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.

Gold work and other thoughts

I once heard of a way to curse someone and it was: "May you live in interesting times." I think that the state of the world right now would qualify. We certainly are living through a unique time in history.  For most generations there is a defining event that everyone remembers and can tell you where they were when it happened. Think of  - pick your generation - Kennedy's assassination,  Reagan getting shot, the space shuttle, the world trade center, and the tsunami. Right now it is not a single event but a pandemic that will change our life totally in the short term and who know what it will be like in the future. My daughter asked my Mother who is 98 this year if she was concerned and she said not really. She has lived through the great depression, World War II (and too may other wars to count), several strains of the flu,  and all of the disasters I mentioned and many more.
Just after I wrote the original post, we woke up to an earthquake. Literally had just woken up and was still in bed at 7:09 when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck a few miles from here. I spent the rest of the day with the news on so I could learn what was going on. Felt a couple of the after shocks during the day.
Life changes but it goes on. We need to remember the important things like love and service. Kindness will help all of us get through this better.
Cynthia Jackson is a fabulous designer and a friend. She was kind enough to let me pilot stitch one of her new pieces for EGA seminar  this year.  It is a Mariners' Compass that is stitched with gold threads.  Some fun new techniques and interesting effects with the black and gold. The arrow on the compass is attached with a pin so it will turn.

Faith, Hope and Charity and a goldwork Bee

This has been a rather eventful January. After putting it off for about 5 years,
I finally had a knee replaced. I am at the still not sure it was a good idea place in my recovery, but it is getting better every day and I am told  that the recovery is normal. Time will tell but it was getting worse so...

I have done some more work on Faith Hope and Charity. I am stitching on it for a few weeks a month and it should be done in about a  year if all goes well.


When Alison Cole came to town to teach, I bought a kit for a goldwork bee. It worked up quite quickly and looks good.

Within an Oriental Garden

This is the second of the UFO's that I decided to work on. Like the other one, it is by Betty Chen Louis and is called Within an Oriental Garden. The orchid  and cherry blossoms are soft shading and the the background is done with blackwork patterns on a copper painted canvas. I love the way that it turned out but using a sharp needle to pierce the canvas is not a lot of fun but worth it in the end. The green mat works well with the colors of the embroidery and in the room where it is going to hang.
I started it when I took a class from Betty in 1993 but with one thing and another, it got put away in the stack of things that "I want to get back to sometime". Glad it rose to the top of the stack and now I can enjoy looking at it every day.

Brown Wren and Mossy Hillock

Several months ago I got a most wonderful kit in the mail, it was the brown wren kit from Jenny Adin-Christie. It was a lovely box with a host of bags full of threads, fabric, trims and lots of other good stuff. I finished the wren last week and this week worked on the mossy hillock.
The wren has a number of bits and pieces that you stitch and couch and lace and well the list goes on but it is so much fun. Nothing is very big but lots of stitches are packed into those small areas. I thought that I might never finish adding all of the layers  to her wings.

After all of the stitching you take scissors and glue pot in hand to assemble that cute little wren. She is such a wee thing but most precious on her tiny brass feet.

I then started the green hill for the wren and figured that it would not take too long. Wrong.. I should have known from the number of bags that this was not a simple grassy knoll. With plenty of stitch directions but not too many  pictures of where to put what, I followed the diagrams to  make my own green hill. Creating it is really part of the fun, my hill is unique with curls of trim, beads and tufts of thread.

Lake Marie and challenge stitching

A very long time ago, about the time that I started teaching needlework to groups away from home  our region of The Embroiderers' Guild of America would have challenges for us to stitch. I can't remember the theme of the challenges but I stitched several pieces for the exhibits. The first one that I stitched was called M'Lady's Fancies and had three fans of different kinds of surface embroidery. Well it won first prize. I was amazed but quite pleased with the embroidery and the result.

Over the next bunch of years I did more challenge stitching for different groups. Some pieces were more complicated than others but they all allowed me to explore techniques that I usually don't teach.
Exhibiting your work, especially those that you have designed is scary and can be rather crushing if it is not well received.  To exhibit things in a juried show is not the faint of heart or ego. My results have usually been good but I did have one judge that did not like the titles of my work, my artists statements and accused me of copying  the designs. That was tough to take - after all how can you tell the artist that the title of their work is wrong. Oh well.... a ribbon or two always makes you feel better
Anyway one of the pieces was called Lake Marie in honor of my mother, it won a best of show. It was later purchased by the Embroiderers' Guild for their collections. I saw it at national headquarters from time to time when I was in Louisville and it always made me smile to know that others enjoy it also. I was looking at pictures of the new exhibit space and what did I see....along the edge of the photo was Lake Marie.

Here is a photo of Lake Marie but it is not a very good one. It was taken before digital pictures and I can't tell you how many rolls of film that I took came out so bad!

 Anyway you can see Lake Marie to the left of this photo.

Some of the other pieces that I did as challenges were in magazines, sold as retail patterns, or were taught to groups


This is Silken Glory
 I went a bit overboard on this one. I made the doll, dressed her in hand embroidered and sewn clothes. Made the tiny baby dress with antique lace in French hand sewing techniques and then wrote the verse and designed and stitched the sampler.





Red Queen
This is what happens when an embroiderer designs needlepoint.

Metamorphosis 
The life cycle of a Monarch butterfly in dimensional embroidery.

Triangle Challenge

The challenge on this one was to pick 5 things and create a stitched piece.
This is a list of the five things and my choices.
1. color - celadon green
2. shape - triangle
3. technique - needlepoint
4. flower - hibiscus
5. stitch - satin stitch
So... this is what a green, triangle, satin stitched needlepoint hibiscus looks like.

I also did small needlepoint boxes but the pictures are long lost in drawer but if I ever run across then I will scan them in so I can share them.
Found a photo of the boxes. They are needlepoint on congress cloth. The idea was to make a jeweled jade box, a silver southwestern box and a cloisonne box.

.

Copper Bugs and Butterflies

When we were doing the penny bathroom, I wanted to do something to go in the room that had copper in it. So.. I decided that some dimensional embroidery and goldwork with copper threads would be perfect. I got out several of my Jane Nicholas books on stumpwork and found directions for  the bugs and inspiration and some templates for the butterflies.
Then I bought copper threads and sequins and beads and copper metal threads and then I bought some more. I have enough copper for several more projects - actually several dozen - some of which I have in mind for later.
I finished all of the critters and framed them together in a mat with nine cut out circles. They were so much fun to do. Sometimes I substituted threads when I didn't have the correct one and for others all I had was an outline and just got to play with metal threads, silk and beads.

Here is the complete set.

There are 4 butterflies, 4 beetles and a single dragonfly.

I figure that all of this embroidery is great practice for the Needlework Casket that I am ever so slowly working on.