Embroidered Rooms A><B

I saw these pieces by Manuela Caniato at the 2021 Knitting & Stitching Show held at Alexandra Palace, and was keen to get a closer look.

They are cotton canvas worked with stranded cotton, each just 27.5 by 20 cm. Manuela took pictures of her rooms on the iPad and drew them digitally before printing on canvas and embroidering.

She also says that she likes this as it is “the making of a new fabric” and is a combination of digital and manual skills, and that she likes to imagine that she’s “throwing a thread that unites past and present”.

Looking more closely, I was drawn to the herringbone effect and texture that the rows of stitches brought while also clearly showing the scene, and the plant in the image above is also effective agains the straight lines of the background. Though while it’s good to see the detail, I actually think standing back and taking them in from a short distance shows so much more.

What do you think?

Untangling threads with history

We’ve been continuing to clear my MIL’s house, and sorting through what is no longer needed. It was the home that MOH spent his teenage years in, and holds many memories for the whole family, and it also has plenty of stuff, as family homes do. A fair amount of that has come back with us, and that includes some craft stuff which, as you can see, needs sorting.

What’s strange though is that now this untangling is soothing. Previously I’d not had the patience for it, and my dad and even MOH would help sort out tangles in wool, but over the past few years I’ve found the patience - and the satisfaction - of untangling reassuringly mindful.

A while back I bought a large bag of vintage threads, where thankfully the embroidery threads were neatly organised and wound around strips of cardboard. Remembering this I dug them out to add this jumble of threads to those.

And before long, they were unravelled and some new cardboard strips with notches cut out held the once tangled threads. Not all of the threads survived it, but a large proportion did, and they are much more usable like this.

I noticed though that the two strips of cardboard I’d added to, had much more character than my saved birthday cards. Or they do now, maybe my birthday cards will hold the same attraction in years to come, who knows.

The blues above are wound onto a card that once held ‘washing and boiling elastic’ and which ‘outlasts any garment never needs replacing’ - the mind boggles doesn’t it. The greens and yellows I added to the 'knicker elastic’ card which once held ‘the latest Improved Rubber Thread.’

Aren’t they a find? And I wonder if any of the packaging around today will seem as dated in the not too distant future!

Love This #95: Suzy Watson's detailed designs

Today I’m sharing some of the most fabulous embroidery I think I’ve ever seen, and even looking at them now I can’t help but be amazed. These pictures are clearly taken through glass, but even so it’s clear to see the detail.

These all formed part of the exhibition by Suzy Watson at the 2021 Knitting & Stitching Show held at Alexandra Palace. The exhibition was titled Birds of Paradise, and it represents Suzy’s study of colour and how she views it.

For each piece of art, because let’s be frank that’s what they are, Suzy uses more than 200 threads to create the picture building up the layers from dark to light, and she aims to create “a series of work that feels real and comes to life”.

Tick.

She’s done that for me, each piece is incredible, isn’t it?

I could have quite easily left with any of the pieces I’m sharing here today, and these bugs held an unexpected and special appeal - which I’ve still yet to fully explain to myself, so there’s no chance of explaining myself in writing.

And then I spotted the glass display case of embroidery hoops, which I spent a fair time admiring and managing to capture even more of the detail by laying my phone directly on the glass.

Just look at the work involved, and the detail.

Now tell me they’re not art.

The cactus paintings were equally as charming, discovering the work of Suzy Watson at this show was pure delight.