I stumbled across half a dozen videos the other day, and they're what's sparking this blog post. Erica Wilson was someone whose work I first came across in a small way in Cathy Callahan's 'Vintage Craft Workshop' book. In it she gets different crafters to recreate seventies designs but with a modern slant. There're projects involving raffia, hessian, papier-mache, macrame and lots more, including embroidery.
The chapter on 'Stitching: Crewelwork, Craft Kits, and Applique' included a brief note about a lady called Erica Wilson.
The chair's shown in this photograph, and I can see why the stitching captivated Cathy Callahan so much. It's fabulous.
Erica Wilson's name stayed in my mind, so when I was snapping up a few secondhand embroidery books, wanting to learn more about the craft, I happily bought one of hers. (It's a great book, by the way. Dated, obviously, but very comprehensive.) All of which led me in the meandering direction of YouTube where I discovered a handful of episodes of Erica Wilson's TV programme for the American channel PBS.
Erica was born in England in 1928. She studied at the prestigious Royal School of Needlework in London, and moved to America in 1954 to teach. So successful, Erica taught classes, lectured and led seminars all over the U.S., and she went on to write sixteen books. Her TV series was shown on both sides of the pond, and I bet there are still plenty of stitchers who remember them fondly. She died in 2011, and her obituary in The New York Times was titled 'Erica Wilson Dies at 83; Led a Rebirth in Needleworking'.
I think this is my favourite of the videos featuring Erica' work on YouTube. It might be a seventies design, but it'd fit into plenty of modern interiors. If you've got a tea (or coffee) break planned, why not settle down on the sofa with a cuppa and give it a watch? I think you'll be glad you did!
It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...
Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....
Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites. I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs. It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know. Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world! I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them. Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters - I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet. Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining. I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar. Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint. Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste. Applying paint with a ATM card wa...
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