Monday 3 November 2014

English Work: Embroidery Short Course – Part 2

The second day of the three part course was in September. This lesson would teach us how to stitch faces. I was looking forward to this lesson!

We had a few technical problems linking Tanya’s computer to the projector. The Ashmolian’s technical folk were unable to resolve the problems so we huddled around Tanya’s computer to look at the lovely images of faces she has collected over time. Tanya said that basically all Opus Anglicanum faces are ugly but there are nice ugly faces and there are down-right ugly, ugly faces. I think I could see where she is coming from. I think the problem is 1. they are mostly very small faces and 2. intended to be viewed from a distance so subtle details are a waste of time and silk. One thing Tanya did point out was that, by far the majority of faces, are depicted at three quarter profile, rarely straight on or in full profile.

We also looked at how hair is worked and then spent some time selecting silk shades for skin, eyes and hair.

© Tanya Bentham/Carol-Anne Conway

The dress is worked in small (approximately 4mm), closely placed rows of split stitch using three strands of very fine silk (if you read the instructions properly!). The face and hands are worked in the same technique but using even smaller (approximately 2 mm) split stitch and two strands of fine silk. It is a very slow progress and I didn’t get very much done during the class. Nor have I done much in the intervening time but I want to get some more done before the next class in November when we will be learning something very exciting!

Happy Stitching.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

I rather like the look of that face, already!

Moonsilk Stitches said...

Thanks for sharig this with us. It's very interesting. I love the comment that the faces are ugly or ugly-ugly!