It’s true. There is no fabric quite like linen. When it comes to hand embroidery, linen is, in my mind, the ideal fabric. And there are many, many reasons why it is the ideal fabric. But there is one reason that shines beyond all the others: one Grand Reason that linen is the bee’s knees when it comes to hand embroidery.

And that reason? I’ll call it Flexibility. That sounds so very positive, doesn’t it? Linen is flexible. It can be used for a host of applications in embroidery. It can be used for counted work. It can be used for free style, surface embroidery. It can be used for goldwork. It can be used for needlepainting, for whitework, for blackwork – you name it! When it comes to practically any kind of hand embroidery, linen steps up to the plate! (With a few minor exceptions.)

But that’s not the Flexibility I’m talking about. Flexibility in embroidery can mean a lot of things. It can, for example, be the flexibility that the embroiderer has when it comes to changing her mind.

Some people may call this Fickleness. I prefer Flexibility.

At the end of last week, we took an up-close, personal look at Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães by Yvette Stanton. Today, because I know you’re just dying to add this book to your needlework library, it’s time for a give-away!

Schwalm whitework embroidery is a folk embroidery that developed in the Schwalm region of Germany. It is characterized by its folk design elements (tulips, hearts, flowers, and so forth) and drawn thread (openwork) fillings.

The little goldwork dots in the outside edge of the Medallion are under way again. There are 50 of these little dots in the edge, and they’re worked in a combination of pearl purl (for the outline) and chips (little cuts of check purl) for the filling.

If there weren’t 50 of these dots to contend with, I’d say they weren’t too time consuming. The dots are about 5/16″ – 3/8″ in diameter, so they’re pretty small. This makes manipulating the pearl purl (which is a stiff thread) somewhat slightly less than fun. Actually, every time I finish a dot, I find myself saying, “Bah – that wasn’t so bad!” and I move on to the next fiddly little blighter with an ever-increasing excitement at being one step closer to the end.

Today, I’ll show you how I work the pearl purl outlines and talk a little bit about working with this versatile and beautiful real metal thread.

Have you ever wanted to embroider your own little garden? If you have, but you’re not sure how to go about doing it, there’s a nifty e-book available out there to show you how. It’s called Stitching Idyllic: Spring Flowers by Ann Bernard. Ann’s little book focuses on creating your own unique embroidered garden out of recognizable flowers and trees, using very basic stitches worked in threads and combinations of threads that produce true-to-nature color schemes.

The Medallion Project is dragging out a bit longer than I had hoped! I did not meet my First Personal Deadline (which was Easter), nor my Second Personal Deadline (which was April 15), and now I’m pushing my Last Personal Deadline and Final Deadline of All (mid-May). I must be finished around May 15, because it has to be turned over the vestment-maker, to meet the June deadline. So it’s down to the wire! (No pun intended!) This may turn into a nail-biter!

Today I’d like to show you how I changed the order of work on the roses, and give you my reasoning behind that. You can apply the same principals to any embroidery – sometimes, you just have to change the “normal” order of work, due to some logical reason. I’m also going to show you the back of the goldwork, because this figures into my reasoning for changing the order of work.