Witney Exhibition and Book (Preorders)

I was able to get to the Witney Exhibition this week in the UK and I was blown away.  I have seen many of their exhibits before and was extremely overjoyed, but this one took my breath away.  I would have been a happy camper with the first two rooms I entered, but then I went into the largest in the back and the shear number of 17th century band and whitework samplers on the wall knocked me over (think dozens).  And that wasn't the highlight!  

The highlight was the Elizabeth Hall collection of a casket and the smalls which had been kept in the box for almost four hundred years.  I was lucky to be the only one in the gallery at the time and so I asked Rebecca if she would consider allowing me to film her talking about the collection and the family.  This is the single most important casket and school girl collection to come to light since the Martha Edlin collection.  It not only includes her work, but the work of later family members and the samplers of friends that did works in the same school or were in her wedding, etc.  To see so many interlinked pieces was astounding.  And to know that the family shared all their letters mentioning the embroideries, allowing the maker of so many of these family pieces in the casket to be identified and dated as well. 

Rebecca was just too excited to tell me about the collection to say no to filming - so expect something on YouTube coming up after I get back to the states and can edit.  I have to admit that my eyes wandered here and there to a sampler or more on the wall and I might have cut her out of the frame here and there - but the visual candy and wonderful story is still there!  I can't believe I didn't shake more (from excitement).  

This exhibit and next year's one (yes she has MORE like this!!) is really Rebecca's baby and culmination of the work she has done for decades on needlework through the store and her books.  She is collaborating with Isabella Rosner to expand the research hours and knowledge that can be learned from the pieces and they have written an important book about the collection for the exhibit. 

Normally the catalogs are softcover, but Rebecca promised the family that the collection would be properly documented in one volume when they offered it to her for sale.  While we all hope a single collector or institution will have the vision to purchase the collection as a whole, it was significantly important to Rebecca and the family to publish it all in one well done volume, hence they spent the money to make it hardcover and use very large and detailed photos.  But this meant that there are only half the copies of the catalog as there would normally be.  This book will not last long on the market.  

Because of its importance to research and the knowledge base on embroidery and schoolgirls, Access Commodities has committed to bring a number of copies to the US in a large shipment.  We want to support what Rebecca Scott and Isabella Rosner have been doing so they can pour their capital and knowledge into next year's book as well - Volume II.  

I am taking preorders for the book.  It is heavy and so postage to get it here to the US has not been small.  But that is the nature of books these days.   I hope to have the first copies I order by late November and can start shipping them out.  I think you might want to give the link to a husband for a great Christmas order!

I was so excited that pieces were photographed in macro so we could really see what was going on in the work.

Witney Antiques Annual Exhibition

 It has been a very busy two weeks getting the Frostings Box out the door and back from a trip to Ireland and off to the UK.  I am here in Oxford ready for a visit to the annual Witney Antiques Exhibit and very excited!  I warmed up today visiting the burial site of Martha Edlin right after getting out of Heathrow and then a quick nap and hours in the Ashmolean Museum looking at 17th century embroidery.

If you have been following the Witney Antiques Instagram you may be seeing some of the outstanding pieces that are in the exhibit and the associated book coming out for the exhibit.  

I will report back soon on the exhibit which runs from now until Nov 18th daily (email to let them know you are coming) and the hotly anticipated book.

I have gotten a few emails inquiring if I will be having the book in my shop.  Initially I didn't think so, but Access Commodities called yesterday to let me know that they will be able to get the book in and I will be taking preorders for the book as soon as pricing is figured out.  You can always call Witney and purchase one as well if you don't want to wait a few more weeks.  

Tricia

Screenshot from Witney Antiques Instagram of a pristine casket!

Christmas Baubles - a Needlework Nibble as the 2023 Christmas Ornament

 

A new free needlework nibble pattern has been posted on my teaching site.  Get in and download it.  The ornament is 4 inches in diameter and uses sampler stitches combined with five types of gilt die stamped spangles that I have sourced and a really fantastic twisted gilt trim made from bullion and check that is twisted around a wire.  

Each of these materials are available in the store as well as an all-in-one stitching kit (I have a limited number of them available).  One of the spangles can be seen below - they are super cool!  

Jo's Beautiful Casket

 I love getting emails with photos of the finished caskets!  It can certainly brighten my day to see such a monumental amount of work finished (and make all this work to get here worthwhile on my part).  

Josephine Wootton has been showing us progress on her flat top casket with doors for years on the NING site for the class and it is so cool to see it all together.

Her first friezes were posted in late 2017 so it has been a long journey to get to all the embroidery.  Jo said that she used designs from the original Cabinet of Curiosities course and mixed the ones she liked together  on the panels.  She worked it all in Split Stitch on 40 count linen (it must glow!).  She laughed and said she was getting a little tired of the technique when she worked the back so the design is a bit more sparse.  I think we can give her a pass on that!  The casket is just beautiful.  I love how she has embroidered on the drawer fronts as well - and you can see several of the small projects from the Cabinet of Curiosities as well in the drawers!  What a heirloom for her!

She said she is now off to work on the Double Casket she has!  

Friezes finished in 2017

The front and top of Josephine Wootton's Casket

Josephine Wootton's Casket with old man fall pruning on the left side

Josephine Wootton's Casket right side with a woman holding a flower

Josephine Wootton's Casket with an amazing marbled paper that matches the purple and pink

Josephine Wootton's Casket inside with embroidered doors

Back of Josephine Wootton's Casket

Another Double Casket Finish to Celebrate!

Deborah Zibrik has just sent me fabulous photos of her finished Five Senses Double Casket to post.  Over the moon with the results!  

I had to zoom into the photos to look at the silver trim closer and realized immediately it wasn't a purchased trim but had been handmade by Deborah and so asked her the story behind it:

The needle lace trim was made with a crochet hook – was single crochet on either 3 or 7 stitches to get the needed width and then made as  long as required. The sterling thread is a really high quality vintage metallic thread  ( almost like a passing thread) purchased several years ago in Amsterdam. - DZ

Deborah sent me some of this luscious vintage thread to play with and it is just lovely and has a wonderful patina.  I just love it when people add their own panashe to their caskets with layers of stories.  I really recommend them being written down on the bottom of the casket or as a note in a secret drawer to preserve it for the future.  Can you imagine a descendent or museum in the future finding that note to realize the personal story behind just the trim!  

Inside the handmade vintage silver trim changes its design

For my caskets I was in Venice this summer and visited the last hand gold beater.  You can bet I purchased the gold I was watching and filming being made into leaf.  I will use it to gild the feet of my casket and will have to put that story somewhere on the box.  I have many stories of how the parts were made and the wonderful people involved.  Gotta start writing more of them and sticking them in drawers.  

If you are on the private class site (NING) there are several caskets being shown that are getting closer to competition and it is getting exciting to see them come together.  Hopefully in the next year I can post a few of them.

Tricia

Historic Sampler Design Course - Starting Dec 1, 2023

Some of the pages of motifs in the course showing the different historic sampler styles treated

Yea!!  I have been able to launch a new online course that I have been working on it for many months and am very happy with it.  It's another 'Tricia course' where it has so many layers that you might go back to it for years. 

I taught this back about twenty years ago in person using only Dutch motifs and it was very well liked.  But now I have expanded it greatly and found a way to put a modern spin on it to make it so much more useful.  Not only is it a system of layouts with historic reference material in the pdf (also on pintrest) to see how all samplers conform to these easy layouts, but also a step-by-step design methodology.  And then there is the source material.  Loads of source material.  There are 100+ pages of motifs and alphabets culled from samplers, mostly my collection, which span many major classes of samplers from Europe, UK, and the US.  Think 10 crammed pages of quaker motifs for example.  

The original course taught how to cut and paste motifs on graph paper to get your result.  But this is a major upgrade.  I have been working with Ursa software for months to provide the pages of motifs in formats that students can download and use in either the mac, windows or iPad version of their popular charting software.  So there will be videos on how to use the software (you buy separate if you want - if not - cut and paste).  But it is really reasonable - less than $20 on an iPad, which I really prefer as using the pencil is great.  

Mobistitch interface on the iPad allows you to upload my graphs and pick and
choose motifs for a new design

Videos on the design process and how to fix common issues, how to balance whitespace, dense motifs, etc.  Then selecting and balancing color and thoughts on how to select counted stitches for things like band samplers (12 pages of bands included).  Lessons have mini-design projects to try out concepts and you can upload a picuture to NING to get some feedback if wanted in the course group.  And I will go over non-rectangular samplers and other 3-D projects as an advanced topic.

See the full course description here

Examples of design work from the inspiration, methods and mistakes are provided

Sampler designs in process are shown to highlight design problems that came up and
how they were solved

Last Week of Summer Sale - 20% off

I forgot to blog about the summer sale running on the Thistle Threads website!  This is the last week of the sale - 20% off a large selection of threads and kits.  The sale ends midnight EST on August 18th.  If there were thread types you have wanted to try - this is a good time to get some.

I will then be off to take my youngest to college.  Cue the Kleenex!  Next week is wisdom teeth so I will have a few last days being Dr. Mom and sitting on the couch watching cartoons and the movie Draft Day while he recovers.  Empty nesting is going to seem like such cold turkey for us after having dozens of people in the house every weekend for fourteen years.  I certainly will have more time for stitching!  

Tricia