Certificate Course Gingham Lace

 Because there are 5 Saturdays in this January, there have been two Certificate Course workshops, the first on Chican embroidery, which I've covered in my weekly diary. The second was on Gingham Lace (or Chicken Scratch, Depression Lace....) taken by Carol Mullan. Carol (like Barbara, who taught Chican)  is a good teacher, who knows how to encourage innovation and individual learning - really important in these topics. 

I brought along a piece of mauve gingham with roughly 1cm checks. The photos vary in colour but this first one is a good representation.

I worked a slightly extended version of a motif provided by Carol, using white thread and exposing the white squares in the woven stitches. 

On the other end of my piece, I worked the same motif again, this time in a mauve thread and exposing the purple squares.

I thought the white worked much better. This correlates with what I've thought when working gingham lace before - that in terms of thread, the white and dark colours in gingham produce a better result than the blended colour between.

So I experimented with a dark purple row around the edge. You can see immediately that this produces a kind of dark mauve shadow around the thread.

I played with this quite a bit, and decided in the end to keep the outside row very simple, to focus on colour. The little corner triangles are in fact the same mauve thread worked to expose the white squares rather than the purple.

The colour reproduction in this last photo is unfortunately terrible!

I then went back to the white motif and added a vertical row, exposing the purple on the woven squares. It is such a lot of fun playing with these simple stitches and fabric - and so rich in learning.

Finally, I found some suitable lining fabric and a zip, to turn the piece into (of course) a pouch. 

This (colour change again, I'm afraid) is the result. I'm pleased with it. I will find a use for it, it demonstrates both the stitches and colour impacts of gingham lace variations - and it's been a fun thing to do over a weekend.

Can't ask for more than that!

Chicken scratch apron no.3

For the last 52 days I have been posting a daily blog at https://jillian-england2020.blogspot.com. It began as a travel blog, but continued when I arrived home on 19 March to 14 days self-isolation, and subsequent lockdown at home in the face of the Covid19 pandemic. Much of my daily blogging is about embroidery, which I have not  repeated here. The post below was written in January. I will certainly post to this blog again in the future, maybe some composites of finished projects while in lockdown, or, certainly, when the need for daily posts has past, returning here to my usual project-based posts.

In the meantime, here's a post I prepared in a less troubled time, three months ago!

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I was making this one over the holiday period between Christmas and early January, on the last piece of gingham I had bought more than a year ago to make aprons. It needed a heavy thread to get decent coverage. I had a good supply of ecru thread in perle 5, but not much red. 

 I began on the pockets, using ecru thread and working crosses on all the ecru squares using running stitch up, down and across the diagonals, then whipping the diamond section.The second pocket I worked with similar technique but on the mixed red-ecru squares, leaving the whipping.








Along the bottom I worked a chain stitch diamond border.

Introducing colour into the bodice, was, I think, a mistake when I didn't have red thread. The pink didn't quite pop, but I was not going to undo it.

When Create in Stitch opened again after the holiday break,  I made a bee-line and bought a supply of red perle 5.

I used it first to whip the diamond on the second pocket,


then to work an edge below the bodice.
















It helped. The impact would have been stronger, I think, with red in place of the pink, but it does have its own charm. It is such a lot of fun experimenting with chicken scratch. The effects are pretty much limitless. 

Another chicken scratch apron

I was well and truly on a roll with chicken scratch aprons. The other two pieces of fabric I had were both ginghams - one in dark blue and one in a dark red. Both had an ecru rather than white contrast.

I cut both of them out to the same template as the previous one. I began stitching the blue pockets with stars, using perle 8 thread.




While I was pleased with the effect, I thought I needed more thread coverage on the edge and bodice to achieve a lacy look, so I switched to a perle 5 ecru thread.

This gave me the coverage I was after and I could work it in rows of running stitch - first one diagonal, then the other, then verticals and horizontals.

It's rythmic and easy work, but you need to be very careful with tension.

I worked a dense pattern with an embedded  diamond shape on the bodice



and an outline pattern around the hemline.

I then decided the bodice needed an outline in dark blue. I had no dark blue in perle 5, and all local shops that sold perle 5 were closed for Christmas-New Year, so I used the perle 8 in a close pattern.






I was very pleased with this result.



I had no particular recipient in mind, but one of my stitching buddies, who also loves cooking, fell in love with it, so I was delighted to give it to her.

She agreed to model it, provided I didn't show her face!

Chicken scratch apron

A year or so ago I did a workshop at the Embroiderers' Guild on Chicken Scratch, or Depression lace. We worked a little sampler, mine on a piece of small squared gingham that I happened to have left over from something.

I really loved the result. It was fascinating to see the different effects of using the red or the cream thread, and  from stitching on either the red or cream squares.

Others at the workshop had some striking fabrics they had bought from Trish's fabric shop in Adelaide. I visited after the class and bought three pieces with the intention of making aprons.

I also went hunting for patterns for cover-all aprons in the Japanese style. In the end I bought two aprons online to use as templates - cheaper and easier than patterns!

The time has never been quite right, but this Christmas, when I bought my eldest granddaughter a recipe book for Christmas, I thought it would be good to make an apron to go with it. I chose this piece pf fabric - a bold check rather than a gingham.

Because the squares were about half an inch, I needed quite a heavy thread to get coverage, and settled on this crochet cotton. It needed quite a large needle, but worked well.

I had bought a metre of the 140cm wide fabric. The length gave me the drop, less a strip for the cross-over straps,  and the width enabled me to cut the wrap-around apron without side seams. Using the pieces I cut out from the arm holes for pockets, I just had enough to patch together some bias strips to edge the curves.

I began the embroidery with the pockets, using detached chain crosses and edging it with double crosses.








Along the bottom I worked simple crosses on the red with cream thread. I really love playing with the different effects.



I kept referring back to my sampler.








The yolk presented the greatest challenge. I had a couple of adaptations before I was happy. It needed quite dense fill to achieve the lacy look.
I didn't have a model to photograph the finished piece, but I was delighted with it. It is sturdy, but looks quite delicate.


It made a good present to accompany the recipe book.

Having taken the plunge I made up the other two pieces I bought after the workshop. That's, however, for another post or two!