Love for making samplers
For some reason I love making samplers. Trying out things, make little attempts for working with all kind of techniques… At this blog I will regularly show samplers I made. And tell something about the “how, what and why” of it. A kind of diary, you could say…
Love for architecture and archaeology
In addition to embroidery I also have an interest in architecture, mostly in contemporary architecture. Buildings like this for example.
For the last ten years I also became interested in archaeological architecture. Especially remains from the Neolitic period, from 6000 – 1400 before Christ, draw my attention. In that period of time our early ancestors build e.g. with megaliths, big, big stones. All around the world we can still find megalith remains, like houses, burial places and ceremonial places.
Love for the Mediterranean area
The last five years during my holidays I visited megaliths at Menorca, Sardinia and Malta. See the photos below.
More places to discover
I’m so happy I got the chance to see those places… Nevertheless I have a “wish list” of megalith places I would still like to visit. For example the stone circles in the UK and Ireland. To keep this interest alive I recently read the book “Megalith, monumenten van steen” (Megalith, studies in stone) from Librero publishers. The drawings in the book inspired me to embroider a sampler which pictured the famous stone circles of Avebury and Merionetshire therein.
Embroidering stone circles
First I made a drawing on tissue paper of the ground plan of the stone circles of Avebury and Merionetshire. On the outer circle I drew the Avebury stone circle, in the middle I drew the circle of Merionetshire. Then I applied the drawing to cotton fabric with some back stitches. And then the fun began, I started embroidering. I worked with a cotton fabric and black DMC yarn. I used 1, 2 or 3 threads for the different areas in the circle. This created some depth in the work and made it more lively. I stitched quite tight, so after removing the tissue paper the stitches wouldn’t be too loose.
When finished, I was glad with the result. I als learned some valuable lessons. My first lesson was not to use tissue paper when you work with tiny stitches (as I did). The paper is too soft for pulling it out easily from underneath the stitches. It was quite a monkish work. I should have used tracing paper. Second lesson was -because I worked with a black thread- I should have used a black pencil to draw with. Now at parts where I could n’t remove the tissue paper for a 100%, there appeared a kind of blue-ish shine.
Wanna read more about megaliths? See: http://www.librero.nl/zoek/megalith or “The standing stones of Europe” by Alastair Service and Jean Bradbery.
Have fun!