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.