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

Suzie asks to see the back of my Clarke’s Law sampler. Here it is in the dawn light:

I’ve not been very assiduous about making it 100% two sided, but double running stitch does lend itself to highest efficiency if one follows that logic. I’m also using knots, for which I am wildly unapologetic. Also, I’m not one of the back-is-perfection nazis. Neat, yes. Long jumps and stringy bits can be shadow-visible from the front of the work. Plus work should have a logical progression that uses thread efficiently. Rabid about it though – no. Historical works weren’t perfect.

If you notice, both the plume and hops flower patterns contain elements that cannot be worked 100% double sided – isolated lines or units not attached to the main work area. For example, in the hops flowers those are the little detached diamonds that inhabit the central motif. If I were to work this pattern double sided I’d modify it slightly, adding a vertical connecting each of those diamonds to the lozenge that surrounds it. That way front and back could be completely alike. But since the back on this won’t be visible once it’s mounted, I’m not making an extreme effort. Still, you can see that with the exception of the voided backgrounds, I’m pretty close:

Plus as you can see from the back of the piece at the top, I’m on the letters that follow the hops band. What to do next? I haven’t decided yet.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery, voided

Poking my head up from yet another marathon sprint at work here. With promise of another one hard on the heels of the last, I’m probably surfacing just long enough to note limited progress on my sampler and report other news.

First the progress:

You can see that I’ve completed another row of text, and I’m on to another double running stitch panel. I’m working this one voided too. It’s a mishmash, with the bulk of the elements taken verbatim from the sampler that provided the previous strip. The hops flower(?) and the strange ocarina-like turnip things on the side are direct quotes. The finials on either side of the hops flower were very difficult to copy though, so I took the liberty of substituting bird heads for them. Lots of patterns of this style/era include animals, humans or birds (all or in part) sprouting from vegetation. My treatment of the voided area is however a total flight of fancy. I chose to use half-cross stitch, massed into a field of diagonal lines. I used a diagonal fill on the Do-Right sampler, too:

Unlike the graph paper like squared fill I on the grapes strip, I haven’t seen historical precedent for the diagonal line treatment. But it’s not totally illogical. If you’ve seen an artifact worked this way, please let me know. Other unusual treatments of the voiding include working the background narrower than the foreground and the direction of my diagonals. I’ve only seen one historical piece worked this way – a late 16th early 17th century panel photographed in Cavallo’s Needlework. I graphed that one out, it’s in TNCM on Plate 74:1 – I worked a bit of it a while back, and am considering doing it again on this piece:

Mirroring the diagonals on either side of the central motif is new. I haven’t done this before, and I’ve never seen it done on any other piece. Again – I can’t claim originality, there’s only so many ways to do things in needlework, and it’s a sure bet that the most obvious have been tried before. One last thing I’m planning on doing is NOT filling in the voiding in the background behind the little triangular areas above and below the strange, mutant turnip things. That will make the central hops flower motifs on their lozenges of darker background look a bit like a series of very large beads.

Given my impossible work schedule, the stitching density of both the foreground motif (again worked with two threads of my DMC floss), and the background (worked with one thread), this panel should take me quite a while. After this one comes the rest of my quote. So far I’ve stitched “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indi-” Next comes “-stinguishable from magic. In all probability, the “magic” won’t fit on the next line of text. I’ll deal with that problem when I get there.

Next post – snails in the Antipodes! My dream casket! (Not the kind you’re thinking of…) Stay tuned.

Technorati : BLACKWORK, COUNTED-THREAD, EMBROIDERY

Charlotte asks about the colors of the bands on the Clarke’s Law sampler. She says that each successive band looks lighter than the one before. I answer:

So far I’ve used only two colors of embroidery floss – DMC Red #498 and DMC Black #310. The top band was done in long-armed cross stitch, using two strands of red. Long armed cross stitch produces a particularly dense and raised texture.

Outlines on the grapes band were worked in double running stitch using two strands of the red, but the background grid filling was done in one strand – also in double running.

The current plume flower band is worked in double running using just one strand.

Between the relative densities of the various source patterns and the density of the working methods I’ve ended up with the progressively lighter look for each band even though all are worked using the same thread.

My plan for the rest of the bands is to do more of the double running work, choosing bands of different visual densities and working some but not all of them voided (with a background fill, but not necessarily solid). The next one will probably be somewhat closer in look to the grapes panel, but in between that and the current band in darkness. I will alternate bands of various densities with the black lettering. I’ve used plain old cross stitch for both the letters and the red embellishing squiggles that loop around the letters. If you compare it to the long armed cross stitch snippet above you can see the difference in coverage between the two.

When all of the lettering is done I’ll consider working more long armed cross stitch. Depending on how much room is left on the cloth, I might just go for broke with one massively large pattern, working it voided, so that the piece has a nice dense anchoring segment at the bottom. Or there might be a couple of bands of progressively darker stitching leading up to it. I haven’t chosen the patterns yet and I’m not sure exactly how much room I’ve got, so you’ll have to stay tuned to see how it all works out.

To answer Ellis – the reason you can’t see any lines drawn on on the linen for stitching over is because there aren’t any. This piece is done on the count. I’m using the weave of the linen as my guide, copying patterns drawn out on graph paper, with each grid of the graph paper corresponding to square of 2×2 threads.

To answer Marya – if my pattern contains a straight line that spans two or more graph units I do not make one big stitch over all of them. I make an individual stitch for each grid unit, even if they are all in one straight line. This keeps the work neater and more true to the graphed original. Long stitches are also more likely to catch on things.

To answer [anonymous] who noted that all of these patterns seem to rely on just 90 and 45 degree angles – yes, you’re right. I can’t rule out totally that diagonals over a 1×2 grid unit weren’t used (30/60 degrees), but so far I haven’t found a historical piece that used them in this type of pattern. It’s possible that some in-filled blackwork diaper patterns (the dark outline, different geometric filling variant seen below) used stitches at those angles, but I haven’t had the luxury of examining enough historical works close-up to make that determination. Lots of modern blackwork does use those angles. But for me, I’ll stick to the orthodox and limit my design to 45s and 90s.

Technorati : blackwork, cross stitch, embroidery