Jacobean work

While tidying up this week, I found another embroidery. This was my interpretation of a design from The Royal School of Embroidery of England, an inspirational source of work. I had found a small photo in magazine and considered it a good study of form from this period (1567 - 1625). I offered it to my clients at the studio as a possible project to learn many of the basic embroidery stitches. The colours chosen for this piece are not typical of the era.

In the 16 th century, the colours were derived from vegetable dyes and the fibre was wool. The term 'crewel' is derived from the German word for fine worsted wool, knäel, and probably came into use at the time that these wools began to be imported from Germany. The ground fabric for traditional crewel work was a twill fabric of which the warp threads were of linen and the weft threads of cotton.

The project shown here was executed on a pure linen ground fabric, the threads were DMC cotton embroidery floss. The stitching offered close to a dozen different techniques typical of the era and to create a raised effect, two threads of the floss were worked together in the needle rather than just one.

I had intended to cover a book with this embroidery, but as is so often the case, no sooner was the course completed and my particular piece finished, I quickly moved on to preparing other programmes and projects for my clients. This explains why only now has it seen the light of day and sits in my studio, framed, so that I can enjoy it along with the good memories spent embroidering with those that attended the class and who became friends.