The New Black

Hullo! I’m Curegreed, and every third Friday of the month I’ll be telling you all about what goes on at the degree in The Royal School of Needlework. I’m a student and I’ll be sharing as I’m going. It’s nothing official, but Mr X Stitch thought it’d be interesting. Here goes nothing!
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It’s our last project of the year- and it appears to be our heaviest. There were no smiles when that timetable was given out, I tell you now.
However there is a marked change- we’ve been offered freedom from stitch. No longer do we have to give in singular final pieces, a range of samples is OK. No longer do we have to use stitch for our final outcome- simply something inspired and informed by stitch is OK too.

The stitch that we have to be informed by is Blackwork. Oh what I’ve learnt of Blackwork! I had no idea it was all tonal- those background patterns? They’re supposed to fade from dark to light! Either by adding/taking away shapes or by changing the thickness of the thread. I literally had no idea. You’re probably laughing at me for this, but we’ve all got to learn.

For Blackwork we found ourself looking at a lot of old paintings in Portraiture Museums. You know the sort- Elizabeth I with her big leg-of-mutton sleeves and her sceptre, men looking fiercely into your eyes whilst trying to ignore their fluffy collars. That’s because that’s where all the true Blackwork designs are! And none enamoured a bud and I more than The Cholmondeley Sisters. And so, for a side project, we made a ‘cover version’ of it.

And boom! We got ourselves a Blackwork Project. The RSN is no longer all Tudor Roses and dogs on cushions.

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If you want to see my other work then my personal blog is a pretty good place to start: My Little Stitches
If you want to know more, please get in touch! You can email me at: prettyguns.rosa[at]gmail.com

Disclaimer: Curegreed’s view do not necessarily represent those of the Royal School of Needlework, and she’s not pretending they do. Okay?