There were lots of questions and helpful comments on yesterday’s post about using silk satin as a ground fabric for hand embroidery. I’ll answer those questions (I hope) within today’s article, where I’ll also show you the second silk option I tried out.

A couple months back, I showed you some gorgeous silk dupioni from Japan, bought by a good friend who went shopping in Osaka just to find it for me. (What a guy!) My second Ground Fabric Test made use of the “white” (more like egg-shell) dupioni. Again, it’s silk, so it’s not a glaring white – just a soft pearl-ish white. A very pretty fabric!

Do you every wonder how to decide on the ground fabric you’ll use on a major embroidery project? I wish I were the type who could definitively say, “This is my design, and this will be the ground fabric I stitch it on.” For some hand embroidery projects – especially smaller, quicker ones – it sometimes goes that way, but for anything that I’ll be investing a lot of time and supply money into, I am not very quick at making a decision on the ground fabric.

The other day, I showed you my design process for this current embroidery project I’m working on. The project will be worked in silk and gold threads, that I know for sure. But I’m still a bit undecided on the ground fabric. So this is what I’ve been doing – trying to narrow down a choice of fabric, based on various considerations.

So, how do I narrow down my choices? By testing. Let me show you what I mean…

Yesterday afternoon, the “Ask & Share” section here on Needle ‘n Thread went live!

2016 Update: The Ask & Share Section on Needle ‘n Thread is view only now. You’re welcome to browse through it, but it is no longer functioning as an active forum.

I’d like to give you a little overview of this new site feature, so you can see how to use it and what it can do for you.

This summer, contrary to all previous plans and imagined agendas, I’ll be teaching an ecclesiastical embroidery class twice a week. I shouldn’t really call it a class. It involves one person, to whom I couldn’t say no. I’m glad of it – even though I hadn’t intended to teach at all this summer, a regularly scheduled meeting time twice a week is a great mainstay when it comes to keeping a structured schedule. So, I succumbed, and the first step in preparation for the class was the design process.

Before entering that process, I considered a few things: 1. What does the student already know? 2. What does the student want to learn? 3. What is reasonably achievable in the time that we have? 4. What are the various approaches we can take to reach our goals? 5. Of those approaches, which makes the most sense?

Next, I dug out my Ecclesiastical Stuff box.

The last couple days, I’ve shown the beautiful goldwork & pearl and beadwork frames embroidered by Larissa Borodich. Well, for the fun of it, today, let’s look at the artwork she framed.

Yep, I thought they were paintings or prints. Didn’t you? And surrounded by the sumptuous embroidered matting, I didn’t look that closely at the images themselves. Did you?

But when I started cropping the photos in Photoshop, I zoomed in on one of them. I couldn’t tell for sure what I was looking at: was the picture just slightly grainy? And then it occurred to me! So I whipped off an e-mail and got a response, with a few more photos. Here they are:

Yesterday, I showed you some stunning beadwork embroidery worked by Larissa Borodich, and today, I’ll show you another gorgeous piece she did, worked with gold threads and natural freshwater pearls. I’ll also tell you a little bit about Larissa’s technique.

And then…. and then…. later on, I’ll tell you something else. Something incredible about the pieces that I’m showing you… but I want to see if you can guess the last detail!

Continue reading “Gold Threads and Pearl Embroidery”

Today, I’m going to share with you some photos that were sent to me by Anna at Talliaferro, who just knew that I would love seeing these pieces.

Prepare to be inspired!