Onwards & Upwards

The sun disappeared this week and the rain came back so that meant that I could get on with no excuses to create a distraction.

The burse embroidery is complete and has now come off the frame ready to be made up. This involves quite a complex construction but with the help of Beryl Dean’s Church Needlework I seem to be getting there.

The first thing was to get 8 x 9” squares of cardboard and glue two together at a time to leave you with 4 squares in total.

The embroidered front and the plain fabric back of the burse are then mounted onto the card and laced to stretch them taut.

                                                                                                 Lacing the embroidery

Fair linen is mounted onto the remaining two squares of card and these are over sewn together to create a hinge effect. The fair linen is the inner part of the burse.

                                                    Inner section of burse with over sewn hinge

You then have to join the inner and outer section by slip stitching them together, remembering to replicate a hinge with the fabric on the outer section. This is where your fingers thumbs, threads and needle all seem to get in the way! But I WILL do it.

                                                       Ready to join inner and outer sections

Overall, the embroidery is OK but I did have problems transferring the design onto the fabric initially as it is textured wool. We decided not to use silk fabric or threads to try and reduce deterioration as the church can be a bit on the damp side. Having said that, the appliquéd sections use a silk dupion. Onto this a piece of kid leather was couched on each arm of the cross and edged with pearl purl and then gold passing was couched down around the edges of each appliqué shape. Imitation jap thread is used for the outer semi circles and jap and rococo edged with pearl purl form the inner circle with a chip work flower in the centre and finally a spangle right in the middle of the flower. Am I happy with it? Should we just say you learn from each piece you do, so there are probably things I would do differently another time but those I will keep to myself!

                                                                                                 Mounted front

The veil will have an embroidered cross using DMC threads and edged with passing threads. This should keep the fabric as supple as possible so that it will drape well. Just the colour of the cross to decide on now!

So you see I can finish things when I put my mind to it there’s just such a long list of things to complete.

As they say on Gardener’s Question Time ‘Onwards and upwards’