The stitching on the doors is going slow but I am making progress. I thought that it would work out better if I embroidered both doors at the same time. They are mostly mirror images, one being the tree of knowledge and the other the tree of life. We have images of the tree of life in many different cultures but not as many of the tree of knowledge. They are both necessary and so my garden starts with the tree of knowledge, works its way around the cabinet and ends at the tree of life. I have the grass, the sky and one of the trees finished. The snake winding its way round the tree is done is an embossed gold flat plate. It made it harder so stitch but I think that the pattern looks like scales. I am about half way finished with the second tree, then it is on to the leaves. So many leaves.... I have a plan for them and hope that it looks as good as what I can see in my mind.

I have been creating a mossy forest glade. It was so much fun to play with many different threads, tons of beads,and fun found objects. I tried a number of techniques to get the textures that I wanted. It is stand alone piece but also a test for the top of my box and another project. I like the way it turned out and now will continue on the next project. I have done some flower petals but need lots more of them for my vision to come to life.

Sides of my cabinet stitched and all attached

This week I finished and mounted the second side of my cabinet - kist to the wooden box. I am having a lot of fun with them but the panels seem to get more complicated as I go along. I tried some new techniques with the elephant and the cat. The head of the elephant was stitched on a separate piece of fabric edged with metal pearl purl and then cut out and stitched onto the body after it was glued to the paper. It is impossible to glue the silk to the heavy paper backing if the embroidery is too thick. The tusks of the elphant are ivory from an antique piano key that I cut to fit. The cat was stitched with silk thread on cotton organza, the edges were turned to the back and then applied to the stitched side over the grass. I did a lot of hunting for the beads that I used for the acorns. It was hard to find just the right size and shape with a large hole in the bead so that I could stitch the silk threads over it to create the nuts of the acorns. Those perfect beads came from Israel and are made from olive wood. All of the plants and animals on my whole casket/cabinet have meaning to me and it has been fun to put them together. When I design a panel, I think I have it all in my mind the way that it will look but as I choose threads and stitches the design always has a mind of it's own and ends up changing as I go along. The designs for the next part are constantly in my thoughts and new ideas come all of the time. Then I just have to figure out how to turn those ideas into embroidery. Now on the the doors......

Casket side and another Robin

It took me six months but I have finished the right side of my kist. It feels like I am getting a bit closer to finishing. Next step is to glue the back and side to the box and then get started on the left side.

I really love the way that the deer turned out. I found some fun deer on caskets and mirror frames and played with the designs.

I have been doing a number of robins lately and just took a goldwork class with a small robin. We were able to finish most of it in class and I came home and did the finishing touches to make it into a pin. It was designed by Clara Warschauer. She has a couple of other designs that I am planning on stitching.

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. 

 

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.

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.

Black work Jacket and Skirt

 A life time ago and in a galaxy far away one of my ambitions was to do graduate work in costuming and work in that profession. While I still love historical costuming, I decided that it was not for me - the long hours and the fierce competition would  not work well with family responsibilities. So I dabble in dressing a historical doll or two.

I have always loved 17th century embroidered jackets; most of them are polychrome but a few are black work. There are a number of portraits that feature the jackets. Perhaps the most famous of the jackets is one that was owned by Margaret Layton. The jacket and her portrait are exhibited together so you can actually see how accurately the clothing was depicted.

Several years ago I found a black work rectangle on Pintrest that I liked. I was able to trace the pin back to the original source. It was a 17th century jacket featured in Gift of Stitches Magazine. I found the site to purchase the magazine with both the design and the finishing. Any  miniature clothing needs to have fabric that is not too stiff or out of scale so now the hunt was on for just the right fabric for the jacket and all the other parts of the set.

 I started with 55 count linen for the stitching. A bit small but I wanted the jacket to be as small as I could make it. I used size 100 black silk thread for the stitching. The directions called for putting lace around the edges but leaving the jacket raw on the inside. I knew that once the jacket was finished, the inside would never be seen but just could not leave it unlined. 

A while ago, I was in China and bought some very fine pale pink silk and decided to line the jacket with that. I had forgotten just how hard it is to work on that scale but love how it turned out.

Of course a jacket needs to be displayed with a skirt - a 17th century embroidered skirt. Now the hunt was on for the perfect fabric. It had to be just the right color and have the correct drape. The design is adapted from historical sources and stitched with gold silk  thread with metal thread accents.

 Then it needed a dress form to put it on and the  proper underthings so that it would look right. You know how that goes - right down the rabbit hole.

The dress form...

The linen petticoat - front and back...

The bum roll - this is rather strange piece of clothing but it was used in that period and made the skirt hang correctly...

The salmon colored skirt...

The finally the jacket......

The front assembled with the gussets. 

The lined jacket.

Cabinet of Curiosities - Case

Since we have been social distancing, I have had time to get to something that has been on my "to do" list for a number of  years. Before you can adhere the embroidery to the wooden casket, you need to glue a layer of paper to the raw wood. I had done this with the Goldfish trinket box so I thought I knew what to do. Turned out to be a bit harder that I thought.  I studied the videos of the steps to cover the box with paper first, then either decorative paper or fabric. After looking at several samples I decided that some it was just whatever you want to do. All of the samples were unique.
So I started in on the cream paper for the outside of the drawers and the case. That went fairly smoothly but I did use a lot more glue that I thought I would. I used rice glue because I figured that the usual wheat paste would not do my Celiac any good.  The rice glue has been used in Japan for centuries so I knew it was stable and would glue paper and fabric to wood.

Here is the whole case covered. Since the paper takes up more room than you might think, the top lid will not fit in place yet. I will have to think about just how to adjust  the pieces but for now it is what it is.

These are the various drawers, lids and bits. Some of them have marbled paper on them. When we traveled to Italy a number of years ago. We went into a fabulous shop in Florence that had drawers of hand marbled paper and I found the greatest paper.  Other parts have silk Duponi  and silk velvet is in the bottoms of just a few drawers. I have been lucky to find paper, Duponi and velvet that match.

Here is the main case with the ink well, pounce pot and pin cushion in place.

I wanted something to decorate this front panel of the case. You can't see it with the other sliding panel in place but the thought of it being there makes me happy. I used period appropriate flowers and painted them on paper before I glued it in place.

Snow Day, Cabinet of Curiosities Top Frieze, While Rosy Cheeks Sampler

Today is a snow day at our house. Not that is doesn't snow in Utah, it does. We have more than 5 major ski resorts less than an hour from my house. But today it decided to snow and snow and snow - starting early in the morning and filling all of the roads with about 10 inches of the white stuff and it is still snowing about 8 hours later. We decided that selling embroidery supplies as fun as it is, was not as important as staying safe. So I am warm and dry and stitching... Life is good.
Here is photo of the front yard just a few minutes ago.

I was able to spend some extra time working on my casket pieces. The top frieze of the casket is finished. I love all of the leaves and spangles in the bands. I did learn a few bits along the way, like making sure to put plenty of basting lines on the silk to be sure that the embroidery didn't wander into the areas where it is going to be covered later.  Oh well...The leaves are surface embroidery so they are quite flat but the rest of the casket is going to have much more dimensional embroidery Now to start the designs on the rest of the casket. The floral frieze is next. The designs are in my head so we shall see just how hard it is going to be to get them out of there.

Because I am going to be starting on the next sections of the embroidery and there are going to be many colors in each section, I needed a better way of storing my threads so I could get to them easily. This set of metal basket from JoAnn's is going to be perfect and it was on sale too. I have sorted the threads so each of the color families is in one basket and I can see all of the wonderful threads together. That will make it easier when I want a specific color but don't know which of the textures that will work best.

 While Rosy Cheeks Sampler is finished. I am in the process of editing the instructions right now and then I can send the pattern out. It has taken so much longer than I thought it ever would but since I decided to use so many specialty stitches the pattern is about 30 pages long. It can be done in just cross stitch or as many or as few of the wonderful unique stitches as you want.

Frog Purse

For a number of years I have been working on and sharing with you the bits and pieces of my Casket - better known and as the Cabinet of Curiosities. Not content to stitch just the class pieces I have been adding other fun pieces by my imaginary Scottish stitcher  - Katherin Boswell.
One of the fun things that were created during the 17th century were small purses in the shape of a three dimensional frog with a bag inside of the body. A number of them still exist in museum collections.  They are totally useless except to make you smile; they might hold a coin or two but not  much else.
A group of us are studying and sharing all kinds of embroidery techniques. We decided that we would make a frog purse. Mine is a common English frog with an interesting difference. A Scottish variety of the frog can be a peachy tan instead of the more common tan/green. It is made of needlelace with covered wire legs and a rust silk bag. I used a lucet to create the drawstring.
One member is doing a bright pink frog and another is doing brightly colored Caribbean tree frog.


Here is an example of one of the antique ones.

This is the front of mine...

And here is the back

The TRIKET BOX is Finished!!!!

I finally finished the last of the projects from the Cabinet of Curiosities class from Tricia Wilson Nguyen.
It has been a fabulous journey of learning and discovery. I have always wanted to stitch a seventeenth century needlework casket, and Tricia's class is making that possible. I am not sure how many of us knew what we were getting into when we started but it has been so worth the ride.
My Gold Fish trinket box looks "fabulous" and I can't wait to get started on the big casket. I have ideas galore, a theme and a name. It will be Kathrin's Kist since she is from Scotland and an old term for a  box is a kist.

The gold background silk of my embroidery is on my box is some wonderful heavy gold Scalamandre fabric from a past project. Because it is such a strong color I decided to use a limited number of colors of threads on it.  I used antique Chinese gold thread for the couched lines plus Chinese and French silks and for the embroidery.
The fabric for the top is an ivory Duchesse silk. The green and blue are Chinese silk, the gold and ivory are French Soie de Paris silk. I threw all kinds of gold metallic threads into the design; English gold-work bullion and purls, Chinese gold thread, Japanese gold threads and French paillettes are all used together. The gold fish is padded so that it is raised above the surface of the box.
I was going to use a gold and white paper for the box but ended up using a hand made gold and green marbelized paper with a dark gold silk for the lining.
The gold braid is the perfect shade to match the gold silk and gold leaf feet finish the box.

Here are the flowers on the back of the box. My three daughters have favorite flowers and so I added them to the back of the box. They are a sunflower, a daisy and a columbine.

 This side of the box features pea pods and a potato flower.

I love daffodils and carnations so they are on the front of my box .

The marbled paper lines the lid to finish off the box.