Opus Anglicanum finish: Mary

This is where I left Mary at the end of the Opus Anglicanum class in January.  Since then I have managed to work my way through a piece of canvas work, preparatory to the March Retreat in the English Lakes District, finish the Australian Bush piece . and the acorn and horse from Opus Anglicanum.

So now for Mary. It seems appropriate to be posting this from Windermere, on my embroidery retreat. Details of how that is going can be found on my travel blog.



    Regretfully, I did not take photos of the face in progress. It looked more like a skull for much of the time. My granddaughters had many questions about the veil - why did she have white hair? why would Mary wear a veil? why would you wear a veil under a crown?










I have surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying working with one strand of silk. That, however, came to an end and there was no way out of completing the goldwork!

I'm very pleased that I had finished the crown at home during the course. This meant I only had the cloak/shawl to finish. It took a few hours and I tried hard to improve the stitch as I went along.


In deference to my granddaughters, I also added rather more hair than the original had - in order to make it clear that the white bit was a veil.






Again, I had been giving thought to how I might use this piece. I still had one box with a magnetic base for storing needles and the embroidery space on the lid was perfect.


So here she is, guarding (blessing?) the needles. She will make a nice gift for someone.

Thanks again to Alison Cole and my fellow students!

Opus Anglicanum: Roger the Little finish

Since the Embroiderers' Guild Summer Week of classes, I have been doing my best to finish the four pieces I started as part of the classes I did. The box with the acorn embroidered on velvet  in my last post was finished in time to house some jewellery for my eldest granddaughter's birthday last month. 

I then moved on to Roger the Little, a horse head embroidered on linen, also part of Alison Cole's Opus Anglicanum class.

This was a lovely piece to work on. I won't go into the detail of stitches. It is Alison's design and I'm sure she will be offering it in future classes.

The only difficulty I had was in shading. I would have liked a couple more transition colours between the dark and light greys.

Nevertheless, I am pleased with the result.

I had, all along, planned to use this on the lid of the companion box to the one I used for the acorn. Once it was finished I went in search of an alternative - a box with a round mounting space of the right size - but I was unable to find exactly what I was looking for, so returned to the original  plan.

I padded the back of the roundel and backed it with another layer of linen, couching a gold thread around the outer edge to give it dimension .



The box I had is not easy to work with, having a very narrow edge to which to affix an inset. There is also a shallow allowance for the lid to fit the box, so the inset needs to fit high and tight into the lid.

In order to minimise the thickness of fabric at the edges I mounted the edges in silk and cut away as much of the linen as I could.













In process I pricked myself and added my blood to the linen!

Again, attaching the inset to the lid was difficult. I can't find tacks short enough, and getting even a small staple gun into the space is difficult. I managed with the help of pliers. I am sure there are better tools for achieving this, but I don't have them.





I have a bit of a plan for this box - but will set it aside for several months.

Now for Mary!