St Cuthbert's Isle

After finishing the cross, I also had another piece in mind just for the exhibition, which was simply on the theme of Lindisfarne, and so could have touched on the Gospels, the history, the religion, the castle... Anything, really!

With such a wide variety  to choose from, I thought about techniques before picture on this one. I had really enjoyed doing the Dunstanburgh piece last year, so I looked back at that. It's a lovely technique to use, but it's not very precise. With that in mind, it's best used on landscape, to colour the general background before embroidering the focal point.

So, next step was to decide on a photo to use. I went back over the photos taken on Holy Island last year, and chose one taken from St Cuthbert Isle, looking across to the mainland.

The reverse picture would be this one, looking back to Holy Island, and the ruins of the Priory. An amazingly peaceful place, which has seen some horrific moments in its history, it is well worth a visit if you are in the area.

So, I spent ages on the background to this one, because with a technique like this where you are only embroidering a small focal point, you need to be sure that the background is right. So I layered the foundation, and added the colour, so that it was all perfect.  Sprayed a bit of water over it all to wet the natural glue in the raw silk, carefully placed the baking parchment over the top, and ironed.

At this point you need to iron the fabric that you have just created until it's dry, then peel off the baking parchment. I'm sure you can imagine how upset I was when all of my carefully arranged colour peeled right off, stuck fast to the baking parchment! Upset, stressed, and not a little darned annoyed!

By the time I had managed to carefully remove the colour from the parchment and rearrange it on the background, and vainly try to make the darned thing stick where it should, it was no longer quite as perfect as I was sure it had been, but in all honesty it probably didn't look anywhere near as bad as I'd thought when I looked at it again the next day!

So, fabric finally completed, I set about deciding what needed to be stitched.  I find with this technique that less is always best, and so I decided that all it needed was the cross itself, plus some small detail of rocks, flowers and grass around the base.  I had deliberately not put any colour in the center of the design, because I wanted the whole of the cross to be stitched. That was the biggest job, of course, and was done entirely in long and short stitch in varying shades of dark gray, green, and white.

The details around the bottom of the cross are meant to show the lush grass and wildflowers growing around the area, among the rocks and delves of the island. These were done in raised cup stitch for the rocks, colonial knots for the flowers, and long stitch for the grasses.

Please remember folks, that if you choose to visit Holy Island you check out the tides! The Island can only be reached by a causeway, and only at low tide. If you try to drive across at the wrong time, you will get stuck, and you will be charged for your rescue! The crossing times are clearly shown at both sides of the causeway, plus all around the Island, on the Internet, and in every pub and shop along that whole stretch of coast. If you do get stuck, you have no one to blame but yourself :-)

Having said all of that, it's perfect for a day out if you are in the area. If you go across as soon as it is safe, there is more than enough time for a walk around the village, a visit to the castle, exploring the ruins of the Priory, and taking the time to enjoy the peace. And don't forget to watch out for the hermit crabs as you plodge through the rock pools on your way to St Cuthbert Isle.

Celtic Cross

Once again, it's been months since I managed to find the time to Blog.  What with Ferg and Helen getting married, work, and just general stuff, I've been rather busy. So, I've got myself one of those little tablet thingys, and off I go on catch up!

OK, so the last thing I blog'd about was the embroidery of Bede. Since then, I've done another two embroideries for the Guild's exhibition in Durham Cathedral.

Bede was created for the Saints of the North competition, but there was another competition running alongside that one, called Knots and Crosses. Obviously, this screamed Celtic, but where to find the perfect cross to recreate?

I'd been looking around for a while, but hadn't found anything. Then I saw a photo I really liked, which was posted to a Facebook group called Northumberland. It's a good place to find some very good photos. I'd love to show you all the particular photo than inspired this, but despite my asking the photographer if I could print the photo and use as a starting point, he never did answer me (which seemed a little rude!)

I used his photo anyway just to get the general shape of the Celtic work, but wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to stitch it. It seemed fairly obvious from the start that it would look best done on a grid, as opposed to free stitched, so I drew it out onto graph paper. I was still no further forward as to stitch technique, until I glanced at my bookshelf and noticed a book I'd forgotten I'd bought on canvas work. Another excellent Barter Books buy!

So in the end it became a canvas work piece. I stitched the cross and the stem on separate pieces, using a variety of stitches. The Celtic knot work in the center of the cross is couched handmade cord, and the piece in the center of the stem is woven.

Once the stitching was completed, I found another problem, however. I now had two pieces of work that somehow needed to be attached, and no idea how I was going to do it!

A chance conversation with Lesley one day ended with us wandering into a fabric shop. She had not seen any of the work, and only had my rough description of colours to go on, but her idea was to back it (somehow) onto a purple velvet. I found the perfect fabric, cut out the already stitched cross pieces and attached with a simple blanket stitch in black.

The finished cross looked very ecclesiastical once stretched and pinned. I didn't win any prizes for it, but once it was on display in the exhibition I was approached to sell. :-)