Sewing machines

Here is an interesting snippet about a basic - the sewing machine. This photo is courtesy of Wikipedia, thank you.

We all know the name of Singer in relation to sewing machines. He was an engineer, and when he saw a rotary sewing machine (an earlier type) being repaired, he decided he could make a better one. He mounted his needle vertically and included a presser foot, so that the cloth could be held in place. Combining elements of earlier machines, he gained an American patent in 1851. After some legal jockeying with earlier inventors, he joined forces with a lawyer named Edward Clark,
and together they formed the first hire-purchase scheme to allow people to buy their sewing machines in an affordable way. Singer Sewing Co invented the first electric sewing machines in 1889, with the motor strapped on the side, as most homes did not yet have power connected.

Embroidery techniques

Master Embroiderer Helen M Stevens tells us about "opus plunarium" which means literally a work of feathers, describing a form of embroidery developed over the centuries. She believes it originated in Anglo-Saxon split stitch. Opus Plunarium is similar to satin stitch but it changes direction so that it gives a three dimensional appearance to the stitching. It is achieved by gradually changing the angle of the satin stitch as you work around a curve or change in shape of the motif, by slipping the next stitch beneath the previous one, about half to two thirds of the way down, so that effectively you have worked half a stitch at the wider end of the motif and none at the narrow end.

I don't have a photo to show you but Helen Stevens does, in her books, which feature the most beautiful embroidery.

Website

At last - my website is ready and I am just waiting for my son Brian to give me a hand with the web server stuff - nothing like having a family member who knows what they are doing! My favourite page actually has my daughter's patchwork cushion on it - it is a page for people who have not got a blog or website to show their work on, they can put it on this page of mine for free and their family and friends can then visit the page to see their latest creative efforts. Angela doesn't do a lot of sewing but this cushion cover came out so well I put it in as the first entry. My plan is to have the website up and running by 1st November, and once I have the URL I will post that here as well as everywhere else I can think of. I'm going to update at least the information boxes (a prominent part of the site) every month, and I have another pattern I have just started typing to add as soon as I can, hopefully in December. I've been doing quite a bit of embroidery too but the patterns are lagging behind the sewing!


A small preview of Angela's cushion cover is shown above.

Embroidery - grading your shades

(Shiny satin doesn't photograph too well, but I wanted to talk about grading shades of colour)

This embroidery was stitched in stranded cottons on black satin. I wanted to embroider a bird (as I often do) and the owl begged for a nighttime scene.
A cat had to go in somewhere, so that outline was on top of the wall - just what you might see dimly in the distance. The moon was to one side, so I
graded the colours of the tree leaves - dark furthest away, then a shade lighter and lighter again on the side closest to the moon. I had scope to use
gradually changing shades of the strands in my needle. The shading of the tree actually shows up better on the photo than the owl, which I was so proud
of, as I followed the colours in my bird book as accurately as I could. There are hundreds of shades in stranded cottons, you can always find a match
for whatever you are stitching.

By the way, I have altered the name of the stitch I used in the last post - the leaves were not cretan of course, but fly stitch.