Friday 31 January 2014

January in stitches


Great to start teaching again .... in this six week course at Hoop I am teaching all the embroidery families, starting with running stitches and all their variations, then chain and today was cross stitches and herringbone. We settle comfortably into a happy contentedness experimenting and discovering the different ways of embellishing a simple basic stitch into a glorious rich brocade!

I often use my mother's stitch cards to demonstrate what is possible, and my students now confidently work in stranded cotton on felt swatches which we will make into little sample books when complete. I am designing a special sampler for them to complete at the end of the course.

But this business needs new input ... it has taken all my time to build it with the designs I have but now that I want to grow, I need to take some time out, during the relatively quiet winter months to design a new range of kits, and finally get those stitch cards produced! So for the next two or three weeks that is what I am going to do. There are a lovely lot of kits made up ready to go when orders come in ( I have lost lovely Sarah who has gone to live in Pevensey Bay!) and accounts are done and studio ordered ...

It feels oddly like a guilty pleasure ....

stitch card teaching aids by Joan Nicholson
Stitch Cards by Joan Nicholson 1960

Samples of stitches on card and felt
Running Stitch variants 

Stitch samples in class
Sticthed sample cards

Work by students
Embellished chain stitches

Work by students


Herringbone Varients
Herringbone variants

stitch card teaching aids by Joan Nicholson
More Stitch cards

Friday 17 January 2014

Emroidered bracelets


Embroidered Bracelet  using felt, hand embroidery and pearl button fastening
Embroidered Bracelet  using felt, hand embroidery and pearl button fastening
Embroidered Bracelet  using felt, hand embroidery and pearl button fastening
Embroidered Bracelet  using felt, hand embroidery and pearl button fastening
Embroidered Bracelet  using felt, hand embroidery and pearl button fastening
Well now it's back to normal  after a jolly Christmas with the boys, but they have both gone back to Berlin where they are forging ahead with their lives with great gusto! Tom my eldest and his lovely girlfriend Marcella dressed up as Joseph and Mary for the Christmas children's service and really were superb at it, so good that one child rushed up to them and exclaimed " I've just been reading about you!" Proud Mother me ...

But now it's back to work again with so much to do ... This year will see a big change in the business, hopefully moving up a few notches with the launch of some new kits, both the printed panels and tapestry kits too, based on some designs my mother did 50 years ago, and the long awaited stitch cards! I have had to lose dear Sarah as she has gone to pastures new with her boyfriend to Sussex and so now will be taking on help with admin and manufacturing so I can at last get on with the new designs and building up the business, ready for the Hatch showcase in London arranged by School for Startups the wonderful but demanding course I am on. So this year will be full on!

I have had a few birthdays to make things for too ... I am finding it a little of a displacement activity too when I should be doing my accounts but all work no play as they say ... These are little felt embroidered bracelets, quite traditional I think but very satisfying to do. 

Having just begun teaching at Hoop for the new year too, a six week hand embroidery course which we began today and which will culminate in a sampler which I still have to design! News to come on that ... 
Ah much to do and post Christmas sit ups only a part of it!
Christmas nativity
Tom and Marcella doing the Nativity so well with Charlotte's donkeys
and Biddy suffering Christmas humiliation.