Briggs Garden Lady - Long Hot Cornish Summer Days

 
Yes , long hot Cornish summer days are here again ....and the local beaches are full of happy families , ice-creams , buckets and spades , sand castles , surf -boards and sun cream !
 Not for me...I,m sitting in our summer house in the shade with a fan on to cool me down and enjoying some stitching time ... it's too hot to do any gardening .

              I,ve completed quite a bit more and am putting in the little details .

             I thought I,d try and embroider the veins on the Pansies .......

........well , I wondered if I could ....I,m using crewel wool..which is quite thin ...thinner than tapestry wool ....

 ....but still too thick for the delicate veins . So I thought I,d try splitting the crewel wool . It was a bit fiddly but not impossible !

It didn't have to be perfect , I just wanted to give a suggestion of them being Pansies .

 This would probably look better worked in embroidery cottons or silk ...fuzzy wuzzy Pansies ... lol !

 Crewel wool is not really all that happy being split apart , as you can see in this pic...but it can be done ...it is not too bad if you use a much shorter length than usual and be very , very gentle with it .

 I,ve added more flowers and outlined some of the basket to make it stand out more .

I always have a little Robin following me when I ,m gardening ...so I put him in from another vintage embroidery transfer .....and pots with Pelargoniums...blue Lobelia .

                                             Then I thought......bees !

          Bzzzzzzzz .... By the way , the Red Hot Poker flowers  I worked in Bullion stitch with my chenille needle .
  I sought advice from Mary Corbet over at  https://www.needlenthread.com/   about a suitable make of needles ....but I think the American Bullion Needle size numbers seem to be different to ours over here in the U.K.
    Then I discovered Tulip Hiroshima Bullion Knot Needles "Big Eye"..these are brilliant and make nice straight bullion knots ...unlike the ones I did with my Chenille needle .......however ...I like the way the knots turned out sort of fat at the bottom and more like Kniphofia flowers ! See what I mean in the pic above .
  Now I have several packets of ordinary Bullion Knot Needles in different makes and sizes AND these lovely Tulip Hiroshima Bullion Knot needles to play with !

             ..............then I got carried away and maybe put in too many bees !

Sometimes it's just nice to get carried away ..takes me away from thoughts of things going on out there in the world . Happy here in my own little world !

Briggs Garden Lady no 12305

  My Appletons wool , colour shade cards , are coming in very useful , deciding on which colours to use and in helping me find them in my wool collection cupboard .

                  I,m trying to decide on which colour to use for her dress .
                     I worked a few Delphiniums and some Foxgloves .

                                        A green watering can by her side .

 She is tidying , dead-heading , doing a little weeding and cutting flowers for her vase .

Starting the Oast Houses of Kent Countryside crewel embroidery .

 I was so lucky to have the right colours for the oast houses in amongst the vintage crewel wool in my basket .  There was no picture , nor instruction leaflet with the transfer . I did find a picture of the front of the original leaflet , so I can use that as a guide , but there is no list of the colours or stitches or the order in which to do it .

So to begin with I went over some of the more important details with a sharp pencil . I think I,ll do this a little  bit at a time , because it could smudge .Then I,ll stitch a bit around the outlines of things and just see how it goes really .
Once again , like the other vintage embroidery I did , the stitches in these Briggs leaflets are mostly the basic ones .... back stitch, stem stitch , crewel stitch , long and short shading , detatched chain stitch for the leaves and what else can I see ?.....ah ...French knots ..lots of French knots on the cherry blossom ....and it is all very freely and painterly done  , or so it seems to me .
 Actually ,  I am not even sure if this one is a Briggs Embroidery transfer ,  There is no makers name on the transfer  . Maybe someone could let me know ?

 The sun has come out , so I,m off to sit out in my garden and stitch a little more .

Vintage Oast Houses Embroidery Transfer

 I found this old embroidery transfer of the Oast houses in Kent and it tugged at my Kentish heart strings and I just had to buy it ...but sadly when I came to iron it on to my linen , it didn't work ! It seems that it had been used too many times and the ink was used up .

So I sat for about two hours going over all the lines with the horrible pink transfer pencil .

                                                  ...and then ironed it on ......

Its not brilliant , and the next problem is that it didn't come with any instruction leaflet  either ...grrrr . I managed to find a picture of it on the internet and decided to match the colours up as best that I can . I,m not even sure if this is meant to be stitched with wool or cotton threads .  Anyway  , I,ve decided to stitch it with the lovely mellow colours , of the vintage  Penelope crewel wool , that I used on the "Down a Country Lane " embroidery earlier in the year .
 Cant wait to get started now .  Here we go stitching into Autumn  . I love Autumn  !

Elsa Williams Small Tree of Life Finished

 Finished .....and I,m reasonably happy with it .. there are a couple of things...such as the pistils on the large blue flower stamens , the bullion knots not covering the printed lines of the pattern ... but its time to move on  .  Which brings me to the very long , tediously boring , instructions for blocking ........ yawn !    I have never had to block any piece of  my hand surface embroidery ever .
          I also didn't use an embroidery hoop and it is perfectly fine and straight  .

I gave it a little press , face down on a double layer of thick towel and a very slightly damp flannel . This way , the iron does not flatten ,but rather plumps up the crewel wool embroidery on the under side .

I think that tapestry , such as the above cushion , can get out of shape whilst working  , even when done in a frame ......and would definitely need blocking .
  Then again  , I have made up slightly wonky tapestries into cushions  for my own use and I think they're fine .
 I think there are way too many  finished tapestries just lying around out there !  They should be made up into cushions or lovely shopping bags  , loved and used !
  The lovely toadstool cushion above was one that I bought from a nice lady on Ebay  ..she told me  , that her husband had said that they had too many cushions and not enough chairs for them all , so some of them just had to go !
                                  Lol ! Glad to have been able to help her out .

I have another Elsa Williams Kit waiting in the wings  , but I might do something else first.
 I need to finish a piece that I designed myself ....a much larger piece ...I had taken a break from it .
      I need to tidy my workroom .   You want to see my work room ?  O.K. Well , maybe next time .

 Remember those little pieces I embroidered  ?
 I ,ve prepared some linen with few more patterns  from " A Scholehouse for the Needle " by Richard Shorleyker published in 1624 .  I love these early English patterns .
 I,ll gather some more pretty crewel wool , my new cute scissors , a fresh needle , put all into my embroidery travel bag along with a good book and I,m ready for our next trip . Fun little pieces of history to pull out and work on , as and when I have a few minutes to spare . I,ll make them up into little things later on .
                       I cant wait to embroider that sweet clove scented Gillyflower .

My Valentine's Day Gift

Love must be celebrated ! I decorate the window and didn't really expect anything .....but
 my dear one surprised me with this antique embroidery thread wrap .

I,m suffering with flu at the moment and not up to doing any stitching , so I thought I would share with you this lovely thing .

                                  It is hand embroidered possibly silk , but I,m not sure .

                  Inside there is a tool for pulling the threads through the long slots .

It is stamped with the word CREWEL ....which means that it was meant to hold very fine embroidery wool threads  .
   

On unrolling the wrap I find it filled with modern ,embroidery cotton threads.....

 ....and a huge tangled ball of saved used bits ...outrageous ! But with sniffly nose and a big box of tissues ,I set to unravelling  and reorganising  .

It is quite a therapeutic thing to do and calming ,  wondering what they were used for and thinking about what I might use them for .

             Colours of the Cornish Sea when the sun shines through the waves .....

                                A Bumble Bee ...Cornish colours  black and gold .

                                           Mermaids playing in the waves ....

More tea ......... more Lemsips ......more tissues.....lie down ....headache..earaches .sore throat...cant stop coughing  ..groan : (

                                         Mrs Stork is happy in her new nest !