Home » Archive for 2013

Christmas all wrapped up!

What a hectic few weeks!
Here is a wrap design I have been doing for my small gifts and also as a Freebie for last orders before Christmas! To claim your download just email me on info@modernvintageembroiderydress.blogspot.com to let me know who you are and I will send you the pdf to download and print onto any paper you desire. It also can be cut up to make paper chains as long as you like! I remember being sat in a corner to do these as a child while my mother was stirring puddings and what have you, going into a paper chain zone, not know quite when to stop! Anyway enjoy!
Free gift wrap and paper chain design for all last orders

Free gift wrap and paper chain design for all last orders
Diposting oleh di edit

Giant Puff Ball

Sliced just after picking

preparation with good butter salt and pepper

Frying with the bacon

Consumption ... satisfaction
I found these photos on the camera today ... completely forgot to post them though the event was quite spectacular! We almost fell over this giant on a walk down a familiar route one weekend in late September. It was as big, no bigger than a football and weirdly attached to the soil by the smallest of stalks. looking rather like it had been blown up from the earth ... I was very excited to scoop it up and made a sling for it out of my jumper, which smelt heavenly all the way home. It squeaks when it is cut like cutting polystyrene ... and the aroma is indescribably delicious. Butter, bacon, salt and pepper great slices of it on good bread ... we had risotto too, and stuffed a squash with it. It was handed out to friends and kept me in food for a week. A huge soft cloud of a thing. Delicious.
Diposting oleh di Label: , edit

Teaching ... Christmas decorations

 Here are some pictures of the teaching I have been doing recently at ... The Sewing Place  and at Hoop, where the course continues each week (6 in all, two more to go)
It has been great to work with everyone and we have had lots of laughter and creativity. The Christmas decorations will be available on the website to download, next week. The crowdfunding has begun with 5 backers so far! I can't wait to begin The Thread club in the new year ... if we reach the target it will make everything speed ahead!
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/nancy-nicholson-design/
The little felt bird decoration and all the variables made by students ...
The Toadstool decoration and a the Kit bag embroidered using thread spun by the student, wound onto a beautiful old wooden spool
christmas designs
The original designs for the classes ... patterns coming soon

Diposting oleh di Label: , edit

David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Fungi
Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye
which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...
Diposting oleh di Label: , , , , edit

Special Offer

Please note also that I have a special offer this month. Any Stitch Kit ordered before 30th October will have a FREE Interactive card pack and two postcards included. For every two kits ordered, two FREE packs and two postcards will be sent to you. http://www.modernvintageembroiderydress.blogspot.com/
Printed fabric embroidery kits
Lovebirds Stitch Kits in assembly line!
Diposting oleh di Label: , edit

Madonna

Silk scraps, couching, split stitch, beading
Madonna and Child

Silk scraps, couching, split stitch, beading
Detail

Silk scraps, couching, split stitch, beading
Detail of Infant Jesus

This is another of those treasured possessions made by my mother in her student days, so, late 30s/40s and now very fragile, it fades every year even though I keep it out of the light. The thread has just disappeared in places, but her hand is very familiar, in the couching and split stitch used on the hands, very much in the medieval tradition, little scraps she had around, some of which I still have the remains of somewhere. I know this may have been more appropriate to post at Christmas but I am just giving you something lovely for now as I am off to school tomorrow, see here http://www.schoolforcreativestartups.com/
and not sure when I will get time over the next three days which is the first, rather scarily named "BOOT CAMP" which makes me visualise mud and being out of breath and feeling rather awkward in over sized and unflattering khaki ... and which I am hoping is in reality sitting in a lecture theatre and meeting some other entrepreneurs, and learning lots of new stuff about business. But stupidly worried about what to wear and whether my bag is big enough for the "quiet snacks" which are required for the day! Just hope I find a chum quickly ... oh!

Diposting oleh di Label: , , edit

New Stitch Cards!





Well, here they are, the new stitch cards ... though still excitedly awaiting card samples from the printers. Also working on the packaging. But basically they will be in single design kits with thread and possibly ( a new venture for me) a needle, envelope, and full instructions for stitches. They can be stitched, cut out, coloured some more, hung up sent as gifts, or bought as stocking presents. To start with I am producing 4 bird cards and four christmas decoration cards (photos soon)
They are not on the website yet but will be as soon as I have a finished product, hopefully in the next week or so. What do you think?
Diposting oleh di Label: , edit

Advent Calendar

Felt, applique and hand embroideryhand embroidery course

I am rushing to finish the prototype for the Advent Calendar course which starts on Friday! It is more stitching than you can shake a stick at but it will be lovely. And I have so many other things that need to be done ... I need ten sets of fingers all busy like an articulated automated machine ... but if you live near Tenterden in Kent then get yourself booked in to the course at Hoop or ring Vanessa on 01580 388011 to book your place. Or come along to the next course which is Christmas Decorations which I have designed 6 decs for you to make and embroider. If you can't get along to these then how about an online course? I have been thinking about doing some short projects online with tutorials once a week. Any views on this? 

I will of course post the finished article when I finally get to the end ... sun shining and at least can sit outside to sew ...
Felt decorations with hand embroidery

Diposting oleh di Label: , , edit

Sweet Nostalgia ...

I have been sorting out books on the stairs bookcase and found this old copy of The Faber Book of Comic Verse though I am not sure of the publication date it is at least 1940's. It was a gift from my mother to my father just after the war, on his birthday 27th April 1947. There can't have been even an idea of my brother yet and still they were dreaming of their new life together and all it's possibilities ... My mother, the nurturing earth mother contentedly coping with 16 children all looking like my father with only one daughter! My father lounging around taking it easy smoking his pipe. All photos of him then had a pipe in mouth or hand. Some of the in jokes are forever lost, never to be explained sadly, like the sandwich tree, and the even more mysterious mitre plant ... and "PIP when 306" ?

It is a great treasure this little drawing and good to share with the outside world. Drawing in books? ABSOLUTELY!
Pen and ink fantasy drawing

Here they are on a picnic before I was born with my brother John and sister Naomi ....
Wye Valley picnic

and John and Naomi with my mother.


Diposting oleh di Label: , , , , edit

Pretty Little Cities Winner!!!!


Another gorgeous pattern from Satsuma Street

We've been totally blown away by the number of responses to the Satsuma Street Pretty Little Cities giveaway, 197! I loved reading all your responses, all the cities were very much loved and I loved seeing the suggestions for other cities / places that would look great in a Satsuma Street pattern; Scotland, Madrid, Yorkshire! (Yorkshire would rock!)

I've plugged the numbers into the random number generator


Which is Meghan! Meghan wrote


So congratulations Meghan! Please contact me, Jo and I'll pass your email onto Jody from Satsuma Street and you can tell her which four Satsuma Street patterns you'd like! You can find my email on the 'Email Us' page, the tab for which is at the top of the blog.

Also  a friendly reminder to Margaret Schindler to also get in touch for her Alison Glass pattern prize!



Diposting oleh di Label: , edit
Langganan: Postingan (Atom)