A look at how far I’ve gotten on this last strip, sans frame:

I still think a narrow dark black strip is needed below this panel to establish a visual border along the bottom edge. After that the only stitching left is to fill in some small doodles at the motto’s line ends where my text didn’t span horizon to horizon. And to finish off the thing I need to edge out the piece with mitered fabric strips (sort of a self-matting made from cloth), and figure out whether to frame or rod-suspend the final piece. I’ve been working on this now since the first week of December, averaging between 30 and 45 minutes per day. Not particularly fast, but about what I thought it would take when I embarked on my project.

To answer my far-flung offspring – What’s next? Not sure. I owe a ton of holiday socks, so I may take a knitting interlude. But I haven’t broken the stitch itch yet, and will probably start another randomly executed band sampler, although I haven’t decided it it should include a saying, some alphabets, or be just another collection of patterns I’m auditioning for future publication.

Another possibility is the immense dragon from my favorite source (seen at the left of center in the photo). I’ve already begun charting it up. It’s gigantic. Just the little pepper shaped blossom object at the lower right spans more than 40 stitches. Given that few people appear to be interested in this stitching style at the level of complexity that fascinates me, I’m not sure if a multi-page dragon graph would be of use to anyone else. Still, I might do it just for the fun of just doing it. We’ll see.

Technorati : Embroidery, Holbein stitch, Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted-thread, double running stitch, strapwork, voided embroidery

Evidence of progress on my penultimate (possibly ultimate) strawberry panel, way down at the bottom of my Clarke’s Law sampler:

A strip this wide with a voided filling does take a bit of time to complete. Still, I’m chugging along, about a quarter of the way through, perhaps a bit more. And I’m thinking on what to do next. I do owe a ton of holiday socks that need to be knit between now and the end of the year. But I’m just not engaged to produce socks right now. What I want to do is to keep stitching. It’s always a bittersweet moment when a project is within sight of the end. There’s impatience to be done with it and be on to the next. There’s indecision about the direction of the next work. And there’s dissatisfaction with and pride in the current piece mixed 50/50. I can see what I’d have done differently on this one, and I can also point to bits that turned out even better than I expected.

In the mean time, I hope someone got use out of the three part tutorial on stitching logic. Here are recap direct links to all of the posts:

Double Running Stitch Logic 101 – Two Sided Work and Baseline Identification

Double Running Stitch Logic 102 – Working from the Baseline

Double Running Stitch Logic 103 – Accreted and Hybrid Approaches

I also took an earlier and less organized stab at the subject here:

Double Running Stitch Logic

Technorati : Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted-thread, double running stitch, embroidery

I’m still working on the accreted section post, but I’ll hop in to answer my own questions from my last note.

First, here’s progress to date on the current strip.

The baseline anomaly in this one may be easier to spot now. If you click on the image above and look closely you’ll see that the pattern is composed of two identical sections that never meet. There’s a void that runs through the entire longitudinal stem. Therefore since the upper and lower sections are totally separate, there are TWO baselines in this one, an upper and a lower one. Here’s a suggested baseline for the upper section:

And the baseline for the lower section:

Sneaky to be sure. But the sneakiness is my fault based on a misinterpretation of the sources I had available.

This pattern is graphed out in TNCM as my (early) interpretation of the center-most design in the lower section of the ultra famous Jane Bostocke sampler in the V&A. At the time I did this I was working from a tiny 2″ square photo in a book, and did not have the luxury of the magnificent photos now available on line. I did the best I could under the circumstances, fudging the little violets in the center somewhat, missing the ornament running down the center of the main vine (which may or may not connect the top and bottom halves of the pattern) and missing the true nature of what looks to be mulberries between the strawberries in my piece. In the original they’re more like little spiral tendrils. I’ve also missed a couple of other fruits/leaves branching from the main line. If I were to re-issue this design now I’d play up “inspired by” in my description. Still even with my clumsy amendations, the pattern is recognizable as a scion of the Bostocke design. Or perhaps not since no one identified it over the past week.

Technorati : counted-thread, double running stitch, holbein stitch, sampler, spanish stitch

Another quickie. First apologies to the mathematicians and topologists among us. I should have more correctly stated “any continuous wall maze can be solved by following a right hand (or left hand) wall.” Discontinuous mazes are like double running stitch patterns with breaks in them. They can’t be stitched (traversed) 100% double sided.

I’ve made some progress since the last picture which was taken this Friday past. I’ve selected the penultimate strip for my piece. This one is wide, and I’m working it two-tone.

You get extra points if you can spot (from this partial repeat) something about its baseline. Hint: It’s not that the strawberry pips and texture on the pansy type flower keep this from being a candidate for 100% identical double sided work. With a little bit of cleverness, the two sides could be made to read mostly similar, although the pips and textures would by necessity not be identically placed.

Double points if you can identify the source I used as point of departure. TNCM owners, ssshhhh!

In other news, I’m still working on a follow-up post with more info on baselines, and on the accreted section stitching method.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery, sampler

While writing and graphing the last post took up the better part of a week’s discretionary time, I did make progress on my Clarke’s Law sampler. Here’s the area to the left of the center motif – the area that balances a similar section to the right. You’ll note that the pattern I used for the tutorial is the lower of the two narrow red double running stitch bands.

Lovely photo courtesy of Younger Daughter, who is much better with a camera than I am.

This week’s follow on post covering the accreted section double running stitch tutorial will be late. I’ve begun it, but some obligations this week will make it hard for me to finish it by Friday.

Apologies!

Technorati : Spanish stitch, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, voided embroidery

Amazingly, in the middle of the constant stream of work-related chaos, I did manage a half day over the weekend to unwind. Here’s the result:

I’ve finished the panel of narrower bands to the right of the central motif. Now, with my right hand edge better established, I can finish out the voided, red band immediately below. Then it’s on to th set of four narrow bands on the other side of the center. They’ll be different (and different widths) but they will also alternate red and black. For the record, all four of these narrow bands can be found in TNCM, the pomegranate and foliate bands being two of my special favorites.

Here’s a partial shot showing more of the piece. I still have to fill in “-A.C. Clarke” immediately to the right of the word “magic,” but I haven’t identified the smaller but complementing alphabet to use. I’ll fill any left-over space above and/or below the author’s name with another narrow black double running stitch band.

And on the bottom? Yes – there’s one more wide band to go after all of this is done. I’m not sure. Something spectacular, with liberal use of both red and black. I’m not sure what that will be either, although I do know that whatever it is it will need to be between 50 and 60 units tall. (point of reference – the grapes at the very top of the photo above are 65 units tall.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, spanish stitch, strapwork

The latest strip. As you can see, a relatively un-normal quiet week allowed me to finish up the last lettered strip and begin the next. This one is done in standard double running stitch (aka Spanish stitch, Holbein stitch) using one strand of plain old DMC cotton embroidery floss. I was thinking of working the background, but I think I’ll leave it plain. I don’t want to overwhelm the delicate scrollings.

I graphed this from the same photo of a Victoria and Albert Museum sampler that many of the other strips here and in TNCM came from. If the link above doesn’t work, search for item #T.14-1931 (it’s also pictured in Drysdale’s Art of Blackwork Embroidery). It’s listed as Italian, 16th Century in the museum records, but Drysdale lists it as later. Another source lists it as Spanish, which is where the attribution in TNCM came from, but that’s wrong and if I were to re-issue the book, would be corrected. If you squint at the photo you’ll see the sources for my tilting columns, grapes, and the hops flowers and plume flower strips.

But this pattern doesn’t appear only on this one source (right edge, lower four up from the bottom, and just below a red pattern, also see the snippet below). The unknown keeper of the www.drakt.org website took some photos of other samplers at the V&A among them is a page of showing shots of two cases of voided work. Thank you Unknown Keeper! If you look at the centermost of those three photos, you’ll see a pattern very much like the one on 14.931, but instead of outline only like that sampler’s (and my) rendition, this one has a filled in background. Here are the three versions of my current pattern side by side:

The 14.931’s version is on the left. The unnumbered V&A bit from the Drakt site is in the center, and mine is at the right. I charted mine from 14.931, as best I could. Thankfully I have a better photo from which to work, provided by long time stitchpal Kathryn. For the record, I have not seen this exact base pattern with its distinctive frilled/curvy leaves in my amateur’s wanderings through historical modelbooks, although there are quite a few designs in them that are vaguely similar to it.

Let’s look at the two historical pieces. The V&A calls out 14.931 as possibly being a professional’s work sheet – a sampler in the truest sense of the word, collected by a stitcher of high proficiency as a record, as a reference. The stitcher did just enough of each pattern to set the repeat. The Drakt photo is of a finished band, tricked out with accompanying side flourishes. I’m not sure what the finished band would have adorned. Possibly a pillow or bedcovering, or some table linen. It’s not impossible that it came from clothing, but linens are more likely.

Discounting the worked background, the similarities between the two outweigh the differences. Those are minor – the treatment of the center binding band and stems/bodies of the central flowers, and the treatment of the diagonal arm that links each up-down motif. 14.931 uses a more architectural binding in the center, with more delicate center stems. Its diagonal arm is adorned with an S-shaped squiggle rather than chained solid fill diamonds. But even with the differences between the two historical renditions, it’s clear to me that the two stitchers involved were cribbing from the same source, with minor changes creeping in much like the modern game of telephone, in which a comment whispered to one end of a line and then passed up along the chain often turns out different than the original message. I happen to prefer 14.931’s lines and proportions, so that’s the pattern version I started with.

My amendations are mostly in the treatment of the two terminal flowers in the pattern’s center, a minor elaboration of the binding bars in the center, and the filling in the diagonal arms that connect each central motif. I didn’t like the sponge like “down flower” at the center of 14.931, and I had trouble seeing exactly what was going on with the “up flower.” Plus I didn’t like the smashed tulip look of the comparable center bloom in the Drakt photo. I tried several variations on the S-squiggle in the diagonal arm, but didn’t like any of them. I ended up with th ladder shape in order to make the airy and open terminal acanthus-like leaves look lighter by comparison. And then I added the second narrow binding bar to correct proportions in the motif’s center. I could have raised the original bar two stitches, but I liked the way that it lined up with the separation between the leaves, so instead of moving it I increased its depth and intensified 14.931’s horizontal lines.

I consider my own changes very much in the spirit of the original, and well within the range of variation presented by the two historical samples. I’ve preserved the look and feel of the pattern without debasing the delicacy or detail of the original, and left it a totally identifiable scion of its parents while tweaking it just a bit to my own taste. Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE (2 June 2023):

I have found another example of this design. This snippet is in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design, Accession 47.292. They do not assign it a geographic or temporal attribution. Because of the way the detail has eroded, it does look a bit shopworn to me, like a copy of a copy of a copy.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, spanish stitch

Thanks to a relatively quiet week with only two late nights and one day of weekend work, I managed to make significant progress on my sampler.

I finally finished the band of tilting columns and started on the final line of lettering.

After the lettering I have room for several more patterned strips, the exact number depending on how wide each one is. I’d like to include a row of strawberries, but I haven’t found a historical pattern for them that I really like, so I’ll probably doodle up one myself. I’m also considering several inhabited bands, with dragons, lions or mythological creatures, not unlike the mermaid strip I included in TNCM.

Another possibility would be a series of two-tone patterns, using both black and red in the same strip; or another long armed cross stitch band of a pattern similar in style to the one at the top, but worked voided. That would be very heavy though, and if done at all, should probably be relatively narrow. Maybe I’ll save that for the last one, to give weight to the bottom of the composition.

Technorati : BLACKWORK, CROSS-STITCH, Embroidery, counted-thread, double running stitch