The Needlekeeper's Rooms

It has about a year since I last added to this blog.  I have been urged by a couple or three people to return to blogging about my embroidery adventures.  So I am not to blame for the lameness of my remarks here.  It is those people--you know who you are!

My first embroidered book

In 1994 I made my first embroidered book.  It was on perforated paper and a small 3.5” X 3.5”.  Each page was dedicated to a sampler stitch and the names of each stitch spelled out a word.  The word I used was my first name, Shirley Kay.  It was a cute thing, easy to hold, and a lot of fun to stitch and bind together.  I thought I would have no problem selling the class to several venues.  But in fact, that book class has never sold.  I called it The Little Stitchery Book.

In 1999 I made another similar book and its word was "Y Two Kay."  Still no buyers, but of course that book was topical and dated.

My second embroidered book

 Y Two Kay--two pages

Between 1994 and 1999, I studied book binding and book folding whenever I got the chance.  Book making is too big a field of study to tie each experiment to embroidered pages.  So most of those are pure paper and card.

A couple of years after that I had a very good idea for an embroidery-illustrated folded book.  It was called Laeta Acus (Happy Needle in Latin).  In it was an original story about a young girl who was learning embroidery from her mother.  Every two month for a year, the mother would introduce Laeta to another counted technique.  Again the book was small 3” X 4” with six pages of text and six illustrations.  The text was printed by computer on fine linen, embroidered with a few French know flowers on the edges, and pasted onto the pages.  Eventually a second book was added making a short series about the continuing adventures of Laeta when she was grown up.  In this book, the Queen of the Fairies invites her make royal embroideries for the court.  The illustrations were counted work and lace.

 Pages from The Fairy Queen

 The front and back covers of The Fairy Queen

Laeta Acus, the first book, was entered into the 19^th EGA National Exhibit, garnered a couple of nice prizes, and was away from me for over two years traveling around the US on exhibition along with the rest of the exhibit.  Very gratifying.

Meanwhile I continued exploring books and even took a class or two on book making.

At the beginning of this year, I went to an Art of Embroidery meeting at Stephanie Sams’ house.  Stephanie was demonstrating how to print images by computer onto cloth for making books.  I already had that experience under my belt, and so was more able to concentrate upon making a book entirely out of fabric with no paper involved at all.

What an inspiration!  I grabbed that idea and tore away with it like a storm.  By the end of the half-day session I have one page almost completed.  By the end of two weeks I had the whole book completed and bound.  It is called The Needlekeeper’s Rooms, seven pages of text and nine pages of embroidery.  It is 9” X 11” and packed with stitching, beading, appliqué, ribbon appliqué, and lace.  In medieval parlance, it is my masterpiece.  Now Needlekeeper’s Rooms is in Los Alamos at a gallery show at Fuller Lodge Art Center.  The day that show is over, it is due for judging at the embroidery exhibit of Albuquerque Fiber Art Fiesta.

 Front cover of The Needlekeeper's Rooms.

Note the copper wire binding, the bundle of beads and charms at the top of the binding, and the ribbon applique of the cover.

 Detail of a page from The Needlekeeper's Rooms.

Beading, applique, and Battenberg lace.

Two pages, "Moon Woman Flying," from The Needlekeeper's Rooms.

The bead and charm bundle from the binding is showing between the two pages.  Note the beaded fringe at the bottom, ribbon applique, the moon charms and beading.

I want to thank Stephanie for the inspiration and I want to thank the other members of Art of Embroidery for their encouragement and smiles.

The Bibles of Embroidery

My best friend Ann has come to embroidery, like a lot of women, after retirement when time is not so great a factor. She has done a little embroidery most of her life. We have been friends for half a century--what she does affects me and what I do affects her. So when I moved back to Colorado (Ann lives in Cheyenne, WY) and started teaching embroidery there, Ann would sometimes come with me when she got a chance. Several years ago I showed her how to do colcha embroidery. Amazingly she took to it and started doing her own original work in her own original way. It is still colcha, but with her own twist to it. Way to go, Ann!

We have had some adventures because of this road-trip type of teaching, the most memorable of which was being evacuated from Los Alamos at the start of the Cerro Grande fire. Even after my moving to Albuquerque, Ann has come down to take a class or two. When she retired from the WTLA, she joined the EGA and had started studying embroidery seriously.

So last year when I decided to go to this year's Embroiderers' Guild of America national seminar in Louisville, KY, I insisted she go too. I had to twist her arm, stomp on her toes, and hold my breath before she said she would come. Oh, I also told her it would be one of our road trips except by airplane. That was probably what tipped her to decide to come.

One of the grand things, one of the many grand things, about national seminars is the seminar bookstore hat is dedicated to embroidery and related topics. Thousands of books are shipped in and a book boutique is set up for the six or so days of the seminar This year Ruth Kern Books came to national seminar. Way to go Ruth!

Ann and I went into the book boutique and were overwhelmed by the number of titles we could choose from. I was brave and strong and bought only four books (that's all the weight I could take back in my luggage). Ann bought several books too, including a couple of books I recommend for the serious learner.

So now we come to the topic of this post. My bibles of embroidery. I first was learning about embroidery in the late 70s and early 80s, so my favorite books are from that era, though they are still available, certainly as used books and other editions.

The first of them is Therese de Dillmont's The Encyclopedia of Embroidery, first published in 1880. I have a nice paperback from Running Press from the mid-70s. This is the authoritative book about European embroidery and European embroidery is basically what we do today here in America with some notable exceptions. The illustrations are very good and copious. A person could learn much of what embroidery is about from studying this book.

The second book that I owe so much of my knowledge to is Jo Ippolito Christenson's The Needlepoint Book. Now you need to understand that I started out as a canvas embroiderer. But The Needlepoint Book isn't just for needlepointers. In fact yesterday I was researching stitches from it to be put onto perforated paper. Most all of the stitches in the book can be done counted onto linen and can be done uncounted as surface work.

And the third book is Carolyn Ambuter's The Open Canvas. This book opened my mind to possibility. In it are a series of six samplers that represent six techniques that impact the gound fabric. Again, though they are worked on canvas, they can be translated to any ground.

There are many great books on embroidery. Every embroiderer needs to have two or three good, comprehensive books of stitches and techniques. These are my three. Any other suggestions?