Ongoing - Upcoming Projects

• An illumination project, in which I will do a friend's name in watercolour pencils (I haven't used them before)

• Finish the illumination of "In the Forest" (see the tag on the left hand side of the page)

• Two flowers from Trish Burr's Long and Short Stitch Embroidery (one already started) for two friends.

• To convert my 30 x 50 inch rectangular frame to a 'sit on' frame, with a bit of googling on the net and asking of advice to find a suitable carpentry pattern. And a friendly carpenter.

• A long term project on my rectangular frame, in ecru or ivory cotton or silk (I haven't decided yet) and DMC floss.

This will be my "historical embroidery project". I won't call it my "Elizabethan embroidery project" because I want to include some stumpwork. My "Tudor period project" ?

I want to try out all of the period stitches possible. I'd like to use lots of different patterns for flowers and leaves, and a few insects.

It'll be a kind of 'spot' sampler, but brought together with vines, or an interlace pattern. Well, I guess a spot sampler with a vine is pretty much what Elizabethans did do a lot of the time, if they varied the motifs a lot, as I intend to do.

I'll use patterns from where ever I can find them (including my new embroidery books!), and also do a little gold work as part of it. Mary C was kind enough to send me a sample bag of different gold work materials, and I intend to use them in different ways on the piece.

I expect that I will be working on this for a year or so.

One thing I do know is that I won't be using plaited braid stitch on the vine or interlacing (or only a little). I think I read in the Plymouth Diary that an inch takes an hour. Ouch.

I'm just starting to think about the colours that will be suitable. I've read (somewhere) that they used up to 20 different shades of a single colour. Wow.

I'm greatly looking forward to it.