Like the RSN Essential Stitch Guide for Crewelwork that I reviewed the other day, the one for blackwork is a definite must-have resource for your needlework library – even if blackwork isn’t your thing, but especially if you have an interest in it. Let me explain…

Blackwork is only sometimes my thing. There are many aspects of blackwork that I like, and I’m drawn towards certain techniques that employ elements of blackwork. I love border patterns that include blackwork, for example, and that are worked in Holbein stitch. When considered a strictly counted, linear technique, however, it doesn’t really appeal to me too much: medallions or other geometric shapes (mandalas that repeat, and gridded stars and squares and circles and so forth) that are strictly counted Holbein stitch or backstitch – as lacy and pretty as they might be – aren’t really up my stitching alley. Though I suppose, like everyone else, I do go through phases where I can see how they could be appealing!

But blackwork can be something different from this linear approach – i.e. “pictures” achieved by patterned stitching with a gradation of shading, and often employing embroidered outlines. This, I find appealing. There’s something about achieving a shaded effect by gradually changing a pattern or by gradually changing thread weights within a pattern that I think is interesting and challenging… and beautiful. I also like the variety of filling patterns that are often employed in blackwork. Filling patterns interest me – whether they are counted or not.

So the blackwork embroidery that is primarily covered in this RSN stitch guide is not necessarily the same type of charted blackwork that we see often today. Certainly, elements of this type of blackwork “fit” within the frame of what the book is all about, but in fact, the RSN stitch guide concentrates more on that latter type of blackwork – a challenging form of blackwork that is more akin to surface embroidery than it is to counted cross stitch.