Tudor Times

July 21, 2013September 13, 2013 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Hello everyone, apologies in advance as this is a very picture heavy post but I have some fab 17th century embroidery to show you!

We visited mainly smaller Tudor properties this week, not by design just those that were local to us (and open on the right days!). We still have many more on our wish list to do 🙂

The first was one I have had on my list for a while Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire, a very lovely Tudor house which as you can see from the pictures has suffered through the years and has needed extensive structural work to keep it from falling down!

The second was East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley, not only a beautiful little house but also home to some gorgeous embroidery.

Look at all these beautiful pictures.

Sadly their sampler display was not available due to a ceiling collapse in that room so I will return to see that sometime.

There was also some lovely embroidery that had been done for the displays by local women, this blackwork beadspread and crewel work hangings date from the 1920s.

And some fantastic plaster ceilings.

The last one we visited was Gawthorpe Hall near Burnley, this is a mini Hardwick Hall in design and is home to the Rachel Kay Shuttleworth needlework collection. A small part of her 28,000 pieces were on display.Rachel lived in the house in the 1950s and was a passionate needlewoman.

There were no photos allowed in the house but there is an excellent blog with online gallery and details of the textile courses they run.

A very textilicious holiday with lots of inspiration for me!

Now back to the real world of work with just a few bits of stitching a week to keep me sane 🙂

Thanks as always for visiting, I will be off to Ashby de La Zouche Castle next weekend for a show with Swords of Mercia so if you are in the area come along and say hello!

This is England

July 20, 2013September 13, 2013 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello again

I spend a lot of time travelling to all sorts of beautiful parts of the globe so it was lovely to have week in my gorgeous country appreciating (along with many tourists from all over the world) what England has to offer.

Our first day was spent in the Cotswolds where I grew up and the visit to Bourton-on-the-Water brought back many happy memories of paddling in this stream, seeing the pretty cottages and visiting the model village (which Kerry loved just as much as I did when I first saw it).

We then went to Snowshill Manor, a National Trust property in the Cotswolds, quintessentially an English manor house with beautiful gardens but home to a very eclectic collection by the last owner Charles Paget Wade.

There was everything from samurai warrior suits to old bikes, including many beautiful Oriental chests from his travels. One room had a lovely collection of textiles including what looks like a piece from a Layton jacket!

I particularly liked this sampler book showing miniature garments, no information on its maker but I think it would be a for a similar purpose to the one that inspired the Blackbird Designs book, ‘A Stitcher’s Journey’, which I posted about previously, to show prospective employers your needlework skills.

A lovely day out – and all in the best of English summer sunshine!

Thanks for visiting, more historic loveliness soon!

The heat of the (k)night

July 19, 2013 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Well hello from my cool lounge – dare I say it is a little warm out there today, not that I am complaining but am having a cool half hour inside to blog.

We have had a lovely week starting with the amazingly brilliant and very, very hot Tewkesbury last weekend.

Huge congratulations to all the boys who fought in temperatures of 34 degrees on the Saturday.

One of the organisers had the brilliant idea of filling buckets with large blocks of ice and flannels so we spent a lot of time cooling people off as well as giving water.

The back of the battlefield looked like Emergency Ward 10 1471 style and there were lots of very red faces but thankfully no ill effects.

Possibly my best Tewkesbury ever – such fun even if were all looking like lobsters!

Here are a few pics, these were taken by my lovely friend Sam.

Luke, one of our group, in his new armour

Luke and Jamie guarding the Prince

The Prince with Margaret of Anjou and her bodyguards

The battle

My lovely Ellie watercarrying

I didn’t manage to get any pics of the kit I have made actually being worn as it was too hot to put wool on but everything fitted ok which is good and we bought lots more fabric to make things for us and the boys in the next few months.

The craft room needs a bit of organisation which I plan to do this weekend!

However here is a pic from the Tutbury show a couple of weeks ago of the orle that I made for a friend, these are padded decorations for helmets and I have made this blue and white one and a red and white one as well.

After Tewkesbury Kerry and I went on a little holiday visiting lots of lovely National Trust properties, mainly Tudor ones so I will sort out pics for a mega post over the weekend.There were some beautiful textiles as always so we had a fab time.

Now going to have a quiet weekend of stitching, a little gardening and maybe a walk (which will involve a paddle and ice-cream 🙂 Oh and catching up on the most recent episode of The White Queen where they should be doing the Tewkesbury battle as well!

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Practising making holes

July 9, 2013 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone and I hope you in the UK have been enjoying all this beautiful sunshine we have been having!

It has been wonderful here and we have been really enjoying ourselves. This also bodes very well for our favourite event of the re-enactment year as this coming weekend it is the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival and I am beyond excited 🙂

You may remember that last year the event nearly got called off do to the site flooding and it was a mud fest to say the least but this year we are looking forward to lovely sunshine just like the old days.

Do come and visit if you can – it is the 30th anniversary of the event this year and is a brilliant day out, free entry as well though please donate as much as you can to our bucket collectors as it costs a lot to put the event on and we want it to continue! The town and Abbey are also fantastic to wander round and if it is hot there is the river to paddle in.

I have been making lots of kit for friends and have been busy finishing it off in time which is why I have been practising making holes. If you want more info on medieval men’s kit then go to my page which details what everything is called.

I am not very good at this part of the kit making process (my lovely friend Kerry is a dab hand at it and her dresses have beautiful lacing holes down the back). I have usually cheated with using ribbon loops on my dresses but wanted to make a shirt with a laced neck and hose with holes to tie them to the brais.

They are not too bad but could be neater.

I will take some photos of the garments on their recipients and post later – Jake has been very kindly trying things on for me as I go along but as he is lots skinnier than my friends they have looked a bit big on him!

So far I have made a shirt, lined hose and slightly different style of brais so it has been good for me to learn new skills.

I have also been practising neatening my seams by stab stitching as I always zigzag raw edges before sewing together to prevent fraying and this makes them a bit neater and means the sleeves can be rolled up if needed.

I am thinking of adding a new page to the making costume bit with more details of these garments as I know I get lots of hits for that so it is on my to do list now that summer is here and work is quieter.

It was my birthday recently and I got some lovely presents, my sister-in-law Amanda who is a very keen cross stitcher made me this beautiful Celtic design scissor keep which came in very handy as the scissors had really fine points for cutting the holes.

She also stitched this birthday card for me – very appropriate!

And from my lovely kids I got this gorgeous book which was a total surprise as it was not from my wish list. Ellie saw it when one of the staff at Hardwick brought it in and thought I would like it and it is brilliant, just my sort of book with lots and lots of detail about techniques and sources.

It is called Sweet Bags by Jacqui Carey.

And look another version of the Layton Jacket that I have posted about previously, this one is a portrait of Lady Dorothy Carey dated 1615 and I had not seen this pic before.

My lovely Mum gave me some money for garden furniture so I have bought a BBQ and last Friday we had our first Marsden barbie – here is Jake enjoying the sun (and a little cider!)

Still got to get a new table and chairs (that is our camping stuff) once I have decided what I want, tempted by a lovely mosaic bistro set but think the table is a bit small.

Well I shall be posting again in a couple of weeks as after Tewkesbury Kerry and I are off on a National Trust fest making the most of our memberships to go and visit some lovely properties, hope the weather holds for that.

Take care and thank you as always for visiting, liking, following and subscribing 🙂

More medieval art – and this time it gets to live with me!

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello everyone

Am posting this from my bedroom while watching the mist roll in over the moors – don’t you just love July in England lol!

The weather has been pretty variable here lately but I have been spending most of my free time making medieval costume for friends so it has not been a problem.

I realised after I had posted the pictures from Florence that I had not yet shown you my latest wonderful art from my friend Pat of Buckles Medieval Art.

These were my Christmas presents (and a wonderful house-warming present from Pat who is lovely as well as superbly talented!)

I have previously posted about the art I already have from Buckles and these beautiful pieces are now in my bedroom and lounge to add to my collection.

An early style of tryptich – Byzantine Art influenced, very much like the Baptistry in Florence.

A later style Madonna triptych, there were so many like this in the Uffuzi Gallery in Florence.

My house-warming gift, a painting of me in lady’s costume to complete my set of me in different roles – I also have an embroiderer and a nun.

It is so lovely to be able to own these pieces, thank you Pat and Clive for all your hard work!

When we were at Tatton recently we took some pictures of their stall – look at all this wonderful work.

Please go and visit their web site as well.

Work is still busy, busy so am enjoying my R and R with some simple garment making – shirts, brais, hose and coifs for friends. Nice hand finishing while watching fairly mindless TV of an evening.

I have also been enjoying the White Queen on BBC 1 – spending time fabric spotting to see if I own any of the stuff they have used 🙂

Take care, have a good week and thanks for visiting.

The (wet) Castle Camping Club

June 27, 2013September 13, 2013 stitchesoftime2 Comments

As I have previously posted we get to camp in some of the most amazing places with after hours access to historic venues and the wonderful views from the tent for breakfast. This was my view last Saturday morning.

We were at Tutbury Castle for a new event and had a very good time despite lots of rain. Great company, a few campfires and a little bit of cider made for a very nice weekend 🙂 Thanks to Armourial Knights for all their hard work in organising it.

I had wanted to visit Tutbury for a long time as it was one of the places where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned while she was in the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwick’s husband.

As you may know from my posts about Hardwick, Mary was a very keen needlewoman and again as with most of the places I visit I am very honoured to have been in the place where some of that work may have been created.

Here are a few photos – not great shots as it was a very grey weekend but what can you expect from mid summer in England!

I love the shot I got of the owl flying off the perch!

Have had a very busy work week and am looking forward to a weekend of nothing but sewing – lots of medieval kit to make for friends so am going to try to document the process for some new costume making pages.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Fun, sun and a few feathers!

June 17, 2013June 17, 2013 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Hello and hope everyone has had a good week. I have been busy marking and so it was lovely to have a fun weekend away at the beautiful Tatton Hall event in Cheshire. The weather forecast was not very good for the weekend but luckily it rained mainly at night (although we did have a wet set up on Friday!)

I have just bought a new tent and was planning to take a pic of it to show you (you know how I love tents 🙂 ) but got distracted by the rain.

It is a ‘new to me’ slightly bigger version of the one I use when there is just me camping and is lovely and roomy, for those events when me, Ellie and Kerry might be hiding from the weather!

Ellie is going to have my old tent as the one I bought her as a 16th birthday present is really too small to get into medieval kit in. Plus the kids tell me off if I have too many tents myself – they seem to think I have a problem.

The rest of the weekend was lovely and sunny, we even got a pink yesterday and had a brilliant time as usual.

Ellie was given a new feather for her helm from a friend who had decided to get some very impressive ones for his helm, here she is with her feather and he and another friend Andy and enjoying themselves on the battlefield.

Jake was there as well, it is his birthday today and as he has had the last 10 birthdays celebrated at Tatton he joined us for this one so he was our official photographer, which meant we got some really good shots again.

Here are our friends from Knights and Freemen and Harlech enjoying the battle and a shot of me in watercarrying mode!

He also took lots of shots of cute dogs so asked me to pick one to include in the post so here it is!

I have been making lots of kit recently for friends in my group and other groups and have lots of things still to make so I am going to have a lovely summer of sewing :-).

I have made a couple of chaperons and this weekend Kerry was wearing the one I made for her at the end of last season for the first time so here are some pictures of that.

We are off to Tutbury Castle next weekend for another event, this time a new one so we are looking forward to that as we haven’t been to this castle before.

Have a good week and thanks for visiting.

Medieval art anyone?

June 9, 2013February 5, 2022 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Well the trip to Florence with my lovely mother was fantastic!

I think this has to be my favourite city so far – the churches and palaces full of frescos and medieval art, the Uffizi Gallery with even more medieval art, the beautiful buildings and views over the Tuscan hills and the gorgeous food.

View from the Ponte Vecchio looking at the Arno River.

Some of the 80 ice cream flavours to choose from in the shop near our hotel.

I loved the display at this shop in one of the side streets, We came back with pasta, herbs and oils, yum, yum!

And there are also lovely shops if you are into that, personally I am not going to pay 10 times the price I can here for a pair of designer sandals but we did a little window shopping and marvelled at what some of the so-called fashions were priced at.

We stayed at the Albergo Firenze, another one of my fantastic finds from Expedia. Although it was rated only 2 star it was a gorgeous room, really good value for money and the location is excellent – 5 mins walk either way from the Palazzo Vecchio and the cathedral so exactly where you want to be.

I have put a tiny selection of pics here, as there was so much to see.

Angel mosaics in the Baptistry.

Detail from one of the Madonnas in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Detail from one of the Annunciation frescos in the Santa Maria Novella church.

One of the chapel paintings from the same church.

We also saw some beautiful silver and goldwork, this was an altar piece frontal in the museum of the Santa Lorenzo church dating from the late 1700s.

I also loved this ceiling painting from the Plazzo Vecchio with its depiction of women spinning, weaving and sewing.

I had seen some of the fresco paintings from the churches before as many are in medieval costume books – look at these two beautiful gowns from frescos in the Santa Croche church.

I have come back with loads of prints and a new icon with one of my favourite Madonnas by Filippo Lippi so have put up some new art in my bedroom to remind me of the trip!

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

It just gets better!

June 8, 2013June 9, 2013 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone and a very special welcome to all my new followers, I have been getting lots of notifications recently about people now following me and am very honoured, hope you enjoy all the future posts.

I have just got back from a brilliant trip to Florence and am sorting out my many pictures of medieval art and churches for a mega post.

I have had a lovely day today so I thought that I would share some of it with you – when I first moved here I promise to post pictures of my lovely surroundings in all seasons so here we have the early summer collection.

I love walking round here and particularly the walks up the valley with the reservoirs but the scenery has just got better as the rhododendrons are now in bloom! I love rhododendrons and they have only just started to come out so the walks will be even better for the next couple of months!

I am so lucky – all this is just about half an hour walk from my house! And there were baby geese on the reservoir today, have not seen them before.

Got back from holiday to find this very lovely Spring Exchange piece from Stephanie at Blue Star Stitcher, my latest partner in the Seasonal Exchange blog. This is a Prairie Schooler piece in an egg-shaped finish with really lovely beading. The backing fabric is really pretty as well. Thanks Stephanie it goes really well in my kitchen where I am currently displaying all my Spring exchange ornies.

Will be back soon with the Florence pics.

Thanks for visiting.

More from Hardwick

June 1, 2013September 13, 2013 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

My lovely daughter Ellie has just sent me some further photos from Hardwick which I wanted to share with you.

The first two are of a painting of Arabella (or Arbella), Bess of Hardwick’s granddaughter, which hangs in the long gallery. This is a beautiful portrait and the detail on the sleeve is amazing.

This one is a ‘slip’ a tent stitched piece which has been appliqued onto a velvet background. This comes from the ‘Mary Queen of Scots bed’ although Mary never stayed at Hardwick but she may have slept in this bed as Bess’s fourth husband George Talbot the Earl of Shrewsbury was Mary’s jailor for a long time and Bess and Mary did spend time together sewing.

The last three are of the volunteers at Hardwick on one of their recent costume days. Aren’t they wonderful. Ellie and I would love to do Tudor re-enactment, the costumes are so fantastic and it would mean I could wear some of my blackwork! We shall see what I have have time to do next year.