IHSW and ME

All the flowers of tomorrow are the seeds of today

Elizabeth Kendall

 

 

After finishing the Happy Hen Necessaire for Rachel the rest of my IHSW weekend's stitching was working on this small Assisi design.it is only 3 inches across.  I started Saturday night with a blank piece of linen and this was my progress by Sunday night. The linen is 35 count sandstone and I have outlined with DMC 801 and for this piece  keeping to one of the more traditional colours  I have chosen green and as a fine thread was needed to keep the work neat I have used YLI silk this is a Japanese silk and a much finer thread than DMC stranded.
 

 

 

I am reasonably  proud of the back, did you know that Assisi embroidery stitched correctly should have  rail roads-lines on the back? I have one piece of Assisi Embroidery that was bought in the town of Assisi.   My friend Sally and her husband visited there  in 1997, they set out to go down by train when the big earthquake hit and had to continue their journey the next day, I had asked Sally to  bring me back an embroidered piece  and the piece she brought me is definitely the highest possible standard of work.  Having being able to study this, I have learnt much from it including the invisible  starting and ending of threads something I have not managed to achieve hence the  brown bumps on the back of my piece.  Can you spot the beginning and ending of the threads here. It is so neat.

 

 

 Another feature of the mat she brought me is the rolled hem, this took a lot of practise to master, but has been well worth the effort and I have stitched it on several mats. The mat  has been stitched on 32 count linen,  the cross stitches are over 3 fabric threads ( not 2 as we so often do) and the thread used is DMC coton a broder 25.

 

 

Hopefully it will not be too long till I am able to show you my small piece of Assisi embroidery

 mounted on the March page in my journal.