Wednesday 5 August 2015

Embroidery Revisited

Embroidery has never been one of my things. I guess I have to have a practical application for the projects I undertake, and embroidery on clothes always says 'hippy' to someone my age. 

My mum's greatest joy as a young woman in the 1920s was painting and embroidery. When I was a child my bed had a beautiful cream linen coverlet that she had embroidered with bluebirds.




This matching pillow sham is still in my linen cupboard.

A friend signed up for an embroidery course at our local Neighbourhood House last year and I decided to join her for the heck of it.


I wasn't completely clueless about basic embroidery stitches but learning to do the bullion rose was quite a challenge.

Having completed the three-week course, I had to find something to embroider. My sixth grandchild was on the way at that time so I thought it a perfect opportunity for a bit of embroidery. The difficulty was what to embroider as we were expecting a boy baby.


I'd already made a bunny rug and chain stitched a bear onto it.


I tried out a boat on my sampler.

Then I had the bright idea of embroidering a set of bibs featuring the images in that classic children's book, Very Hungry Caterpillar.




I drew up the shapes to the size I wanted, traced them onto tissue then marked them onto the bibs by piercing through the tissue with the point of a biro (there must be an easier way?).









Some were more successful than others but all in all I was pretty happy with the result. 


The VHC himself was, I thought, a triumph (it's not easy to embroider a face on a tiny caterpillar!).


An evening spent with needle and thread is an evening well spent.

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