Another sample of needlepoint for my Ellen Mahon style sampler book. This one is taken from a design by Sarah Bland (1810-1905), who created many designs for canvas work and embroidery. You can read a little more about her here, and you can see more of her work at the V and A Collections here.
The great thing about antique canvas work and samplers is that it’s relatively easy to replicate the designs and motifs by zooming in to a photograph and transposing the stitches onto graph paper. I really like this little stylised flower motif:
It isn’t an exact copy, but it’s near enough. I like the idea that women were designing their own work despite the fact that embroidery patterns were commercially available in vast numbers. To me that suggests a recognition of self-worth and individualism, finding a voice through which to express a lived experience. Needle and thread often seems to me more like writing than drawing. Hand stitches in particular are as characteristic as hand writing, whether they depict text, shapes, or abstract patterns and lines.
I worked this one very small as well, like the last one – single strand of DMC cotton thread on 40-count silk gauze:
that’s an ingenious stitching frame … and I very much like your interpretation of the colors
Thank you, I just used the colours I already had, some of which weren’t an exact match. Silk gauze is too fine for a standard frame so you have to tack it to mount board or similar.
It doesn’t have to be an exact copy to be a very charming version all of its own, which it is!
that is a lovely little piece and a real honor to the original!
Thank you, yes I enjoyed making this one.