Embroidery Goodness

Things have gone a little crazy at work lately, as my entire department will be moving to a new building 15 minutes away.  Part of the craziness is trying to clean out our cubicles, and get rid of stuff we no longer need.  In doing this, I noticed a list of embroidery links I had saved at some point.  Since there's really no reason for me to be keeping this list at work, I thought I would share it here and immortalize it forever.  :)

In Prayse of the Needle  This site hasn't been updated in quite some time, but it has a wealth of information regarding tudor/elizabethan embroidery.  The author has created several projects herself, and has a number of very helpful class handouts.

Historical Needlework Resources  This site is pretty fabulous.  It covers several different countries, and several different time periods & styles.  It has beautiful examples, and also explains how to execute the various stitches.  I found this site extremely helpful when I was researching 16th century embroidery.

The Atlantian Embroiderer's Guild  As with most Kingdom guild sites, this one has lots of good information.  One of the best features of this one is that they have created patterns for the populace badges & ensigns of all the Kingdoms in the Knowne World.

Auntie Elspeth's Book Reviews  I realize that this sounds a little strange, but this is a very helpful site.  This page is a collection of embroidery book reviews written by a lady in the SCA.  If you are considering buying something, I would suggest taking a look at this page to see if there is a review on it.

West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild  Like with the Atlantian site, this is another Kingdom guild site.  This one has a particularly good list of articles written by its members.

I do enjoy embroidery, and I am fascinated by the heraldic quality of 16th century English and Scottish embroidery.  I know I will do an art/sci project on this eventually, but right now there are lots of other fiber arts winking at me seductively.  Be patient, embroidery...I shall return to you someday. 

Textile Goodness

I know I've mentioned that at Village Faire, I took a wonderful class showing how to build a pvc tablet weaving loom.  I had been wanting to do this for a while, as I didn’t want to invest in a nice wood loom until I knew for sure if this was an art I wanted to spend time with.

Now that I have my loom, ideas are sneaking through my head of what to do with it.  I’ve already bought red and black thread for it, and I now have the shuttle that my father-in-law made for me.  (Which is very cool, and I think I might eventually paint it something heraldic.)  I’ve been trying to ignore all these sneaky little thoughts, as I still have a good amount of knitting to do before Christmas.  I’m not quite sure if I will make it that long, however, and it’s not all my fault.

Last night, some friends of mine told me about something evil.  (Thank you Your Excellencies!!)  On the web, there is a site with a card weaving pattern generator.  Yes, you heard me right.  And you can download it to you computer.  And it appears to be free.  Yes, yes, I know, right now you’re looking at the screen and saying “you plan to share, right?”.  Well, obviously, that’s the whole purpose of me telling you about it!  The website is called the Card Weavers Studio and all the information is right on that page.  I played with it a little, and it appears to be very cool.  Hopefully when I get home tonight I can download the program onto my computer and have some fun with it.  If anybody else downloads it, let me know what you think!

So as all things do, one thought led to another and I started looking at some of the other sites that had come up on my search.  I found the site Textile Techniques & Tools which looks very yummy.  There are scads of links on this page, some I already know and lots that I don’t.  I really haven’t had any time yet to go through them, but there’s enough that I know is good to make me want to share.  I also found Þóra Sharptooth’s page.  She has loads of links as well, and I’ve heard from lots of people that she is an amazing resource for textile information.

Calontir has a very cool website for the Fiber & Needle Guild.  There are several very interesting articles and links on this page alone, and I didn’t really go through the rest of the site.

I found a really cool page that talks about Tablet Weaving for Kids.  This isn’t really pertinent for somebody wanting to learn tablet weaving themselves, but is awesome for those wanting ideas on how to teach it, especially to children.

There are lots and lots of other pages out there, so I won’t even attempt to list them all.  If you have a link that you have found extremely helpful and informational, please share!