Getting back into the rhythm of things of late sees me first taking a look back at past projects. Seemingly have a raft of work in progress or completely abandoned pieces of work. Recently whilst having a check at what pieces I have that I want to sell, I came across this piece of gold work, (see above) a Tudor Rose sampler, stitched in the first year of my apprenticeship at the Royal School of Needlework (sadly, they dropped the apprenticeship in favour of going the University route).
To be honest it slipped my mind that I had even done it. To be fair it was 12/13 years ago. I do recall the first year being a bit tricky for me, the whole doing pre-scripted designs didn't really appeal to me. Still I did each of the projects.
If you wondering it's purposely left unfinished, some in my year did go on to finish it but I quite liked the fact you can see the layers, which was the purpose of the piece. Goldwork looks really tricky but with practice you can get the basics down pretty quickly. Most of the problems come from when you don't do the prep work properly, from the padding layers to working out the order of work. For instance you wouldn't necessarily start with the gold that is more delicate and liable to crack (i.e. in the case of the image above, the stem which is cut work), in an area that you also need to do a lot of other embroidery. Also simply taking your time with it.
It's been nice to look back at this piece, and perhaps it's about time I got it framed. For the time being though its time to look ahead.
Too the next post.
