It is change of season here, and the weather has gone from quite warm to suddenly very wintry. Naturally there has been a spike in coughs and colds and other illnesses, and I have been sick with various viral and bacterial infections for over a month. This coupled with a hand injury has made my usual slow progress even slower (although that hardly seems possible)! I have had a lot of projects to work on for other people. Here is one that I was working on for a friend.....
One of my friends was invited to join a peerage Order, and his partner asked me to help her with a new jupon for him. She designed it and provided the materials, and I just needed to embroider some stem stitch outlines for her.
I worked these cute little guys in three strands of DMC floss in a split stitch. Once I was finished, I gave them back to my friend and she cut them out, needle-turn appliqued them down and couched thread around the outside.
The finished product was a work of art and a real credit to her. It shows how relatively simple (although time-consuming) techniques can be combined to create very dramatic designs. It has also inspired me to start thinking about different ways of incorporating embroidery into clothing.
Photo credit: C. Lindner
