WORDS!
Moving right along, and answering questions.
I’ve finished the first panel. I’ve drafted out the motto and it’s obviously in process, too. What you see here is just the second half of the phrase. The first half will go above the completed strip, but I have room to add this part without advancing the scroll, so I am doing it first. And here are some details which should help folk looking for more info.
I am using a combo of two alphabets available on the Patternmaker Charts blog site, established by Ramzi, and apparently now maintained by helpers as well. The bolder upper case letters are from Sajou Booklet #004, but I tweaked them slightly for greater twinkle and depth. I am after all honoring yet another science fiction book by my Resident Male is currently writing. Starlight is appropriate. The lower case alphabet does not line up exactly with the upper case one in terms of spacing and ornament, but again, it has twinkle. It’s from the same site, but appears in Sajou #007. The site has been up for a very long time, and the interface is clunky to navigate but the content is priceless. Booklets indicated by asterisks contain line drawn material. No asterisks means the content is charted.
How did I know to use these together? Guesswork, and reaching way back to being a little kid. My grandfather owned a contract print and engraving shop in the pre-photocopy era. He produced catalogs, advertising material, magazines, books, stock certificates, menus, and lots of other printed matter. While it’s obvious that I didn’t follow him into the family business, I was a curious little thing, and he was happy to show me the fun of type faces, font sizes, leading, kerning, and the way that different typesetting choices and physical presentation can change the way a message is perceived. With his paper samples and layout guides, I always had the wildest written report covers in grade school.
Maybe a little bit stuck from those chats, and from going through his printed examples because I still quest for just the right thing when I compose my motto-bearing pieces. Sometimes I hit the mark, sometimes not. But to this day I always learn from the hunt and the exercise.
What’s the next panel after the words are completed? Something totally new. I’m web-walking looking for Azammour Cluster pieces I haven’t seen before. There are more than there were just three years ago, because the fragments in museum and private hands are being re-evaluated, and the turn-of-the-1900s identifications as Renaissance era snippets sold to collector/tourists are being updated. I’ve found a couple of very interesting ones featuring motifs other than the usual meandering repeats or birds. Charting now. Slowly. Reveal when I have more to show, of course.
And what is the full text of the motto?
Anything Could Happen
Anything Often Does
This can be read in a few different ways. First and foremost is that it is a direct quotation from The Hungry Judges, the novel currently in development, and central to the plot stream.
Yet at the same time, I can see it as a summary statement of my former professional career in engineering/high-tech bids and proposals. That was an endless parade of short term crisis containment and contingency planning – managing overburdened teams striving to meet unrealistic deadlines, spiced with technical requirements that were not always feasible within performance constraints. But I never missed an on-time submission in 42 years, had an enviable win rate, and emerged without ulcers.
And lastly of course, it does echo my current medical predicament. My malady is not something pegged to known statistical associations with genetics, environmental or exposure factors, stress, or lifestyle. Chordoma is so rare that triggers are not understood, yet appears to be a totally random reactivation of the extremely small number of dormant stem cells that everyone retains along their spinal column, going back to our embryonic origins. What wakes them up is a medical mystery.
With my typical attack optimism, I am planning on outlasting this wack-a-mole recurrence, and with radiation and other modalities, continued vigilance and via several promising avenues of targeted antibody and other “lullaby” treatments, return them to secure slumber.
FIRST PANEL FLIP
Moving right along on my latest. I’m just past the point of flipping the frame over.
I’ve got all the black double running outlines for the main motif done. That’s not uncommon for Azemmour Cluster pieces, but is not a usual treatment for these larger ones. In the larger museum snippets they are usually outlined in the same color as the voided ground. In the later multicolor ones, anything goes. But it is more common for the smaller ones – especially the ones with birds and foliage or small urns. Since this is not intended to be a fully historically accurate piece, I feel free to take liberties. As for specific references for the pomegranate variants of the spider flower, I point you to these, both collected around the turn of the 20th century, and both formerly attributed as being Italian works of the 1600s.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Accession 11.2880, Newly attributed to Azemmour, 18th century.
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/68407/tent-stitch?ctx=4b923968-ddd5-426e-a76c-6afa55e9b949&idx=229
Cleveland Museum of Art, Accession 1929.843. Also newly reattributed and dated. Azemmour, 19th century
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1929.843
A very similar motif also shows up on this late polychrome sampler.
Victoria and Albert Museum Accession T.35-1933 , Morocco, 19th century
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O70740/sampler-unknown/
Flipping and Stitch Inversion
Why flip? Because I find it awkward to reach the entire area behind the frame for two-handed stitching. And the area of best access seems to be slightly different for each piece of work. But flipping long armed cross stitch (LACS) introduces a small variable that has to be dealt with. Inversion flips the direction of the interlace if the stitch is worked in the same way regardless of frame orientation. LACS is usually done in alternating rows, back and forth, to produce a plaited type appearance. While this is most evident when the thread offers better coverage than the sparse strand I am using, the effect is still there. I even take care to keep all rows across in the same left-right orientation, even if they are interrupted by a non-voided design element, so that when areas do meet up there isn’t a visible “seam” where two rows worked in the same direction abut.
Flipping however means that if I continue to work the same way, with the long arm originating along the top edge of the row and plunging back down at the bottom, slanted in the direction of travel, the spot where the voiding was laid down with the top of my stitching surface aligned at the top of my working area will be inverted compared to anything stitched after the flip. So to avoid those visible “seams” I have to mirror my stitching sequence along the vertical.
Now that I’m working with the side that was the bottom now at the top, my long arm stitches have to emerge at the bottom, proceed in the direction of travel, and re-enter the cloth at the top of my stitching line. Clear as mud? I thought so. This may help. the black arrows indicate direction of travel. And yes, the back side of this work presents mostly as vertical lines, with a bit of fudging at left and right, especially if a diagonal bit of non-voided area is encountered. And if that meet-up is not a diagonal, I do terminate my lines at each end with the equivalent of the missing plain old cross stitch leg, for a neater edge appearance.
If you can visualize it while the direction of crossings look different when seen this way, once they are stitched they are identical, with no visible interruption in texture between them.
What’s Next?
It’s time to start thinking about the next strip. This one is just above the basted center line of my available ground. I am going to omit the traditional top and bottom framing motifs, often seen sprouting from or in addition to a divider like the rope edge I stitched, opting instead to just do a set top and bottom of the whole piece.
Next will probably be a narrower band, not voided. I think as a whole-piece theme, I will alternate voiding with plain double running bands. I am thinking about doing it in another color. I have some medium indigo color Alori silk, and some of the same stuff in purple. I’m considering one or both but probably not together, nor in combo with the black. Not enough contrast between them, and neither is in quantity enough for voiding. Have to ponder more on this.
And just for fun, in the photo at the top you can see the whole frame set-up. My widest Millennium, grasped on the right (just the tips of the jaws in camera range, by the Lowery Large Frame Extender. My chatelaine is draped over it, where I stow it between sessions. You can see the old pillowcase I have pinned to the back of the work. That limits light transmission through the cloth, both from the television (upper left, various vintage Star Trek series are comforting accompaniments to stitching); and the library window (upper right) during daylight hours. I have a couple of magnets stacked in the upper corner of my margin, to hold my needle threader and keep the cut length of thread I’m drawing strands from handy.
Health update
Needle threader? For work on 28 count? And 28 count at all? Yup. Although my fave is 40+, especially around 50, right now my health complications include a modicum of double vision and close detail fatigue caused by mechanical pressure on the nerve that controls the eye movements needed for binocular focus. I can see well enough to stitch, read, or knit out to about fingertip length, but much beyond that diverges – to the point where driving a car is neither feasible nor safe. But because I anticipated a visual challenge and throttled back, I still have my Emotional Support Stitching to fall back on. And it is most welcome.
And I am happy to report that proton radiation therapy begins on Monday. We attack my cranial interloper aggressively, and I am optimistic for the outcome, and enduring the upcoming 40-odd days of treatment with minimal if any side effects. I did it last year and can do it again. Of course, I have other coping mechanisms. Knitting socks in waiting rooms, for example.
SEE YOU ON THE FLIP SIDE
That time has come. Tomorrow is the beginning of The Great Eviction, in which my invader and I will be separated. I am ready, packed, prepped, and armed with great ferocity and the single minded determination to overcome, outlast, and outwit my adversary and come back as unchanged as possible (except for the obligate scars, of course).
I’ve marked my level of optimism on my latest sampler. I haven’t mentioned progress in a while, but it quickly became my Emotional Support Embroidery after receiving my diagnosis last month. Not ironed, but as a WIP, it’s too early to think about doing that.
Yes, it’s still unfinished. I’ll do some more on it later today of course, but I won’t be done. That’s on purpose. I have every intention of future completion. And note the victory wreaths on the top as-yet-to-be-background-stitched strip. That strip is also deliberately placed skew to the centering of the rest of the sampler. My life has been tilted akilter, so this bit is, too.
I’d also like to everyone for the unexpected outpouring of support. I am overwhelmed by the vast number and generous sentiment of the comments here, on various social media platforms, and sent to me personally by direct message and email. I had no idea I had reached so many people around the globe. I am not a spiritual person, but I can say that if Providence can be petitioned, perhaps the wide ecumenical spread and volume of promised prayers in every major worldwide religion (and many of the less well known ones) will tilt the odds even more in my favor.
See you soon!
-Kim
CATCHING AN ASSIST
According to the posting date, it’s been about 10 days since I last reported in on progress on Assist. I’ve had a couple of mis-alignments due to low lighting and inattention. Some I’ve picked out, others I saved as cautionary lessons. And I’ve taken a slight departure from my usual working cadence.
Here’s the latest in-hoop view.
Obviously I’m working voiding on the row of snaky, vaguely draconic S-shaped flowers. But I’m only half-way done with that, yet I’ve gone on to start (although not finish) the row of smaller fills underneath.
Why the partials?
Because it’s very likely I’ll be attending Arisia over the weekend. It’s a big science fiction convention here in the Boston metro area. There will be discussions, panels, and lectures to attend. I like to keep my hands occupied at such things, so I can better follow along without distraction. Therefore to minimize lap clutter and make this project more portable I want to have enough started with established repeats, so I can work “off book/screen” for the balance of the weekend. That plus using the chatelaine means quick convenience – nothing can be dropped or left behind as we migrate from one panel room to the next.
As far as difficulty, the voiding requires no pattern reference once the foreground repeat is established. The partial fills each have enough detail that I don’t need to refer back to those patterns, either. I can just copy what I’ve already worked. Note that that second one is rather far along. In that case I DID get lost and decided to finish that square out here at home and not trust to luck on the go.
I’ll probably start on the foreground of the next voided strip, too. Either below the four-box fill row, or above the three-box fill row that sits on top of the motto (seen peeking out at top, from the folds underneath the frame). Which one I’ll do will depend on which design I pick next. I think one that’s as wide as or very slightly narrower than the Assist strip will sit nicely at the growing pile north of the motto. Something wider and more demonstrative for below. How wide and how demonstrative is going to be a function of the very narrow nature of the composition as a whole. I only have 102 units across to play with. Lots of my drama queen voided/double running strapwork strips have repeats significantly wider than that. We’ll see.
And a working hint. You can see that I’m not stitching up to the red double-running stitch boxes outlining my fills. I’m leaving a one-unit strip of unworked linen between the red outlines and the fills. Usually I “fig-leaf” any partial stitches when working fills in spaces buy doing them first, then stitching a heavy outline around the fill area to cover all sins. This time I opted for a lighter look. The hint is if you look at the on-deck set I’m currently stitching, and the two completed sets above (visible as partials in and above the hoop) you’ll see that I lay down the first pass of double-running, then work the fill, then go back and complete the double-running by stitching the second pass. I’m doing this because counting those little dashes is immensely easier to do than trying to navigate by counting the stitches in a completed line.
The uncorrected mistakes to date? There are four, and I hang my head in shame.
First, my original basted guidelines were off by three units. The natural vertical center of the piece is three units to the right of my first go at basting. That I didn’t catch until I had finished the voiding on Assist. Voiding is not something that should be picked out by the faint-hearted, especially in silk on somewhat fragile vintage linen. So I adjusted my alignments rather than picking out. When I frame or finish this up as a scroll there will be some compensation to keep the final field even all the way around.
Second, I’m off by an entire unit somewhere between the vertical center and right guide line, probably with two one-thread width displacements in an earlier slubby or worn/fuzzy bit on the vintage linen. There I didn’t catch that until the first row of fills and Assist were done. Oops.
Third, that interlace box. The interlaces are not centered, again they’re off. This error I blame on SWI – stitching while intoxicated. We had a lovely bottle of champagne that evening, to celebrate the close of the holiday season, consumption of the last of our leftovers and cookies, and (in passing) to toast our 43rd wedding anniversary. Obviously it went straight to my head. I left that one in to warn me against similar excesses in the future.
And last, the width of the rightmost box on the current fill line. All of the ones in this row are supposed to be squares of 24 stitches. Except that one. There was only room for him to be 23 units wide. Now four boxes of 24 units plus three separators of two units each equals 102. But there he is, one stitch unit narrow. So it goes. I’ll pick a nice scattered fill with a half-drop repeat and no one will notice. Plus an added benefit of the strident, visually distracting alternating strips is that they break cadence. I can correct the count after the next one is done, and the correction will be difficult to see because of the solid red mass separating it from the fills above.
Oh. I did get a side benefit from the dissolute evening of sodden stitchery. I took the cork cage/bail from the bottle and twisted it into a spool holder for my chatelaine. I may go back and redo this with a silver tone one I had saved from last year’s bottle, but for now, it’s working well. The tiny spool of Corticelli Size A embroidery silk spins with little effort; just enough to make inadvertent unwinding unlikely, but easily enough to reel off what I need.
Will this piece be absolutely perfect? Nope. Far from it. And that doesn’t bother me because I have the next stitching project already in sight.
LONG-LOST TWINS, PART VII
Today’s my birthday, and needlework friend Barbara posted a snippet to my Facebook feed of a voided panel showing couples dancing. That bit of fun led to more digging on my part. I knew of similar panels in a couple of places, so I decided to do another of these posts that only a needlework geek could love.
First, here’s the one that was most prominent in my notes. It’s in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), accession 47.199. They attribute it as Italian, circa 1600, and cite both the ground and the stitching as being cotton. I have some doubts about the materials citation, but I’m not an expert and haven’t seen the piece up close and personal. I do note however that it would be one of the two easiest examples of this family to chart.
It’s hard to see, but the ground appears to be in that tightly pulled Meshy stitch I’ve written about before. I do not know if the foreground and outlines are done in double running or back stitch. There’s no other info on working method or object purpose. But I sort of suspect that this might have been part of household decor – possibly a bed valence or decorative cover sheet, remotely possible – a tablecloth, but for that I would expect to see a butted corner, and not the arbitrary unworked bit at the extreme right of the stitching. It is interesting to see the tease that confirms my working method – there’s a tiny bit of the foliage on the “room divider” at the right edge that was outlined, but the voiding wasn’t worked up and around that little bit of outline, leaving it orphaned and alone. More argument for this having been displayed with that selvedge bit tucked away and unseen, as I would expect for the upper hanging around a bed.
In any case, here are some relatives. First a piece from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, accession 38.1104. They cite it as 16th century, and Italian, worked in red silk on linen. Looks like the Meshy background to me.
You can see that the design is very close, but isn’t spot on exact. There is a different treatment of detail in both the foliage divider and the castle tower divider. The border (if there was one) is also gone, but we can’t judge that in absentia. There are also lots more small bits and bobs surrounding the dancers and the little guy in the RISD sample. The male figure has traded his crowned turban-line hat for a lush head of hair. And the little guy looks to be better dressed. I’d be tempted to call him a page in this version and possibly a cupid or eros figure in the RISD piece, due to the bit of arrow fletching? sticking up over his shoulder. And although I haven’t counted the units, or investigated closely enough to see if the thread count of the two grounds are even, the MFA’s snippet does seem to be a bit compressed north-south, compared to the RISD one. But not uniformly so. The upper bodies appear to be less squished than their lower halves.
And the third – this one from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Accession 1929.840. They note their piece as being done in silk on linen. It’s pretty clear that this one is in Meshy, too.
Based on very strong similarity between this piece and the MFA holding, I suspect these might have been true siblings, pieces from the same original, cut apart and sold to two separate collectors, which then ended up in two different museum collections. In fact if you compare the right edge of the MFA piece, and the left edge of this one we can see a bifurcated page boy – it is pretty likely that we are looking at the exact snip line where they were separated. As an aside, I like the little unfinished bit underneath the lower left leaf of the foliage divider, at the left edge of the piece. Again, confirmation that outlines were laid down first, then the background was worked.
This one is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, accession 47.40. They call it “Border” and cite it as being Italian, and 17th century, worked in silk on linen.
Their original photo is a bit fuzzy, but it’s pretty clear that this piece is possibly another section of the same original that furnished the RISD snippet. Not only are the borders and proportions intact, but the small details of crown/hat, arrow, interior detail on the dividing motifs, and even the dress border of the woman dancer is identical.
And to wrap up, I have one more snippet in my notes. This is also from the MET collection, accession 07.62.58. They cite it as Italian or Greek, 17th century, and note that it’s silk on linen. They rightly describe the meshy ground as drawnwork.
By now you should be familiar with the details of this design. Yes – it looks closer to the CMA and MFA snippets than it does to the RISD and the other MET holding. But there are some subtle differences. The ground line is most obvious. In the other two non-bordered bits of this variant, the stitchers have taken more pains to keep a stable bottom edge of the stitching. That’s not to say there aren’t deviations from that on both pieces, but on this one is is far more evident. There are also some other minor differences in detail on the dividers and on the dancers’ outfits. Now I suspect that it was not uncommon for a very large project like a set of bed hangings to be worked by multiple stitchers. Even if a master laid down the outlines and had a crew working “clean-up” behind, filling in background and detail, a large team working quickly might make these minor copyist errors. I don’t think that there is enough difference here to clearly claim that this has no chance of being a piece of the same original as the CMA and MFA fragments.
So to sum up, I do think that two original artifacts furnished all of these bits. And I would go further to posit that the unbordered one might have even been unfinished prior to its dismemberment. I thank the collectors of the “Indiana Jones” era for heading off on their Grand Tours, and bringing back these pieces. I thank the museums for hanging onto these rarely studied snippets, and for posting photos of them on line, so we can speculate about their origin. And I thank Barbara for flagging the dancers for my birthday.
I return you now to regularly scheduled, non-boring Internet content. 🙂
BLACKWORK/STRAPWORK RESOURCES HERE ON STRING
NOTE: UPDATED TO BE CURRENT THROUGH 15 JULY 2025
Blackwork embroidery seems to be having an Official Moment right now, with tons of new interest. I’ve got a lot of resources here that might be useful to folk beginning or continuing their journeys, but it’s not well indexed. So I post this round-up of on site resources in the hope of lending a hand. And to be able to point to the whole set if asked. Image at the end for the eye candy effect. List below has been updated since it was originally posted.
Technique and Tools
- Double Running Stitch Logic. One of many times I’ve tried to explain double running stitch and two-sided work. This post led to the tutorial series listed below.
- Assorted Blackwork Hints. Answers to questions about my working methods. Making mistakes; guidelines; where to start; simple tracing using “the poor person’s light box”; multicolor; equipment hints (frames, needles, wax); and a list of tricks for path planning in double running logic.
- Blackwork Thread Thickness and Grounds. One strand or two for double running? Why is it sometimes hard to keep your lines straight and even.
- Blackwork Heresy. Back stitch, double running, and the hybrid that floats between them, which I nicknamed “Heresy Stitch.” Useful but not something I’ve documented in historical works. Can be easier for people who get lost when working double running, and saves thread when compared to back stitch.
- What Makes a Blackwork Pattern Difficult? Cautions and mitigations for three challenges, that might help simplify those trouble spots.
- On Charting. How to look at a photo and then translate the design to paper.
- Determining the Thread Count of Small-Gauge Linens. How to use a penny (or other tiny thing with a known and stable diameter) plus a cell phone camera to figure out the count of a hard-to-see ground.
- Cornered Again. One way to handle placement of bands on a band sampler and a wrap around frame edging, with minimal advanced planning.
- Filling In. More questions from the mailbag, including some unusual names for stitch techniques that appear in museum annotations.
- Proofing. How I check alignment as I stitch, to make sure I’m not wandering off count.
- Turning a Strip Repeat into an All-over. This one also belongs under the free linear stitch patterns heading below. A couple of ways to make a single width strip into a double, and how I ended up turning it into a Green Man square.
- Travel Cover for a Flat Frame. How I made mine, and how you can make one, too.
- Hoops! Sizes, thicknesses, wrapping, and more.
- Working on skew counts (non-evenweave linens). An aside in the discussion of a past project, but lots of tech info here.
- Typography in embroidery design. Choose your typefaces carefully!
- The Buzz on Beeswax. Why I am such a fan of using it in blackwork.
Inspiration
- Elizabethan Blackwork Smock. Photos of the famous Victoria & Albert Museum smock (1575-1585), Accession T.113 through 118-1997, plus my redaction of some of the fills used on it.
- Blackwork Inspiration. Some sources for folk looking for project ideas for original pieces of contemporary blackwork
- Digression – Blackwork Embroidery. Lots of links to portraits and other artworks showing blackwork. Some of them might still work.
- More Inspiration from Historical Sources. Another link roundup of countwork appearing in paintings and portraits. Some of these links may still be live, too.
- Forehead cloths. The coif’s companion. Much easier to wear in modern context (see Bragging, below).
- Ironwork at the V&A. These pieces sing “outline potential” to me.
Voided Works
- Voided Grounds. A roundup of various treatments for voided work, where the background is overstitched but the foreground remains (mostly) unworked. This is the style that was reborn in the 1800s as Assisi work, and is also known as reserva stitching.
- Voided Pieces and Outlines. Do historical voided pieces always sport outlines? Were they done first? Were they always on the count?
- Voided Narrative Panels. A style cluster of voided works probably done by drawing the foreground designs freehand, then working the background up to those lines.
- Meshy! Working that hard-pulled mesh like voided style that totally encapsulates the ground fabric’s threads.
History, Speculation, Pattern Clusters, Printing Block Migrations and Other Musings
- The Twain do Meet. Introduction to Kasuthi Kashida. Blackwork’s Indian cousin
- Looking East Again. Double running stitch pieces from the Wardak Hazara people of Pakistan. Another example of a South Asian stitching tradition that may be one of blackwork’s lesser known Eastern cousins.
- A Missing Link? A curious family of Egyptian Islamic artifacts of the 10th to 15th centuries, that have no proven relationship to inhabited blackwork (the kind with hard outlines and geometric fills), yet presage its aesthetic.
- The Azemmour Cluster. A group of patterns that in the time I’ve been paying attention has had their commonality and point of origin increasingly recognized, moving them from late 19th century source annotations that identified them as Renaissance era products made everywhere from Greece to Spain, and placing them in Morocco.
- The Spider Flower. A design that is probably part of the Azemmour Cluster
- Revisiting the Stupid Cupids – Multiple versions of the cupid and oak leaf meander.
- A Pattern’s Pedigree. Random thoughts about a specific family of patterns that shows up both voided and unvoided.
- The Leafy Family. A wide leaf-bearing meander that shows up multiple times in artifact inventories.
- More Cousins. The Leafy Bricks group.
- Cornered! Possible working direction and four different corner treatments of a famous, oft photographed handkerchief in the V&A.
- Italian Leafy, Occasionally Multicolor. Another design family of large panels and edgings that have curiously similar design elements, and a direct association of one example with the Jewish community of Rome, hard dated to 1582/1583.
- Long Lost Twins, Part I. That ubiquitous urns and piping harpies design. (I revisited this one in Part V, below)
- Long Lost Twins, Part II. Oak branch, leaf and acorn design, executed in both monochrome and polychrome, multiple versions.
- Long Lost Twins, Part III. Another very common pattern with multiple iterations, in multiple museums, two instances of which may have been cut from one original piece.
- Long Lost Twins, Part IV. Multiple instances of a simple Y and wrap meander.
- Long Lost Twins, Part V. Lots more on that harpies/urns design; found in many museums, many iterations, and even multiple stitching modalities.
- Long Lost Twins, Part VI. Two instances of a column design, very probably once cut from the same artifact. Fragments of which are held in two museums
- Long Lost Siblings? Another case of a single source artifact probably cut in two, now held by two different museums.
- Long Lost Twins, Part VII. Resuming the series. This is a voided pattern showing dancers, several pieces possibly cut from two originals before dispersal to various collectors.
- When is More of the Same Not More of the Same? Examining differences among different editions of various modelbooks, trying to parse out whether they were reprinted from the same block, hand tinted, or recarved.
- Modelbook Blocks: Acorns and Chickens. A classic. Was the block simply traded and reprinted, or was there copying afoot?
- One Design’s migration. Another look into multiple printings of the same design, and differences/similarities among those iterations.
- Early Marketing? Or Not… Speculation set aside by actually looking at the when and where of a pattern published both with and without religious mottoes.
- Repeating On and On on Repeats. A summary of the types of rotations and mirrorings commonly seen in long strip patterns
- Ocular Proof? My argument that Othello’s strawberry speckled handkerchief used in the play to implicate Desdemona might have been conceived of by Shakespeare as a countwork piece.
- A Curious Applique Technique. Not embroidery, but often appearing in modelbooks alongside it. Take a strip of leather or cloth, cut it with precision into a pattern that duplicates itself on either side of the bisecting line. Twice the yardage and no waste. Wildly clever.
- The Symmetries of Linear Stitched Fills and Strips. The difference between designs with even and odd numbered stitch counts, and how they can be used to best advantage. Plus pitfalls of aligning them with each other, especially when using purpose-woven grounds like Aida.
- Griffins. A discussion of a very common griffin design, and how it moved through time and across geography.
- The Unstitched Coif Project Exhibit. My photos and links for all of the coifs produced.
- More on 16th and 17th century pieces associated with Italy’s Foa family. Recognizable design elements characterize this cluster.
- Even More on Azemmour. Additional observations on a cluster of embroideries from Morocco, common in museum and private holdings. Some of which were sold to early collectors as Renaissance fragments.
The Unstitched Coif Project
- Completed coif – discussion of my materials, sources, and method. Includes a writeup of the stitches used, and why.
- Completed coif – discussion of my finish and fills. Close ups of the completed project, plus a motif by motif round up.
- The Unstitched Coif exhibit. All of the coifs submitted for display in December 2023.
- All of the posts tagged with Unstitched Coif. For those who want to get up close and personal with each motif as it was created.
My Unstitched Coif Project contribution, now available in high definition photography of both the front and back. It was collected by the Victoria & Albert Museum, and they have updated the piece’s permanent on-line accession page with those images.
Talks and Classes
The Stitches Speak
These are the slides from a round-up of historical counted styles I presented at a Society for Creative Anachronism needlework and textiles gathering in 2012. Mostly eye candy, and divided for ease of posting, not by subject area. However sources are listed.
- My post-event summary
- Part 1. The rest of these are my slide deck as presented. No script, just the images.
- Part 2.
- Part 3.
- Part 4.
- Part 5.
- Part 6.
Workshop Handout
This is the broadside I hand out when I teach workshops on double running stitch. It’s pretty much a self-paced tutorial, with the simplest designs at the upper left, and progressing in difficulty to the lower right. If you work these at your own speed as a band or jumble sampler, by the time you’ve done them all you can tackle just about any linear design. And although I do use this to teach double running stitch logic, no one will say you sinned if you decide to complete it in back stitch.
- Class handout. (Also available on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
Patterns
Free
Linear Units (Line Segments)
- Ensamplario Atlantio. Seconnd Edition. A collection of blackwork fills from my doodle notebooks, some my own, some from artifacts, but when I started this I didn’t intend to publish, so I didn’t keep track. Some of the larger ones work well as all-over designs, or for small projects like biscornus or holiday ornaments. All four previous segments of the original release stitched back together, along with some additional content.
- Ensamplario Atlantio Volume II. More fills, plus some strip designs and yokes. 90% original (exceptions are footnoted). In one file this time, as technology marched on since publication of the first.
- Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III. You guessed it. Even more fills, plus lots of strip and all-over patterns and even a couple of yokes. Same paradigm as the previous volumes, with the few redacted designs called out in footnotes. Anything indicated with a star is my own original work.
- My Embroidery Patterns tab. Most but not all of the designs below also appear there, plus more.
- Rose Chart. Outline for a heraldic style rose
- Ganesh Project. How to replicate my blackwork method Lord Ganesh, done as a present for a family friend in India.
- Crowdsourced simple diamond interlace, with small motif fills provided by String’s followers. Use some or all. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Dancing Pirate Octopodes. The design that led to the crowdsourced project. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Leopards. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- The Epic Fandom Stitch-Along. 19 bands, 9 of which are quasi-traditional, 10 of which are wildly anachronistic, with spaceships, dinosaurs, pirates, references to Star Trek, Star Wars, and Dr. Who. Guidance for the whole project is included.
- The Epic Fandom Stitch-Along in ONE easy to download PDF. The whole thing, informational posts, instructions and all charts for the project above.
- Cat and Mouse. A large panel with Art Deco style cats, mice, and yarn balls. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Bands from a 16th century Camica. Hem, collar, seam bands, and striping. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Those Snails. They crawl all over my work. I share some.
- Jesters at the Fence. A snippet from TNCM (see below).
- Bead border. (Also available on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Ring of Rats. Another Art Deco style chart (also available on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Tessellated Cats. This design is included in the free book Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III, available on the My Books Tab.
- Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleeves. Another redacted chart for a historical alll-over design. Redacted from a portrait. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- PERSIST sampler – a chart for a slightly slimmed down version of my Persist piece. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- A Holbein Collar. Collar on a man’s shirt, redacted from a portrait. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Hebrew Alphabet and commonly embroidered words. I mashed up a few sources to come up with this one, including a very early Apple II pixelated typeface. But the letter forms are tweaked enough to be mine. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Border or strip design. I used this one on my chatelaine ribbon. It’s also in Ensamplario Atlantio III. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- A Spanish Gentleman’s Collar. An actual example of Spanish blackwork. Redacted from a portrait. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Another Portrait, Another Redaction. Sleeve detail for a woman’s chemise charted from a circa 1500 Italian portrait. This one with chickens. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Pattern from a Gentleman’s collar, circa 1560. Chart and discussion of graphing from a painting. (An easy downloadable PDF is also on the Embroidery Patterns tab).
- Correction to The New Carolingian Modelbook, Plate 73 – the really wide interlace. I finally got around to stitching this one up and discovered that two of the overlaps as charted in the book were wrong. So I issue an update. Given the better layout and composition of my more recently composed plates, this pattern is now presented on two pages, both as a wide border and as an even wider iteration that can be used as an all over and as an even wider border. This PDF also available on the Embroidery Patterns tab
Box Units (squares)
- Unicorn. Box unit (not linear) chart for a unicorn, courtesy of Elder Offspring.
- Castles and Caravels. Box unit design featuring a three-towered castle, and its relationship of that motif to some Spanish pieces.
- Knot More Knots! Simple interlaces in box units (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Simple Geometric from 1546. This one is also box units, and works well for stitching, knitting, and crochet.
- Da Sera Bud Interlace. Another box unit pattern. (Also available on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Fun with Odonata. Another box unit design, this one for dragonflies. Note that they can be used for knitting, too. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- Fun with Lagomorphs. A box unit design for a leaping rabbit. (Also on the Embroidery Patterns tab)
- A Simple Interlace. I lost the source annotation for this box unit design aeons ago.
Not Free
- The New Carolingian Modelbook: Counted Patterns from Before 1600. Also known as TNCM. Sadly out of print. It’s in queue for update as scholarship has advanced in the years since it came out. There are corrections aplenty! You might be able to find it on the used market, but at a wildly inflated price.
- The Second Carolingian Modelbook: A Collection of Charted Patterns for Needleworkers and Artisans. Also known as T2CM Link to Amazon page is on the indicated post.
Tutorials
These are also accessible via the Tutorials tab at the top of every page here. but below they are listed in the correct chronological order
Double Running Stitch Logic
- Double Running Stitch Logic 101 – Two Sided Work and Baseline Identification. Basic logic of why baselines matter if you want to work something either totally two sided, or using two-sided logic for thread economy
- Double Running Stitch Logic 102 – Working from the Baseline. How to follow one, step by step.
- Double Running Stitch Logic 103 – Accreted and Hybrid Approaches. Breaking down a large non-linear chart for easier stitches.
- Double Running Stitch Logic 104. A review comparing back stitch and double running, and how to determine if a design can be worked totally two-sided or not.
Charting Linear Designs using GIMP Drafting Software
I found commercial charting software treats linear charts as an afterthought, so with help, I invented my own graphing method which I have used for all of my books. This series is for folk who want to move on to designing and drawing their own charts, and doing so using the dot and bar method I invented. GIMP is freeware, and if you’ve ever used Photoshop or Illustrator, and are familiar with layer-based drawing logic, the learning on-ramp for this method will be familiar. Although this was prepared for an earlier version of GIMP, these instructions are still relevant, although the GIMP menu screens now look slightly different.
- Charting. A comparison of my dot-and-bar method with the traditional drawn-on-quadrille-graph-paper method.
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 101. The logic of a layer-based drafting tool.
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 102. Getting started, basics of working with GIMP.
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 103. Building the dot layer of your template.
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 104. Layer management and building the design and mask layers of your template
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 105. Drawing the design.
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 106. Additional tools including those for erasing, flipping, alignment, and rotation
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 107. Hints on printing
- GIMP Charting Tutorial 108. Preconstructed templates to save you time.
Just Bragging
- My big underskirt forepart. Why I stitched it
- Forehead cloths for modern wear. Kind of like a kerchief, works well and keeps the hair out of my eyes in seaside winds, adapted from the companion piece often seen with a matching coif.
- Trifles wall hanging. Made as a “mom nag” for my younger spawn, done using blackwork techniques and fills.
- Blackwork sampler done in 1983. Musings on why this piece is not entirely successful in terms of stitching density distribution.
- Two Fish. No astrological connection, just two koi circling on couched gold water. Indigo and deep green silk on 40 count linen
- Fangirl Sampler – A key phrase from the science fiction series by my Resident Male, in an off-world language. It translates to “Life’ll kill you”. I am after all his fangirl army of one. Alphabet from an old Sajou leaflet, but the rest is all my design. The dancing skeletons border is available on the Embroidery Patterns tab.
- Grape Sideboard Scarf. An artifact-based main field with a self-designed companion border.
- Blackwork sampler done as the cover for T2CM, finished in 2012. Below.
AMENDS
Modern Assisi work vs. historical voided work. I know that the counted thread stitching community lumps them together, but they are not exactly the same thing. What I call “modern Assisi” is the 19th century revival of voided stitching, that draws heavily on Italian folk and church embroidery styles, which in turn trace their roots back to Renaissance era voided pieces. And that late 19th century revival was again echoed in the 20th century, with the collection and republication of many patterns, and issue of new books on the subject.
Yes, both Assisi and earlier styles include prominent outlines usually done in double running or back stitch. And both feature largely unstitched foregrounds (sometimes with additional ornamentation) that contrast strongly with a stitched background.
One of the key defining characteristics of modern Assisi is the use of cross stitch for the background. That’s “plain old cross stitch (POCS)” – not long-armed cross stitch. The Renaissance era voided styles use many different ground stitches and approaches, but so far after looking at hundreds of extant examples, I haven’t seen any in POCS.
Which is why I got very excited when I stumbled across this piece. Now before you get excited too, I did NOT find the unicorn of POCS in pre 1650-era voided work.
“End of a Tablecloth” 15th-16th century. Italian, Sicilian or Spanish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession 08.48.132
I made the mistake of idly browsing on my phone with its tiny screen, and jumping the gun I posted about the piece before I got back to my laptop and high resolution monitor. Obviously, once I was able to zoom in I corrected my mistake, but I did look like an idiot.
So to atone for my egregious lack of judgement, I charted the design in question, and make the chart available as a broadside, for your own personal, non-commercial use. Please do not republish my redaction or include it in other pattern collections.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF BROADSIDE OF THE CHART.
Some notes on this piece.
My redaction is not true to any one repeat of the design. Instead I averaged all of them, evening out replication errors as best I could, to arrive at a single, uniform representation of the motifs. All design elements are there, in correct proportion and placement to each other, but there will be small deviations between the chart above and any one of the artifact’s pattern iterations.
The background is not worked in POCS. It was worked squared and unlike every other example of the squared filling on historical works I’ve seen, the stitches were pulled very tightly, bundling the ground cloth’s threads together. Meshy techniques for grounds were very popular in the 1600s and 1700s, but every other example I’ve seen has completely covered the bundled threads with stitching, making a very hard-wearing totally overstitched square mesh ground. In this case the ground cloth’s weave does show through.
The squared filling was worked up to but not touching the outlines of the foreground motifs. A one-unit “halo” was left around them. I’ve tried to represent that on my chart. There was considerable “fudging” in the way the filling was carried into the nooks and crannies of the foreground design. I’ve chosen the least acrobatic of them to include in the chart. Note that there are a couple of deviation points where a diagonal stitch was used to carry the ground thread up into a narrow area of the design.
Colors. Your guess is as good as mine. The outlines and the ground fill are clearly two different colors. If I had to guess, I would probably opt for black for the outlines and madder red for the fill. But other color combos do exist – not every historical piece was done in black and red.
The outlines – double running or back stitch? It’s impossible to tell from just looking at the front. I do note however that the spots on the leopards are all connected to the outline. There are none just floating in space, which makes the piece easier to execute in double running than a piece with discontinuous bits. The only minor challenge in this one if worked in double running would be that little hunting dog. It’s a small area not connected to any of the rest of the design.
And finally, the complementing edging. Note that the squared background is terminated with little “fingers” that slant up and to the right on the top of the strip, and down and to the left at the bottom. I tried to get the whole repeat on the chart, but I ran out of room. For absolute fidelity, work the bottom fingers exactly as tall as the ones on top. Don’t truncate as I was forced to do.
The moral of the story? Check, double check, and do so on the highest resolution display device you have to hand. Never let your excitement run away with you.
MESHY DONE, PLUS KITTING OUT THE FRAME
Yaay! A bit of self discipline imposed, and the forever voiding on the meshy lettuce pattern panel is complete. I have to admit that while I adore the look, I am not wildly fond of the hard-pulling needed to achieve it. I might try it again if I ever find a linen that’s the right combo of threads-per-inch plus nice soft and lofty constituent threads, instead of skinny hard-spun ones.
How does this strip fit into the growing project? After all – it has been about 8 years since we’ve seen the whole thing laid out. For the record, I’ve filled about 45% of the available real estate – there’s a lot more to go.
Now for the next. I don’t think I’ve play-tested these dolphins before (another design in the ever-forthcoming T2CM). The original showed them with a squared fill background in voided style, but I wanted something lighter to follow the dark band I just finished. I left off the voiding, but then decided that the bit looked rather spare. My dolphins needed something to play with, so I added the round elements, and am now pleased. A quickie, this bit took just Saturday and Sunday evenings:
I will add the roundels to the dolphin at right of center, but I left it off so you can see the rather unfinished look it had without something there.
After this one? Probably another narrow strip, possibly a bit wider than this one, and possibly darker for contrast. Then after that I have a double running stunner queued, but it’s rather wide and needs a bit more spacer ground between it and the giant meshy lettuce panel.
In the mean time, as I get up close and personal with the frame I am making little improvements to my set-up. For example, the jaw of the Lowery is steel, and well loved by magnets. But it’s not exactly accessible with the large frame extender unit. BUT when I flip the thing over to terminate a thread, it is. Add a strong classic U-shaped magnet, and I’ve got a handy place to park my snips (the red magnet is just behind the red snipper).
My needle minder works quite well, and sometimes I use it to park my threader. It often does double-duty as a holder for my pattern page. But that can get in the way of the stitching area. So I glued a magnet to the flat side of one of my Millennium frame scroll bars – on the flat side (yes, I tested it to make sure the correct side was up – that’s the one that attracts rather than repels the other magnetic goodies I wanted to use):
I can use this as a rather plain needle minder all by itself, or I can park my fancy one there instead of in the hidden spot where you see it now. Or I can use another magnet with it to hold my pattern page. But best of all, I can use it in conjunction with this page holder I picked up years ago (it used to stick on my fridge door, to hold tickets, recipes, coupons, or whatever).
By just gluing on a magnet, I’ve left the door open for all sorts of other magnet-enabled organizers. There are other styles of clips. Hooks and loops with magnetic bases could accommodate scissors, for example. Finally, I’m still looking for it to test out, but because the rare-earth magnet I used is so strong, I’m betting it can hold my smaller flat metal magnet board. That would allow me to use placeholder magnets on my pattern page while the page is displayed right on my work area.
And where to find inexpensive strong-hold magnets? I recommend the geeky source, American Science & Surplus. They are a clearing house for engineering tidbits, science gear, weird surplus items, kids’ educational toys, and other miscellanea. They are especially good for containers, magnifiers, bags, precision scales and measurers, cutting implements, office supplies, and magnets. Like any surplus store, their inventory turns over quickly, so if you don’t see what you want there today, visit again next week.
CAT AND MOUSE
An odd confluence of happenstances and the resulting doodle.
Last week there was a discussion in one of the Facebook groups dedicated to 1500s costuming or blackwork that started with someone asking for a historical blackwork design that featured cats. There aren’t many examples, and the chat covered iconography, citing that cats weren’t the most auspicious of symbols at that time.
Then an unusual source came across my feed: a line-rendered group of cats, but not from the period in question. This plate flew across my Twitter feed. The source is Ernest Allen Batchelder’s Design in Theory and Practice, New York: Macmillan, 1910.
This appears on page 157. The book is a rather lively examination of design principles across history, and appears to be a transitional work, including the natural elements of the aesthetic/Art Nouveau style, but more solidly grounding the more angular principles that characterize the Art Deco/late Craftsman mood. For all I know it may be a seminal point in decorative design history, but I will leave that point to be hashed over by any readers who are schooled in design theory and lineages.
In any case, here were some linear cats just crying out to be graphed and stitched. So in response to a generalized (as opposed to Elizabethan-specific) demand for cats and to delight cat-loving friends and family, here is what the Batchelder sketch inspired:
This is rather large to be used as a fill pattern in inhabited blackwork (the subtype with outlines and fancy fills), but it is in scale for use as a large all-over design. I could see it being worked as is, in double running or back stitch, in monochrome or in multiple colors (those yarn balls cry out for variegated thread). It could be done voided, with the background filled in. The cats could be solidly stitched or left as is, or customized to match the markings of favorite pets (I provide a rudimentary tabby and tuxedo but any other markings might be fudged in). A frieze of this as the leftmost third of a placemat might be fun. I leave use up to you.
Like my other designs of late, this is “good-deed-ware.” If you like it and use it, I encourage you to look around and make a donation to a local cause that is helping people hit hard by plague-related economic challenges. “Starving artist” should be a metaphor, not a life description.
BOOKMAKING 106: QUESTIONS ON THE VOIDED DIAMOND GROUND
Yesterday’s post has inspired a few really good questions. Thanks for sending them in!
Are you working the diamond background in double running stitch?
Susan wants to know if the background diamonds are being worked totally double sided. I answer that while they certainly can be, in this case I am not bothering to do so.
No one will see the back of this piece once it’s in place on the target book. So I am working mostly, but not entirely in double running. Since I have jumped the gun somewhat and begun the background before all of my foreground motifs are complete, I have to be careful not to get ahead of myself and fill in too much – painting my yellow across the site of a future leaf. Therefore I am mostly working in double running, but reserving the right to pop over to “heresy stitch” to advance my working thread as needed, and to avoid painting myself into a corner, or covering up an area that would need to be picked out later.
There must be gaps where the diamonds don’t meet up with the leaves. Are you working half-stitches to fill in those bits?
Lisa, this is an excellent question, and really observant of you to pick up on the issue! Here’s a diagram illustrating what she was talking about.
Note how in some spots, and especially around the tendrils and lobed leaf sections there is a half-stitch gap between the red outlines of my double leaf, and the yellow diamonds. Now I COULD go and work half stitches to continue the diamonds right up to the edge of the red, but in truth – it doesn’t matter. Because the yellow is so light compared to the red, and I’m working with a relatively heavy thread thickness for the count of the ground, the visual impact of those half-stitches is almost nil. So I cheat, and leave them out all together.
How do you get the diamonds to match up as you go around the leaves?
Another excellent question, Erin! The secret to doing this is NOT to start the diamonds in several spots. Begin it in one place, and grow it out from there, working around obstructions as they are encountered. It’s kind of like a fairy ring, (or if you are computer gaming fan – The Creep). By always extending the pattern area from an established bit of work out into new territory, I stay on target, and my diamonds always align.
Have more questions? Ask away!
String-Or-Nothing 