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.

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!