Sunday 7 April 2013

"Blackwork" embroidery

The victorian bodice is... continuing. There's a lot more hand sewing than I had accounted for, mostly thanks to my own choice of lace adornment, and it may yet come down to the wire whether I'll have a finished gown to wear on saturday. It'll be wearbale yes. Finished, perhaps not. 
 
In the mean time, have some other pretties.

One thing my feast gear is lacking, given how much medieval food encourages me to eat with my hands, is a place mat and napkin. I want something pretty to mark out my place at the table and something equally pretty to wipe my fingers with.

I designed the blackwork pattern on the right some months ago. It started in the best way of these designs, with random scribbling on some graph paper. So using this pattern, it was the perfect excuse to buy some of the yummy black linen from Ikea that I've covetted since a friend bought some for her own dress.

And this is how far I've gotten so far! I'm using the same gold thread that was used to embroider the cutwork sleeves of my court gown, and am working in the corner of the entire 1 metre piece, as I haven't decided just how large I want my place setting to be yet. For the napkin, I think I might just embroider selected pieces in the corners, so they tie together but I don't have to do quite so much repeat embroidery.

I had originally planned to do this in holbein stitch, a form of blackwork embroidery that looks identical from both sides of the fabric. But given that this isn't an evenweave fabric and requires a lightbox (or my phone) for every stitch, holbein would have been a madness too far.

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