• 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…

  • 9th August Recipe #6

    So today is the final recipe from Helen Melvin’s Colours of the Earth. 4 recipes, 1 dyebath quite impressive. To complete the story of my City and Guilds, I took Part 1 only, Part 2 did not appeal as it was doing more and more artistic and distorted work and I wanted to produce 17th Century embroidery – Swete bags and sewing boxes, coifs and collars. It wasn’t going to take me down the road I wanted to go. After the initial shock I had enjoyed part 1 and met some fabulously artistic and textiley people, am really glad I did it. But it was time to move on. I…

  • 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…