Casket Back is finished

 I  have finally finished the stitching on the back of my casket. I love the way that perspective doesn't matter. The peacock is as big as the pear tree and I am not quite sure if all of the flowers exist in nature and the snail certainly does not.

The crocodile is taken from the early 17th century painted ceiling at Rossend Castle in Burntisland, Fife in Scotland.  His body is exotic leather that I painted a bronzy gold color. The Mother of Pearl Fish was made in China in the late 1700's as a gaming token but I thought that it would swim beautifully in my pond.

My husband lived in New Zealand for several years and so I added the Kiwi bird. I bought the yarn that I stitched him with while I was there visiting. It is a combination of cashmere, silk and Brushtail Possum Down.

There are many dimensional elements on this panel with the pears just hanging from the tree along with flower petals that stick out from the background. 

I have used very tiny (about sizes 18-24) antique seed beads in several places. They are so small that I have to insert the silk thread  through the bead and then into the needle to sew them in place because even my smallest needle will not go through the hole of the bead. It takes a while because for each bead, you thread on the bead, then the needle and sew it down, unthread the needle add the next bead, rethread the needle and repeat. I am lucky that I have been collecting them for about 50 years since they are so hard to find now-days. 

Cabinet back motifs

I have been enjoying working on the back panel of the needlework casket. It is full of fun animals and flowers and is stitching up quite quickly for the amount of embroidery on it and all of the color changes but that is just part of the joy of creating my own interpretation of the fabulous originals .


This outline of the carnation uses some antique Chinese thread that is created by wrapping thin strips of paper with gold glued to it and it is then wrapped around a red thread.

My snail is so tiny but full of unique threads and stitches. The crinkled gold plate is from India. I was ordering some thread that I needed and added it because it was quirky and as long as I was paying for shipping why not add some extra goodies. You can see the scale of it by comparing the US twenty-five cent piece. It's amazing how much stitching  and how many different threads you can pack into a tiny area.

This pear tree is full of interesting details. Some of the elements are stitched flat on the silk like the tiny pear blossoms, the trunk of the tree, some of the leaves and two of the pears. The padded pears use 16th century English embroidery techniques with a tiny gold plate along with the gold silk thread. Four of the leaves are wired so that they can be manipulated into shapes. I have used a paper mache form for the other two pears which I did in needle-lace with gold plate around them.

Just finished the peacock which wears the most fabulous colors. 

 

Twined Floral Brooch

 

I call this piece "Twined Floral Brooch". It is an adaptation of a new class from Cynthia Jackson. The class is "A Garden in Gutter Lane". Cindy gave us three different designs and encouraged us to change things if we wanted to. I went totally off course and made mine look like a wreath that is fastened with a needle.

It has flowers and leaves done in a 16th century technique. Some of the flowers have 5 layers of thread and metal threads, and are only 1 inch (2.5cm) across.

I stitched a handmade lizerine around all of the flowers and leaves. Cynthia made it and although it more closely replicates the original metal thread it is much harder to work with than the more modern machine made metal that we use today.

I did the same strawberry two different ways, one with the handmade lizerine and and the other with the more modern machine made metal trim so you can see the difference.

Cabinet of Curiosities and life changes

 It is hard to believe that the last time that I blogged was in March, but this last year has been so full of unexpected and unwelcome happenings that it is understandable.  I have not yet mentioned it here but August a year ago (2023) my husband and partner in all things suddenly collapsed and passed away. To say that it was a shock doesn't even begin to describe the total collapse of my world.  

Since my house is much too big for one person, my oldest two daughters sold their home and moved back in with me. We are still just getting things a bit more settled. Amazing how trying to fit two households into one house is a bit difficult. My living room looks like a jumble sale in progress.

 In April, my 102 year old mother fell and we brought her here to live with us. She ended up on hospice for nearly a month and passed away in May, and all of us got COVID just before her funeral. Since I was trustee of her estate, I was in charge of getting her house ready to sell. After two months of cleaning, repair and misdirected wire transfers, it finally sold. But as you can imagine, I now have some things from house number three here. 

As part of the upheaval of my life and not entirely willingly, but knowing it is necessary, I am in the middle of selling our family cabin and bringing some things from there to the house. So now we have bits of four different houses trying to jostle themselves into one house. It is still  a work in progress. Lots of stuff has been given away and donated and much more is on the way out. But it is just "stuff" and just not that important any more.

During this time I have still found time to stitch because it is the thing that feeds my soul and keeps me sane.

I have been slowly working on my needlework box (Cabinet of Curiosities) or Kathrin's Kist. I have just finished the last side of the upper slope section.  I decided that this part of the casket would feature animals.

This is one of the sides. I tried to add some fun threads and techniques. I love the way that the dog and bird are the same size. The edges are a bit messy but will be trimmed and covered with silver tape.

The second side section has two bunnies, a fun tulip and a curly lamb.

The back of the slope features a very funky lion, a camel and leopard. 
The animals of the original caskets were often drawn by people who had never seen any of the live animals so they are often not quite true to life or sometimes a total fantasy.

The front was so much fun to do. I decided to do the Unicorn from Scotland and the Red Dragon from Wales. They are both padded and couched with metal threads. The wing is a separate piece so it and the flowers are detached elements that add lots of texture.

Silver Butterflies

 I love metal thread embroidery and antique jewelry and this project combines both of those interests. For a number of years, I have had an idea to use antique Edwardian bar pins as the body of a butterfly. The pins that I bought for this project are base metal because I knew that in taking off the pin on the back, the pins would be destroyed as a piece of jewelry but reborn as part of a work of art. Each of the unique bar pins inspired the embroidery of the wings of that specific butterfly. A  couple of the pins have colored stones and so I used that color in the embroidery. I raided my stash to find every silver metal thread that I had, I didn't use all of them but it was fun to have so many to choose from. I started with a metallic organdy for the basic shape. The embroidery techniques vary but include a lot of couched metal threads with some of the areas padded to add texture. I also used beads and silver leather.

This one became a moth because the pin was a different shape and I love how it changed the whole feeling.

I added some colored threads and beads because of the aqua center stone for this one.

This one has a blue stone and shows the frame. I just used a simple black frame for all of them.

Assisi Embroidery

 This pattern is from Modern Folk Embroidery called Fancy an ABC. I brought it because I loved the look but decided that I was never going to stitch the whole design. So.....I picked  part of the design that runs down the right side and tweaked it just a bit and stitched it.

I used a 56 count Seraphim linen in the color Antique Lace which has a bit of a green tone. I stitched it with one strand of Soie Surfine thread.

The technique is called Assisi. You stitch the background and leave the design open so you can see the linen.

Even on that tiny of a linen it is still 3 1/2 by 10 7/8 inches.

I love the way that it turned out. I needed a piece that required just stitching and no decisions.

Parham Owl and Progress on Needlework Casket (Kist)

 I have just finished another piece from the fabulous Jenny Adin-Christie. Her designs are wonderful and so creative. This one is the Parham Owl. It is an etui that has a pin cushion, and thimble holder under the head and the wings are needle holders.

Here is it perching on a stump. I am trying to find a creative way to add some grass around it. I think I know what I want it to look like but we shall see. 

I finished the head first and then the wings. The threads are not the usual ones that we go to when we have a design to work on but really enhance the look of the parts of the owl.

I am back at work on my casket. I have finished the designs for the slope and parts of the body. I needed to get the work that I had finished off of the slate frames so I could use them for the next section. So I glued the paper to the embroidery and then to the casket. It really is a "leap of faith" experience to brush glue on the back of embroidered silk fabric, stick it to paper and then have to wait to see if you did it right.  Anyway, it is on the box now and makes me excited to add more embroidery.