FNwF/ Goldwork Workshop

Hello Dear Reader,

I stitched along with FNwF, however, yesterday I went to a Goldwork workshop, held at my local handicraft group. Therefore I haven't had a chance to take photos of Friday night's stitching yet .... I hope to do this later today .... and to be able to show you the new key tray I was making on Friday evening!

**********

If you've done Goldwork before please excuse me ..... as it's new to me ..... and I'd especially like to show my mum what I am working on  (she follows me on-line, although her sight is very limited, and we do not see her as often as I would wish, as she lives some distance away). I also like to put this on my blog as it acts as a very good reminder should I want to look back at my work in the future.

Our tutor on the Goldwork Workshop was Jenny Beal who is Vice Chairperson of the handicraft group. We are extremely fortunate for her to tutor us as she was trained at the Royal School of Needlework.

The aim of the project was to demonstrate different ways of attaching gold wirework onto fabric. I should make clear we were not working with real gold, its imitation gold, however, it has completely gone out of my head what the material actually is, and I will find out at the next meeting of our handicraft group.

**********

The fabric to be worked has to be held in a very secure frame, so the first thing Jenny showed us was how to put a frame together and tack the fabric into place.

Jenny had prepared the fabric, drawing the pattern onto the silk ready for stitching,
and attached the silk to the backing fabric ready to hold the silk in place in the frame.

Fabric pulled tight, and tacked to the frame.

With a No 10 needle, which I found very small, and red Sylko cotton to couch the Imitation Gold (named Imitation Jap Gold No 9), after running the cotton thread through beeswax .... which makes the thread stronger, and also helps it to pass through the fabric easier .... (quilters will already be familiar with beeswax ..... and, in fact mum mentioned only the other day that she had used beeswax in the past for her quilting).

Imitation Jap Gold No 9 - First to be used.

Stitching the Imitation Jap Gold.  

From this photo I see that I haven't done a very good job as there shouldn't be any gaps between the gold threads .... I guess the lighting wasn't as good as I thought when I was stitching!

I don't mind admitting to errors, amongst friends .... after all, as I said earlier, this is the first time I have attempted Goldwork, and the experts like our friend Jenny have spent many months and years perfecting their skill, and this was only a few hours' work, and, after all, that is how you learn, isn't it, by trial and error?????

Then we "parked" our threads and needles and started adding felt circles

Attaching felt circles .... just a stitch to keep them in place (so I don't loose them) until I can work on them further!

These were next ... cut into small pieces for beads.

This was my first attempt but it's really way too large

My felt pieces were too large to start, here I've cut some smaller and also tried to bunch some of the felt up with stitches to make the circles smaller! Starting to add more "beads" to the third circle.
You can also see the row below being couched into position - this was Gold Purl Super.

As we didn't have much time for all Jenny wanted to show us, we "parked" our threads
by attaching them by their relevant needles in the margins while we learnt other techniques

This will be a seasonal decoration .... there will be more, as I do intend to finish this soon!

I hope you are all having a super weekend.

Hugs,
Barbara xxx

Linking to France Nadeau's Fabric, thread and yarn link party - No 41
I urge you to have a look at France's link party! There are some lovely projects to see!