St Andrews Museum, Fife

If you’re looking for something to do in Fife and you’re interested in embroidery/textiles, you should take a look at Diamond Threads an exhibition of work by some members of Dundee Embroiderers’ Guild which is on at St Andrews Museum.

We saw the exhibition by chance as we were visiting the museum, just because we hadn’t been there for ages. I thought you might be interested to see the axe which was used for beheading people in mediaeval St Andrews. Apparently the short handle was ideal for the job as it was easier to get a good aim at the neck and it should have meant a clean swift chop. I’m not so sure about that, fancy having to stand right next to the person who you were beheading!!

Executioner's Axe, St Andrews Museum

An improved method of execution was thought up – The Maiden, which was an early type of guillotine. You can see an original Maiden at Edinburgh, but here’s a photo of it. I hope it doesn’t put you off your dinner!

Knitting – basket weave stitch scarf

What was I doing knitting in summertime? you might ask – not that we’ve had much of summer this year. Well I was teaching Peggy from PA – USA to knit while she was in Scotland and while we were mooching around in a gift shop one afternoon we looked at a knitted scarf which cost £25. You could knit that easily she said, which of course I could.

Mind you that scarf was I believe knitted in Shetland wool which can be quite itchy on the neck, which is probably why whoever made it decided to line one side of it with cotton fabric, quite a good idea I think.

Knitted Scarf

As you can see I’ve knitted my version of the scarf, a sort of basket stitch using just plain and purl stitches in multiples of five. I haven’t decided how best to attach the fabric to it though. Should I sew it on or use that iron on stuff to bond it on – or what? – any advice gratefully received.

The Great Tapestry of Scotland

Last week we went to the Scottish Parliament where The Great Tapestry of Scotland is on exhibition, it’s the longest tapestry in the world apparently. I meant to visit it this time last year but didn’t get around to it, due to pressure of house selling and too many people viewing our old place. It was my old family friend Isabel who recommended that I visit the exhibition, I knew that it must be good if she was impressed because she’s a really great embroiderer herself.

Of course it isn’t a tapestry it’s an embroidery, but then neither is the Bayeux Tapestry a tapestry, there seems to be a tradition of misnaming such things. I took quite a few photos of the panels which were of most interest to me, but I haven’t sorted them out yet. Meanwhile, you can see images of the panels here.

The tapestry has been wandering around Scotland for the past year or so and nobody seemed able to give it a permanent home but I just heard on the Scottish news tonight that it is going to be on permanant exhibition at Melrose eventually. I’m so glad I saw it in Edinburgh as Melrose isn’t exactly central.

The author Alexander McCall Smith was the chap who came up with the idea of a ‘tapestry’ depicting Scotland’s history and the artist Andrew Crummy designed it with the work being carried out by hundreds of embroiderers from all over Scotland.

Below you can see the first stitch being put into the design.

Elephant Fabric Wallhanging

I have one of those Victorian houses which is described as being a one and three quarters villa, which means that the upper storey has sloping coombed ceilings in places, cottage style, it’s just the way it was originally designed.

But it means that there are quite a few places where you can’t hang pictures on the wall, due to the angled slope, so I’ve made a virtue of the design by displaying fabric which I love so much that I can’t bear to cut it up for craft purposes or for making into something small like cushion covers. I just keep the material intact and back it with some thin wadding/batting and lining and sometimes sew around outlines in the design to accentuate it.

I also love elephants and have quite a collection of them made mainly from wood, china and soapstone too, so when I saw the fabric below I just had to buy it. I sandwiched the three layers of materials together to give it some weight but I didn’t fancy sewing around the many motifs, I decided to use buttons to embellish the designs and tie the layers together, so my button tin was raided and this is the result.

Some embroidery

Cottage Embroidery

It’s a while since I let you see any of the crafts which I’ve been getting on with this winter – yes I know it’s officially spring now but it honestly doesn’t feel like it does it?

Anyway the thatched cottage embroidery is a really traditional design, embroideries like this were very popular in the 1930s but this one is from around about the 1970s I think. No, I haven’t had it hanging around the house all these years, I bought it just a couple of months ago, it was someone else’s unfinished project, in fact the only thing they had embroidered was the trees, I’m not sure if I’ll keep them as they are though. They are supposed to be laburnums and I think I might be able to do something which looks more like laburnums. I’m going to tackle the thatched roof next and by the time I get that done it’ll be well on the way to being finished.

I always have to have a lot of crafty stuff on the go at once, so that when I’m not in the mood to do a particular project I’ll have plenty of others to choose from. This is one of the other embroideries I’ve been doing. As you can see it’s a very different design, although most of the stitches which I’ve been using in the two embroideries are very similar.

Jacobean Embroidery

The fabric which I’m using is a remnant of curtain material in a closely woven faux silk, although it’s quite solid it’s easy to get the needle through and is perfect as an embroidery background.

I ironed the design onto the material, it was one of those tracing paper transfer ones from the 1930s this sort of design was very popular in then, although of course the Jacobean designs were first used in the Stuart times of the 1600s. There was another surge of popularity in the hippie times of the 1970s, with each era putting their own spin on the subject via the different colours which were fashionable at the time. My colours are a bit crazy, but I want it to look cheery.

Unfortunately the transfer ink is yellow and I was determined to use the yellow material as a background, so it has been a bit of a pain in the neck seeing exactly where the design is at times, but I’m getting there and I hope to be finished it fairly soon, which is why I’m putting it in a blogpost really, it’ll galvanise me into action so that I can do another post about the finished projects!

Read On My Kindle

I downloaded Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries by Marcus Bourne Huish from Project Gutenberg. It’s a very old book on needlework and although the writing is a bit stilted compared with books like that nowadays it’s still worth taking a look at it if you’re intersted in the history of needlework. You can download it here.

I also downloaded The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn, which you can read here.

I think there are 18 letters written by Henry and only one from her and that is just because he had written a reply on a letter which she had sent to him. If you’re at all interested in that period of history you should have a look at them. They are a very quick read indeed and it’s a bit like eavesdropping. He can’t ever have expected his letters to be read by all and sundry hundreds of years later.

It’s easy to forget that Anne Boleyn strung Henry along for years, determined to marry him and not be just another passing whim for him, as her sister had been. She was certainly no dimwit but obviously stupidly believed that she would always be able to manipulate him. She ought to have realised that as his wife she was going to have to be like Caesar’s wife and be above suspicion, and she should have knocked all her silly flirtatiousness on the head, then she might have kept her own! She gave him great ammunition but I doubt if she was ever actually guilty of adultery, she surely wouldn’t have been that daft.

I doubt if it ever occurred to Anne that she was really putting her life in danger, it’s not as if he had previously chopped a wife’s head off, in fact he had gone out of his way to get rid of his first wife Catherine legally, when he could have had her done to death any number of ways and not have had the finger of blame pointed at himself.

He’s always thought of as being a monster but I think that as kings go – he could have been a lot worse. Not that I would have wanted to be married to him mind you!

Embroidery Samplers

We’ve got past the stage of having to surprise each other with presents, and I’m one of those strange people for whom the words nice and surprise just don’t go together, because I really don’t like surprises as a rule.

Nor do I really need anything, plus I’m supposed to be getting rid of ‘stuff’ – not accumulating more, but we made the fatal step of going to the antiques fair at Ingliston, just outside Edinburgh, in November and I ended up buying THREE old samplers. Well I couldn’t resist them as they were all such bargains, if you really want to know – the two end ones were £20 each and the middle one was £24. They would have cost much nore on Ebay. Anyway, I said to Jack they would be nice to have for Christmas so he bought them!

Embroidery samplers

At first I wasn’t sure about the age of the middle one as it seems so bright but it is really an old one and the 76 must refer to 1876. It’s made of wool rather than the more common silks and is typical of the designs found on Scottish band samplers, which were never meant to be framed, but just rolled up and kept in your work basket for reference purposes.

It’s such a pity that the names on them are so common, Ann Grey and Brown would you believe, and one doesn’t have names, just initials and a date. The left hand one has a frame from about the 1950s but the others are Victorian. You can’t really tell from the photos but they are very old and the linen is fragile looking but they are in very good condition considering their age.

I was lucky enough to inherit a band sampler from a great aunt a few years ago. It had been worked by her great grandmother, according to the wee note which was with it, it wasn’t framed as it is a band sampler but I took it to a framer and they put it in a simple frame such as was used in Victorian times and I have the original explanatory note attached to the back of it. I didn’t see the point of keeping the embroidery in a drawer unseen but I’m careful to keep it out of strong light to preserve the colours. As you can see, it’s similar in design to the middle sampler but this one was stitched by Jean Barclay in 1837, or is it 73, she made a mistake and couldn’t quite fit it in properly, I bet she was mad about that!

Finished At Last!

I actually started knitting this jumper last winter so I was determined to get it finished before the cold weather really set in this year. It took a bit of sorting out as I’d left it half done for so long, I couldn’t even remember which size I had opted to knit it in. I’ve used this pattern quite a few times since I originally did it way back in the 1970s when I was a teenager and knitted the smallest size, this one is two sizes bigger but I was a real skinny-malinky as a teenager so it’s not as bad as it sounds.

1970s knitted jumper

The great thing about this pattern is that the jumper is nice and long so it keeps my bahookie (bum) warm and I need that especially as it was freezing last night and it’s only October. We gave in and put our central heating on despite the price hikes (does the price ever come down when the global price of gas goes down? – I don’t think so.)

Anyway, I was determined to finish the jumper before going on to the next knitting project, I have so many sewing projects on the go at the moment and I don’t want to get into the same fankle with knitting too. But it’s crucial that I start on the babies’ bootees and scratch mits which I said I would knit for a baby boy who is due to be born any day now. Laura’s best friend will be his mummy and Laura (our son Gordon’s betrothed) has been chosen as a godmother. How different it all is from my day when the big excitement was whether it was going to be a boy or a girl, and it was deemed to be bad luck to buy anything for the baby before it was safely in this world. He has even been named already!

The other bit of knitting comment I want to make is that I was absolutely chuffed when I was leafing through a pile of knitting patterns in a charity shop a few weeks ago, to find the pattern on the left. It is a copy of a pattern which my mum used ever since I can remember, she knitted my dad the lower right hand zipped cardigan/jacket every other year it seemed. As you can see it’s a pre-decimal priced pattern from about 1950 I think. In fact her copy of the pattern eventually fell apart but by then she had done it so many times she didn’t need the instructions. I don’t suppose I’ll ever knit anything from the pattern but it’s just nice to have it as a reminder. Dad died in 1980 when he was just 55 and whenever I think of him he’s wearing one of those knitted jackets.

Sanderson and Liberty Fabric

I am a bit of a fabric hoarder and if I see something I like and it’s priced at what I regard as a bargain, I just have to buy it, thinking that I’m bound to find a use for it at some stage in the future. That’s exactly what happened when I saw this lovely William Morris design fabric, by Sanderson. It’s called Blackthorn and it’s very similar to a Morris design which I first saw in the 1970s, when Morris had a bit of a resurgence. That seems to happen once every 20 years or so, usually because an institution like the V&A has put on an exhibition of his work. I plan to make a wallhanging from this length of material, I’ll back it with something nice but plain and maybe sandwich some wadding/batting material in between, just to give it a bit more weight and make it hang better. Mind you that may not be necessary as the fabric is quite a sturdy linen type.

Wm Morris blackthorn

I remember in the 1970s when we got married I quite fancied buying a sofa in a very similar Morris fabric, but Jack said bloody hell – he’s really not a floral fabric sort of chap – and we ended up buying a very bland and boring sofa covered with beige dralon fabric.

This stripe fabric is completely different but I love it. It’s a shame that the colours haven’t come out so well, believe it or not, the sun was shining brightly on it when I took the photograph and it seems to have had the effect of draining the colour. It’s two shades of green, two of blue and a gorgeous warm yellow, unusual combination but it works. This is a Liberty design, which was a surprise to me as I always associate Liberty with florals, again it’s a heavy linen and the design is called Boughton.

Liberty stripe

Luckily this is a good length of fabric and I’m planning to use it to make curtains for the new house – whenever we get there, and wherever it may be. I’m determined that the next house will not have high Victorian ceilings like the house we live in now. I’ve had 25 years of them and I want something cosier next time, which will have the advantage that I won’t have to buy or make curtains with a drop of 108 inches, which is what we have at the moment.

This is all for the future though as Jack has been told that he can’t retire this year as they need his experience in the classroom. It’s an absolute pain in the neck, but as I said, the best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley. Oh all right – Rabbie Burns said it first!

How exactly are young teachers supposed to get any experience if they can’t get jobs in teaching because older teachers aren’t allowed to retire just one year early, without taking a big hit to their pension?

Anyway, I’m keeping calm and taking the attitude that if we can’t move house this year then their must be a good reason for it. Well, there’s not a lot else we can do.

Needlepoint Sampler

needlepoint sampler

My friend Isabel in Kilbarchan was having a clear out of her embroidery and craft stash and she passed a couple of long but narrowish pieces of double thread canvas which she said she was never going to get around to using. As the canvas wasn’t quite wide enough for a medium sized cushion cover I decided to use one of the pieces to make a sampler.

As you can see, the design is more or less what you would find on a cross-stitch sampler but as the whole of the canvas has to be covered, unlike the linen fabric used in cross stitch, it was quite a stitch intensive project.

To vary the textures a bit I used French knots on the left hand tree, I like the effect but it does mean that I can’t frame it under glass as it isn’t flat enough. The design is loosly based on a traditional embroidery sampler using common motifs but I sort of made it up as I went along, just filling the spaces in with whatever I fancied.

The house is like something that a kid would draw, as they tend to be in samplers but I chose to do the background of that part in a pinkish colour. This is because I am quite a cynical person at heart so as far as I am concerned that house is being viewed through rose tinted specs! Otherwise the rest of it is just things which I love. Trees, topiary, flowers, bees, bee hives/skeps, a rabbit (of course) fruit, bird table. The patches of green on either side of the yellow path are supposed to be a formal knot garden and the ‘patchwork green garden’ which the path surrounds has the letter ‘S’ in the middle of it, with the squares picked out in what I think is called Rhodes stitch. My married name and maiden name both begin with ‘S’ – which is just typical as I have a bit of a lisp! I’ve also made an ‘S’ design in what is supposed to be wrought iron railings on top of a garden wall.

On the right hand side there are some motifs of old garden tools which I don’t think have come out very well. The colours are too muted and similar to the beige background, but I wanted it to look old fashioned and not too bright.

I tried to improve the look by using some silver thread to brighten the tool motifs up. I should’ve put more plants and flowers in that space I think. That’s life though, I find that I’m never completely happy with any project I do and always think it could be better, which is probably just like anyone who does any sort of craft work, it’s what keeps us going I suppose, the thought

Good Housekeeping Needlepoint

that the next thing we do will be better.

Despite the fact that I did this on a frame it has still got a wee bit distorted so I’ll have to stretch it a bit before mounting it on some board.

I have quite a collection of embroidery/needlepoint books and these are a few of the ones which I like to leaf through for inspiration.