BLACKWORK
 
Blackwork is one of my loves, and the first piece I worked on was from a photo of a cottage in the snow. The picture just suggested black work to me.  The cottage is surrounded by orchards, and I have tried to show this with the stitches I have used.  I traced the photo in blocks, and the house in more detail.  It is like doing a pen and ink drawing, but you use a needle instead with black thread. To achieve the darker areas I have used either a thicker thread or denser stitching.  To give a greyer look to suggest distance, as the trees on the skyline, I used finer thread.  There is a line of poplar trees as a windbreak on the left of the picture, which winds round a path up into the farm.

There are two pictures of St. Peter's Church, Bekesbourne, one work in progress, the other finished, framed and eventually sold at a charity auction in aid of the church.  This was worked at an Embroiderers Guild workshop, and is an experimental piece.  Although worked on even weave fabric, the stitches are random, not necessarily following the structure of the fabric.

The ‘Little Fisher Boy’ was stitched as a Round Robin.  I traced the picture from an appliqued cushion, I bought in France.  The figure is made up of large open area, so was perfect for black work.  A group on the Forum worked together on various black work projects in the Round Robin and they all worked on my piece as well.  It travelled round America and Canada, before it finally came back to me.

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