Magna Carta 800

Last year I found out that I had been selected as one of the members of the Embroiderers Guild who were each to embroider a picture for Cornelia Parker's 'Magna Carta, An Embroidery' now on show in the British Library in London. I've had to keep the news secret. This huge piece is an embroidered representation of the whole Wikipedia page about Magna Carta as it existed on one day in 2014. It has been worked by people from all walks of life from prisoners to politicians, famous and not famous. There is a link to the BL site here with more information http://www.bl.uk/events/cornelia-parker-magna-carta-an-embroidery.

We all worked the panels in different ways, whatever suited the subject. We were given black perle for the lettering but apart from that could use whatever threads we chose.

My panel is a close up of the Runneymede memorial inscription, one of the last on the page and I chose to work it as an applique. There were a few of us at Tracy's who did them and we all did them differently.

If you are in London this summer do go and see it, it's free entry. If you can't, check out the video on the BL website above where Cornelia talks about making the piece.

Stitching silk dupion background

Long and short stitch with a bit of sparkle!

Or nue with Jap thread

Working the inscription

Life after fine whitework!

Mm, I haven't posted for some time, and time as they say goes so quickly.

Well I have been doing some embroidery over the last few months, so where was I?

I had just about finished my fine whitework piece and getting it ready for assessment, then there was an 'issue'! Let's just say that it necessitated redoing the whole thing! And I didn't think you wanted to go through the whole process again. Bad enough for me! It's now finished mounted and in for the next assessment... But I forgot to photograph it. You know how it is, you just want to see the back of something!!

In the meantime, I am teaching a blackwork class at the NE region of the Embroiderers Guild summer school later in the summer. So I have been preparing for that.

Playing with Pattern

Worked on either 28 or 32 count evenweave linen with DMC stranded cottons, there's also a hint of bling with DMC Diamante!

A touch of gold!

Based on Tudor embroidery motifs, it shows how you can use pattern as well as thread to achieve depth in a piece. I've just got the instructions to do now but I did also do a handy sampler to help with that!

Blackwork sampler

Nice to revisit techniques.

There is more to reveal but that is for another post!