The light in the hall was especially important today as the two projects we had chosen from needed good light as the stitching was quite precise and stitched white cotton perlé on oatmeal fabric.
Nicola arrived and set up her beautiful display of cushions, booklets, cards and tea towels with her own designs, material and kits to admire or purchase.
She trained at the Royal School of Needlework and worked in the British fashion industry as a sample embroiderer and was one of the team who worked on the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress.
Nicola staged an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery championing the work of May Morris his daughter whos’ work is often overshadowed by that of her famous father.
The two projects we were working on in this workshop were either a Mount Mellick work design, or a Carrick-Ma-Cross design, both these designs originated in Ireland.
The Carrick-Ma-Cross design involved couching a piece of fine linen over a piece of net in a heart shape and cutting the surrounding linen away when complete. This was a scary process but looked very dainty and left a stitched heart shape in the centre surrounded by fine net.
Nicola set us off on our work by instructing us in small groups of four at each table, she then proceeded to come round the tables at each new stage showing us what to do next or help if we were struggling.
Although the embroidery was a bit ‘slow going’ for some of us Nicola had provided an excellent kit and booklet covering all the process for us to carry on at home.
Thanks to Kath H for writing the blog and to Steph for taking the photographs.