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6th September Recipe #7
Although I spent time in August dyeing up samples I have deliberately left the writing up until now – I’m in quarantine for 2 weeks so thought this would be a good opportunity to write up the next four recipes. Hope you don’t mind! I have never been very good at gardening – I have a terrific reputation for killing plants off, indoors or out. The few times I’ve tried to grow any they have all died on me at some point. Madder in particular I think I drown! I love to see them all growing though, particularly in the wild. In the late spring I watch all the scrubby…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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8th August – Recipe #5
This is the third bath following Helen’s recipe, I don’t know of anyone else giving you these options with a single bath. Once I started with the spinning and dyeing I was totally hooked, used to drive my son’s mad I think – certainly embarrassed one of them by taking my spinning wheel along to sports day and sitting spinning my silk merrily whilst all the running was going on – I did cheer at the relevant points of course! I have a Wee Peggy wheel, she’s lovely and very easy to transport around. Although not designed as a “portable” wheel, she’s a castle so will sit on the car…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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7th August – Recipe #4
The City and Guilds course was a complete eye opener for me – both from an art point of view and textiles. I had really enjoyed chemistry at school, but didn’t fancy any of the careers associated with chemistry. So went into Catering instead. On the course we covered screen printing, batik, silk painting, all ideas to put a pattern down before then embellishing with stitch. This part I really enjoyed. Once I got over the “I can’t do art” I threw myself into the course and boy was the photocopier hot after I’d been designing!! My favourite was batik – I really wanted to try out Batik with natural…
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6th August Recipe #3
When I joined the reenactment society I was asked to give myself a character and learn everything I could that was pertinent. I’m pretty rubbish at acting so chose to be an embroideress – someone who could hide away and keep her head down even if talking! Plus I needed to learn about the profession rather than a person. Our local college at that time decided to run a 1 year City and Guilds Art and Design – Embroidery course, so I thought it might be useful and signed up. It didn’t really teach me embroidery – in terms of I wasn’t learning all the history and stitches – but…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
In 1994 Jenny Dean’s The Craft of Natural Dyeing was published by Search Press, perfect timing for someone wanting to start producing handspun naturally dyed embroidery silks for their new life as a 17th Century Embroideress! My sons were 8 and 6 when we joined the Sealed Knot, too young for me to just leave and go on the battlefield so I needed to give myself a character and chose to be an embroideress. The eldest enjoyed the re-enactment events and became a fifer and drummer for the regiment, the younger hated them and started calling in favours from friends as he got older, just so he wouldn’t have to…
