Mabel's other stitching

[Podolyanka]

Beautiful design. I still wish Mabel lived closer to me, then I would subscribe to her courses to learn how to stitch in this technique.

[wendywombat]

Beautiful design. I still wish Mabel lived closer to me, then I would subscribe to her courses to learn how to stitch in this technique.

I think we all wish that!!

Love those leaves!!

[rcperryls]

Beautiful design. I still wish Mabel lived closer to me, then I would subscribe to her courses to learn how to stitch in this technique.

I think we all wish that!!

Love those leaves!!

I know I do!

Carole

[Nicola Main]

This is gorgeous Mabel! Lovely colour of green. What colour will the berries be? Red, orange, white?

[Mabel Figworthy]

The small circles are clusters of yellow French knots, no idea what they're meant to represent and the large ones are dark pink satin stitch - but to keep the stitches shorter I'll do long & short stitch, possibly in two shades of pink/red.

If nothing else this napkin has given me an idea for Christmas; an old friend of DH's helps us out once a week in our business and every Christmas we take him and his wife out for dinner (she is a fellow stitcher, by the way). She usually brings something stitched or quilted, and I've been thinking of something to bring - well, I found some napkins in eBay at a very good price, drew a simple holly border, and will stitch them two napkins, with their initials in the holly border (each their own initial, I mean). Looking forward to starting on that!

[richardandtracy]

Had some lovely stitching time last night, and finished Ethelnute's hair

Mabel,
This looks very similar to the stitched work from the 1300's I saw at the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A. It is superb, well done. The only difference between yours & the original work that I can see is that the thread width on the original is smaller relative to the face size. Not sure if it's due to yours being a smaller image size or if they used finer thread - impossible to tell from the photos. Not that it's an important difference, the quality of the stitching is remarkable.

Just amazing.

Regards,

Richard.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Thank you Richard, that is one of the best compliments I've ever received about my stitching!

As for the thickness of the thread, I would say ours is probably a little thicker - Silk Mill stranded silk (yes, the one I am never going to get the whole set of 700 of ) is relatively thick (I should really say less thin), having a bit more body than a strand of DMC cotton. There are much finer silks (Piper, for one, which is practically invisible it's so thin ) and the medieval ones probably were too, if what I saw at the V&A exhibition was typical.

[Mabel Figworthy]

On a FB group someone posted a video with "embroidery tricks". Most of them weren't really tricks at all, just types of stitch, although there was an interesting example of disguising a tear with embroidery. But a little flower caught my imagination - a very simple, small, four-petalled outline filled in quite quickly (yes, I did allow for the speeded up filming ) with satin stitch, some straight stitches and french knots. This is what it ended up looking like in the video:



Because at no point the needle or the hand of the stitcher was shown, it was difficult to gauge the size, so I drew a similar flower, printed it off in sizes ranging from 2 to 3.5cm and decided on the 3cm one. Having completed the first stage, I can say that is too big (or rather, not small enough) - the 2.5cm would be better.

I started with the white satin stitch, using four strands of Rainbow Gallery Splendor silk (their strands are about the same thickness as DMC). A few points for imporvement: the white stitches should actually have stopped short of the central circle (I went right up to the edge of the circle) and I didn't get those edges curved enough, especially on the first petal, which is practically straight (blue line). Never mind, learning "curve"



Tonight I'm bobbinating some of my new threads, but I should be able to manage some purple straight stitches and pink andyellow french knots, don't you think? I don't think 7 knots (6 pink, 1 yellow) will fill the circle (I'll try again with a smaller version) but I'll see how few I can get away with! I'm also going to add some green leaves, just to see what it looks like.

If this turns out nice, it will make a good quick last-minute card project! And I could vary the colours too.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Trying out my new threads - this is Madeira Lana, a wool/acrylic mix. It's not stranded, but used as it comes off the skein. I found a rather nice pansy design which I thought would make a good trial piece.

[Serinde]

What's it like to work with? Rough idea of thickness compared to, well, anything else, really.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Very nice to work with, no pilling, no thin or weak spots so far (unlike Appleton....), quite a thin thread compared to crewel wools. Here it is compared with Renaissance Dyeing (which you very kindly sent me), Heathway Milano and Appleton:

[Serinde]

Golly, it is substantially thinner, isn't it? But I can certainly see where that might be an advantage, especially if it is available in a wide variety of colours. Thanks, Mabel.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Not as wide a range of colours as I'd like, unfortunately, but enough for anything that doesn't take 4 or 5 shades of any colour. Appleton's is, give them their due, the best one for range of colours. I just don't much like working with their wool

The thinness would be a problem on larger projects, I'd say, because it would take forever to fill anything; but for a smallish design like this (it's about 6cm x 3.5cm) it's fine, and keeps it from looking too chunky. You'd also be able to get much finer detail in, say, faces. They all have their uses, don't they - that's why we need so many different threads

[Mabel Figworthy]

A bit more done on the napkin; I've got quite a bit of stitching time tonight so hope to finish it, but for now it's got all the green done. Haven't quite decided yet what colour the initial is going to be - probably brown, or perhaps the dark pink that will be used for the large circles; or dark pink whipped in yellow; I'll see

[rcperryls]

Carole

[Mabel Figworthy]

Finished the napkin ! (Also done a lot on Ethelnute, but he's so close to finished now that I won't show him yet )

[Podolyanka]

I just love your works. They are so laconic, so expressive, so elegant and so perfectly stitched. This makes them absolutely beautiful.

[Squirrel]

Absolutely gorgeous.

[vanessanjf]

Fabulous

[Serinde]

Very nice!