I also have ordered a new book to help me learn new stitches to use with this new thread. I haven’t read a review nor have I seen the book because it isn’t released yet…but it will be very soon.

Jacqui Carey has already published a book on Elizabethan Sweet Bags which quite a few people have reviewed favorably. Although I’m intrested in the history of embroidery and how it was used to decorate items in the past, right now I want to know how to recreate some of the stitches, so I opted for this new book by Jacqui Carey entitled Elizabethan Stitches.

Since I’ve finished the Royal Persian Blossom project (yep, it’s all done!!!! Pictures coming soon – as soon as the sun is shining – tomorrow I hope!) and the Marriage Pillowe is almost done, it’s time to focus on Trevelyon’s Cap. I’ve done quite enough long and short shading for a while and decided I would challenge myself by learning some new stitches; specifically Elizabethan stitches.

If you’re interested in Historic Embroidery and you understand how to use Facebook (I barely understand how to use it!) there is a great group on Facebook called Historic Hand Embroidery. You must login and join the group but these people have loads of information, post photos of their gorgeous projects and always have time to answer questions.

Do you have any great sources for information on Elizabethan Embroidery? Suggestions? Ideas? Tips? Let us hear from you!

It’s so close to being finished, but I can’t concentrate any more and I’ve come to a part that will take lots of concentration. The anthers, or as I call them, the balloons at the top of the design are the very last things to do. They will have to wait until tomorrow.

Here’s some long and short shading…

which then  was bordered with stem stitch. The blue lifts the gold and makes everything look so sunny.

I just love the blue with the yellowy golds; it’s such a beautiful color combination.

With the lightest blue thread on the outside and the darkest on the inside, it looks like the leaf shape has real depth. This is probably my favorite bit of the whole piece; it’s the colors and the combinations of the different stitches, especially the trellis.

The little branches with buds and flowers are sweet.

It’s all done – except the anthers. As you can see, the shading is a bit more complicated than usual. The small comma shaped area in the middle is to be stitched with the lightest shade of gold. It is then surrounded with a medium shade of gold and the darkest shade of gold is at the bottom of each anther.

I completely understand the concept and what it should look like when it’s finished, I can’t think of how to do the shading right now so it’s smooth. It’s those lightest parts I’m worried about doing well. I’ve only done long and short shading when it moves from darkest to lightest or vice versa, never when there is a lightest shade smack in the middle of a darker shade.

Tish Burr uses this kind of shading in the Moroccan Plums project in her new book Color Confidence in Embroidery. Her instructions are very clear and I’m sure I can do it tomorrow when I’m not so tired and my brain is working clearly again. However, The Unbroken Thread community does have a huge amount of collection knowledge so…

Any tips for me out there? Advise? Help!?

I’ve been working on the last components, all of which are quite large shapes and all of which are at the top. The feeling of the piece has changed so much with each area I finish.

I’ve begun the last pair of shapes right at the top of the blossom, one on the right and one on the left. There’s quite a bit of gold in the remaining areas to stitch. Whenever I stand up to look at my work from a distance, the amount of light the gold thread adds to the piece surprises me.

Here’s the piece before I added the trellis work. It all looks very blue and cool in overall tone. To my eye the gray/brown areas stand out more than they do in later photos.

After I added the trellis the blues warmed up as did the gray/brown colors. The trellis is also a much less dense area of stitching. A lot of this piece is worked in long and short shading and those areas are ‘heavy’ in comparison to the three areas of laid and couched work. I think the balance between the densely stitched areas and the more open areas is wonderful and perfectly balanced.

Now that I’ve added the gold threads to the shape on the left, the whole piece looks more alive. I can just imagine how it will look when there is gold stitching on both sides and the balloon shapes at the very top are also stitched in shades of gold. I think it will look positively sunny!

The Marriage Pillowe is also just about finished and then all that’s left to work on is Trevelyon’s Cap. Time to start planning a new project!

On a completely different note, you may have noticed a small photo of the Silk Angle on the right side of the page. If you click on it, you will be taken to the brand new blog of two classes of future embroiderers. We’ve only had one lesson with the younger group of students so far (classes 3/4, students who are 8 and 9 years old). I’ve gotten loads of great ideas and advice from Mary Corbet’s Needle ‘N Thread, including the idea for our very first little project – craft foam thread cards.

We’ll only post once a week and it will be the students writing from now on. We were just too busy during the first class to have any time for them to write! Stop by and see what we’re up to!

To begin, I used my triangle to find the correct placement for both the vertical and the horizontal lines. The first vertical line needed to be parallel to the far right side of the curved shape so I lined up the short end of the triangle to be parallel with the right edge of the shape. The right angle of the triangle then showed me exactly where the horizontal lines should be.

I then used my ceramic pencil to draw the lines for the first stitches going in each direction. Once those first stitches are correct, the rest is relatively easy if you have the right tools. My favorite tool for working laid trellis is a narrow piece of heavy card cut to the width I want between each long stitch in the trellis. I call it my spacing card. Once the first stitch is in, I use the spacing card to place the subsequent stitches correctly.

One additional advantage to using a spacing card is that you can see where the stitch should be all through the space, even if the line is interrupted. As you can see below the third stitch from the bottom running from the bottom right to the left is interrupted by the blue curve. Using the spacing card I knew exactly where to put the line as it continued beyond the blue curve that interrupted it.

Next I worked the laid trellis that lies at a 45 degree angle to the first. Each line of this trellis needed to cross the intersections of the first. Using another, slightly larger piece of card lined up on top of each intersection, I could find the correct line for the horizontal and vertical lines of the second trellis. If my first trellis was slightly off (it wasn’t quite perfect) the card showed me where and I could line the intersections up as well as I could, leaving the last bit of tidying to be done with the couching stitches.

Once both of the trellis grids were done it was time to cross stitch over the top trellis at the points where the threads crossed. I worked the dark blue cross stitches and then started to stitch the diagonal lighter blue stitches. It quickly became apparent that my cross stitches were far too small and the diagonal stitches were covering them. I snipped them out and started again.

This time the cross stitches were quite a bit larger, extending into the middle of the open area around the intersecting trellis stitches. When it came time to put in the smaller light blue diagonal stitches, the pattern really looked lovely.

When working a laid and couched pattern of any kind, it’s important to remember that each part contributes to the whole. I tried to make the cross stitch couching stitches too small and they got lost. The cross stitches are part of the overall pattern, not simply to hold down the trellis work.

I just love doing this kind of stitching. When I was at the RSN course last summer in Rugby one of my classmates brought a book full of laid and couched patterns to class. I can’t remember the name of the book and worse, I can’t remember which one of us brought the book!

If any of you know of a good book with with laid and couched patterns in it, would you please leave a comment? I know I would appreciate it and I imagine others would too!

Did this make a difference in how I stitched it? Well, yes and no. Usually long and short shading is done to mimic variations in color in something from nature: a leaf, a flower petal, the fur on an animal. What’s most important then is to pay attention to the shape as you’re doing the long and short shading.

What do I mean by that? When I’m working on shading a leaf, for example, I am thinking about the location of the light source and which part of the leaf would be a lighter shade of green in nature. When the shading follows the shape of the leaf it looks more natural.

This leaf wouldn’t look as good if the long and short shading was rounded. It’s the pointed shape, with those few longest stitches that go right into the tip of the leaf that makes it look realistic. The leaf is darker at the center where less light would reach it in nature.

Sometimes long and short shading is done to mimic real changes of color rather than changes of shade. Feathers and the leaves in this example from the Marriage Pillowe are two places where I’ve had to use different colors for shading. Again, the trick to success for me was to follow the shape when I did the shading. I thought about how leaves change color in the fall, how the colors shoot right through the leaves and tried to produce that effect.

The feathers on the Phoenix might not even be classified as long and short shading, since they aren’t really shaded. However, they do give the impression of layers of color, which is one aspect of long and short shading. When working the feathers, I had to be very careful to keep my stitches long. Often more of the stitch was buried than showed on top. The long, thin stitches mimic the length and narrowness of the feathers. If I’d made the shading rounded, it would have look silly.

When it came time to do this long and short shading on the Royal Persian Blossom project, I knew I would need to carefully think about what the final result should be. This shape isn’t from nature and the shades of blue used are so close it’s hard to see the difference in some light.

Following the gentle curve of each of the little bumps in the larger curved shape seems like a good place to start. As I worked, I began stitching in the middle of each of the bumps.

The first stitch was the longest stitch, going most deeply into the first color. The next stitch was shorter. The third was a little shorter than the first and the fourth shorter than the second. Because the shades of blue are so close to one another, the effect was like the shadow on the larger shape.

When I took this photo from the top of the shape, the shaded effect is even more pronounced. If I’d done a less rounded, more jagged shading the shadow effect would have been less beautiful.

When looking at the piece from farther away, the shadow is still noticeable but very subtle.

I’d not thought before of the different ways long and short shading could be used in a piece. I had thought only that it was for changes in color, as in a leaf or flower petal. Using these two very close shades of blue in this shape has taught me something – always consider what the effect is that the long and short shading is trying to achieve for the viewer. Is it meant to mimic nature or is it meant to be a shadow?

Don’t you just love all the discoveries we make when we embroider?! What have you discovered while stitching?