I love battlement couching! If you’re not familiar with what it is, you’ll find a tutorial for it right here on Needle ‘n Thread.

While I’d used battlement couching in crewel work with wool threads, it wasn’t until I made use of it in my Lattice Jumble Sampler that I really fell in love with it. It really is a magnificent filling technique for surface embroidery of all types.

Well, needless to say, I was pretty happy that Hazel makes use of battlement couching in Late Harvest. It fills the center of the pomegranate in the middle of the piece, and it shows up on a couple other elements out on the sides of the design.

I’ll show you one of those elements today, and tell you the good (and the bad!) about my work on it.

Oh golly! I’ve been wanting to write this book review for Alison Cole’s new book, The Stumpwork Masterclass: Raised and Embossed Embroidery, for a long time!

If you acquire this book – and you must, if you have any interest in stumpwork, historical or contemporary – you’ll understand the delay. It is not your typical book. It is a tome, and I wanted to read it cover to cover before writing about it.

Well, I finished it, and now I’m going to tell you all about it!

Today, I’m announcing the winner for the La Serenissima crewel embroidery instructional guide from Talliaferro give-away from last week!

One lucky winner will receive the instructional guide and pattern for this gorgeous design, thanks to Anna at Talliaferro.

And, since I’ve had a lot of inquiries lately on how my personal adventure with cancer is going, I’ve also included a link to a little update at the end of the article, for those who want to read it.

Of all the different embroidered elements on Late Harvest, the grapes were the Wow Factor that really sucked me into this project!

Made from bunches of flat back topaz crystals attached to the surface of the project with a clever combination of detached buttonhole cinched with a whip stitch, the grapes add a massive amount of sparkle and texture to the project.

Lately – and I admit it freely! – I’m a sucker for bling, and these grapes definitely feed my growing penchant for adding a bit of blingy brightness to my embroidery projects.

So, needless to say, I was super eager to get on with the grapes. Alas, it wasn’t smooth going at first! Initially, in fact, it was pretty hard going – most of which has to do with the leaf that I showed you last week and the fact that I switched up the recommended order of work.

I’ll explain…

Good Morning and a Happy Tuesday all around!

I’ve been making pretty good progress on Late Harvest recently, and I’ve concluded that one of the things I like best about this project is that every bit that I do is a learning experience.

Many of the lessons I’ve absorbed from this project are negative lessons – what not to do, the next time I’m in similar situations. Negative lessons are sometimes the best lessons, because they stick with us longer.

The negative lessons I’m experiencing here have nothing to do with the instructions or the kit itself – instead, they have to do with decisions or mistakes that I’ve made while working my way through the project.

Today, I want to show you one of my favorite elements of Late Harvest so far, and I’ll share with you some negative lessons, so that, if you’re ever in a similar stitching situation, you can avoid making the mistakes I’ve made.

Here’s the leaf:

For those of you who have been hanging out with me on Needle ‘n Thread for a while, you might recall a review I wrote about five years ago for the Royal Persian Blossom crewel embroidery instructional guide from Talliaferro Classic Needleart.

For those of you who are newer to the fold, if you haven’t seen that instructional guide, take a look at it! It’s worth a gander!

When that design first hit the market, I was thrilled! Here was traditional crewel embroidery, kicked up about a hundred notches into something new, something artistic, something fabulously exuberant, and yet worked in traditional crewel techniques, with wool.

Well, you’ll be most happy to know that Anna, the artist behind Talliaferro, has done it again, recently releasing a stunning new design called La Serenissima. Today, I want to show it to you and review the instructional guide for this gorgeous piece of modern, yet traditional, crewel embroidery.