Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Granny squares

A granny square throw in progress. I love these colors, especially the bright red :-)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

New header

Playing around with my silk yarn to make a new blog header

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Marcus Stone, In love 1888


Marcus Stone, In love, 1888
Image via Eras of Elegance


OK, I know this is victorian kitsch, the visual equivalent of a romance novel, but still.... I really like it (swoon... :-)

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A spring-summer palette


A few weeks ago, I was in Rouen, France, were I found a wonderful "mercerie" selling silk ribbon in every color imaginable. I couldn't buy all (too bad!), so I picked these four strands and they gave me some new color inspiration: egg yolk, watermelon, pistacho, lightblue, cream...

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Crocheted flower garland finished



The flower garland for my daughters room is finished! With blossoms like these, I couldn't resist hanging it in my cherry tree first :-). All patterns were taken from the wonderful book by Lesly Stanfields "100 Flowers to knit and crochet" (in Dutch: 100 Bloemen om te haken of te breien", Librero, 2009. )

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Saint-Aubin's Art of the Embroiderer 1770

A few weeks ago, Sharon B from Pin Tangle wrote about an exhibition in Kent State University Museum: The art of the embroiderer. The title was inspired by Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin's L'Art du Brodeur from 1770. This led me to search for this book. As far as I know, there is no web-based version, and I haven't got the edition refered to on the museum website:Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, Art of the Embroiderer, translated and annotated by Nikki Scheuer; additional notes and commentaries by Edward Maeder (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983)

But, a little google search revealed some of his lovely, fairytale like designs:

Image via the Flickr Vintage Embroidery Patterns Pool


Image via the Saint-Aubin Wikipedia entry


Image via Venetian Red

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Peacock, gold and purple

This is a close-up of an embroidery I made for a friend. I wrote about its technical details at the medieval silkwork blog, but I wanted to post a picture of it here too, because I really like these colors. There's something about blue-green-purple and a little gold...