Description

English Garden

This design is inspired by historical examples of both Blackwork and Jacobean Crewelwork. For the people of the Renaissance period flowers often carried certain meaning and were used to symbolise virtues including love, strength, innocence, and patience to name a few. As such, clothing and embroidery of the time often featured these flowers as motifs, usually surrounded and linked together by coiling vines and stems. These motifs can be seen in the counted Blackwork style popularised during the reign of Henry VIII, and then continued to be used carrying into the early Jacobean period, although stitched in a different technique (in the later Jacobean period the motifs would become a little more fanciful and stylised)

This design takes some of the most common floral motifs found in traditional English Blackwork and Jacobean Crewelwork and ties the two techniques together. Working the surface stitches commonly found in Crewelwork, using a grey-scale palate with a touch of Gold reminiscent of Blackwork.

The design is worked in stranded cotton, accented with Gold threads including Smooth Purl, Bright check, Spangles and Japanese Passing, on a white Silk Dupion. The kit covers the Goldwork techniques Chipping, Italian shaded couching, and Cutwork, in addition to a wide variety of surface stitches including Padded Satin, Laid stitch, Portuguese Knotted Stem stitch, Long and Short and Trellis. No previous experience of these specific techniques is necessary, but some experience of embroidery is advisable.