of Upright Gobelin in various color and material combinations.  I have tried just Appleton wools and mixing in some DMC and some silk too.  I'm working on a 18 tpi canvas in antique as this is what I will be working on this summer.  It is not a very subtle technique it seems.  It seems like you have to be a bit more aggressive in the shading for it to come through and make a difference, but I have a lot more sampling to do!

Any suggestions on stitches to try?  There are so many of them!  

Here's my "to-do" list so far:  Florentine, Hungarian, Diamond Satin, Parisan, Old Parisan, Chevron, Leaf Diaper, Milanese, 2-Layer Oblong Cross, Smyrna Cross, Windmill, Broad Cross, Rice, Oblong Rice, Plaited Stitch, Herringbone, Rococo, Paris, Tent, and Diamond Eyelet.  

Gregg Floral

The Gregg Museum at North Carolina State University has so many wonderful examples of textiles in their collection.  I recently had the opportunity to study a group of men’s waistcoats from the mid-late 18^th century.  This design (for a workshop proposal) blends elements from a linen waistcoat embroidered with chain stitch floral designs and an embroidered waistcoat pocket flap.   My goal was to interpret the designs seen in the historic examples with a blend of traditional and experimental goldwork techniques. 

 I loved how the buds were stitched on this pocket flap with spangles and smooth purl. 

 I loved all the chain stitching on this waistcoat.  All of the embroidery is just chainstitch plus a couple french knots.  The mix and placement of the different colors was really nice and created a lot of detail to the miniature floral designs. 

 

Below is my final design.  I interpreted the chainstitch from the waistcoat using colored metal purl.  It was a lot of fun doing such a large chain stitch and created a lot of height without padding!  I have done satin stitch behind the chainstitched metal using a Valdani thread.  The flower center is french knots of stretched purl and Valdani thread.  For the buds, I took the idea of the spangles and purls and I layered colored and stretched purls to create more height.  The leaves are a combination of chainstitch and chipping and the stems are s-ing.  

Just before Christmas, I ordered my first Valdani threads and I have to say... I quite like these threads!!! My colleague, Susan Brandeis, loves them!  The colors are absolutely beautiful.  They are so much richer than the DMC's I am used to using and the variegated colors are really nice.  Here I'm stitching with the Quilting and Sewing Cotton thread.  Susan kept telling me that she loves the way it sits on the fabric and she is totally right!  It is mercerized so it has a very soft sheen to it and it does sit on top of the fabric in a way that embroidery floss does not.  That being said, I'm still forming my opinion of it with certain stitches like long and short where the threads need to blend together a bit more.  More experimenting is on the way with the Valdani threads! 

 

A Look Back: Consuelo

My love of the Gilded Age, Industrial Revolution, and Belle Epoque time period, is something that if you know me, you probably hear far too much about!  I am a huge Downton Abbey fan.  Growing up in western North Carolina, the Biltmore Estate was a constant family field trip.  We went countless Christmases to see the decorations and more times than I could remember when visitors and family came into town.  The Vanderbilt's life and stories fascinated me.  The Boldini painting hung on the staircase captured my imagination.  It was a time period full of contradictions, full of extremes, full of juicy stories, full of amazing stitching.  Most intriguing to me is how American wealthy family literally bought British and European culture-- their titles and their possessions.

The Smithsonian channel is running a new series based on these Dollar Princesses.  Here is a link to Million Dollar American Princesses.  I am two episodes in and it is fabulous (so are all the books that the guest speakers have written if you are interested!).  It is my excitement about this new series and Downton Abbey season 5 just starting in the US this week that inspired me to do a "throw back" post to my thesis project.  

When it came time to choose the inspiration for my thesis project in grad school, I knew I wanted to focus on bridal fashion and embroidery, but I could not decide on a concept.  One of my peers asked me, "Who would be your dream client of all time?"  "Consuelo Vanderbilt," was my reply without even blinking.  And, so I embarked on a 2 year adventure that took me from North Carolina to Newport, Rhode Island to Blenheim Palace and London.   I read everything that I could get my hands on concerning Consuelo Vanderbilt, America's Gilded Age, Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and a phenomenon that has a grip on me-- the Dollar Princesses, the group of girls traded from wealthy American families to British and European noble families for titles.  The British and European families were in need of a new cash infusion.  The American families needed social status and acceptance, which a title granted automatically. 

For my project, Consuelo:  The Glitter of a Dollar Duchess, I handcrafted a modern wedding gown inspired by Consuelo’s marriage to the 9th Duke of Marlborough using a vocabulary of ivory silk satin and silver embroidery. I explored the blending of tradition with modernity, as illustrated in the many American Nouveau Riche that “invaded” British society at the end of the 19th Century.  It was my desire to honor Consuelo with this dress while also alluding to some of the realities in her situation. 

The final gown was embroidery with over 73 individual motifs including 8 sets of strawberry leaves to represent the Duke's coronet, orange blossoms to represent Victorian wedding happiness, and acorns to represent the Vanderbilt family.  Silver was chosen for the embroidery and the petticoat as it had been a popular choice for numerous European and British royal brides over the centuries that served as the inspiration for these arranged marriages established for economic, social and political gain. 

Below are some images of my final piece, but if you would like to see my whole process below is a link to my thesis blog (or you could check out my written thesis at the NC State University library!).  All the hand embroidery was completed by myself.  The gown and petticoat were handcrafted by myself utilizing traditional couture dressmaking methods.  My blog covers the whole process from the sampling, patternmaking, fitting, constructing, embroidering, and finishing the final gown and petticoat. 

Consuelo:  The Glitter of a Dollar Duchess

Gown Materials: 

100% Silk Double-faced Satin with Silver metal threads (some are silver plated, some of 90% silver, see previous posts for specifics for each motif)

 

Petticoat Materials:  

Bra top is ivory 100% silk Duchess satin with natural cotton padded bust cups.

Corselet is 100% cotton tulle with grosgrain casings filled with spiral steel boning.

Skirt Yoke and Lining is 100% natural silk Double-face Satin with tea stained Valencienne lace trim and blue grosgrain ribbon bows.

Outer Skirt and Bustle is Silver Silk Metallic Tissue (warp is silk, weft is metal) with 3" white horsehair braid and tea stained Valencienne lace trim.

Studio Photographs by:  Austin Simmons

Detail photographs by: Katherine Diuguid

Model:  Leigh Hawkins
Pedestal:  Trevor Lacasse

Hair and Nails:  Alter Ego, Raleigh

Make-up:  Katherine Diuguid, Leigh Hawkins, and Shelley Smith

Location:  Carol Grotnes Belk Rotunda, Brooks Hall, College of Design, NC State

Posey Casket Toy- Finished (I think)

I think I have finished the Posey Casket Toy from the Tricia Nguyen workshop I took at the Winterthur Needlework Conference.  I love the sculptural aspect of these casket toys.  I love the fiddliness of them and the challenge!  Really it has inspired so many ideas I want to try that I want to move on to those! 

 When I did the second flower, I thought it would be interesting to try to cover the center with French knots.  I started with the same silk covered cotton form as the first flower and then added lots of french knots when I attached the center to the flower.  I think it needs some refining, but I'm quite fond of the texture it gives the center.  I'm looking forward to experimenting with this more in the future!

 I tried the bullion knot seeds again on the second strawberry!  They seemed to come out better than on the first one.  The trickiest part of the bullion knots seeds is taking care of the Soie Ovale thread.  It likes to catch on everything that has any kind of texture (including finger prints). 

 Something that caught me by surprise with this exercise is that I found the flowers and the strawberries lots of fun and the leaves very tricky.  I kept getting very annoyed at the shape of the leaf distorting or just not being as "leafy" as I wanted.  Finally by the last leaf I completed, I realized that I was starting with too short of a first turn which meant that the leaf quickly went too straight with the subsequent rows (you can see it in the bottom leaf in the photo below). 

Finally, I found a sharp, sharp needle completely mandatory for working with the Soie Ovale and the silk braids.  I could actually hear a certain squeaky noise when the needle would start to dull and then it would start to catch on the silk braids, damaging the integrity of the thread and silk of the braid.

Posey Casket Toy- Winterthur workshop

So far, I have finished a strawberry (with tiny bullion knot seeds) and a daisy-type flower.  I am already getting ideas for how I want to use this technique in my own work in the future.  I absolutely LOVE how sculptural it is!  I also am dying to try out some lily-of-the-valley blossoms, though I know this does not surprise anyone!  

In our workshop Ms. Nguyen, showed us some examples of different casket toys that she has seen in private and museum collections.  One of the strawberries shown had seeds in bullion knots (all others were seed stitch) and everyone was remarking how difficult that would be.  I had to give it a shot!  It was not easy for certain, but I loved the challenge of it! 

I found it difficult for a couple different reasons:
- Using the Soie Ovale thread which is a filament silk (no twist) made it a little tricky, especially with my needle-hole-ridden finger tips which want to catch the silk. 
- The size of the strawberry also caused it to be a bit fiddly.  The strawberry is only 3/4" in length, so trying to hold it and get the correct tension on the bullion knot proved challenging.
- It was also my first attempt of doing bullion knots on an object.  It just feels different than having a flat surface stretched on a frame.  

Overall, I'm pretty happy with them.  Some of the bullion knot seeds turned out better than others.  I have a couple that the tension went a bit too bubbly.  I love the effect of the bullion knots for the seeds though!  They add a bit of texture and color.  I am thinking of maybe trying the next strawberry with metallic bullion knot seeds.  I think it would be interesting to see how the metallic looks and reacts on such a small scale.