With New Eyes

If there is one thing I would like in life, it's to be able to restore the sight I had even just a few years ago.
Yes, I know I can buy glasses. I can use a magnifier; I can even pay a lot of money to see if lasers will do the trick. However, being able to see everything clearly without any help would be really nice.
I am looking at embroidery with new eyes.


When I was in my early 40's I did a five year City and Guilds course in free embroidery. That is the kind of embroidery which sits on the surface of your material and follows sinuous lines...not like say, tapestry or cross stitch, which are part of the body of the material and are regimented by the holes in a canvas.

The course covered all sorts of things. Starting at design......and that is a fairly important chunk of knowledge, we began with simple things like lino cutting to make patterns to embroider later. I have to say I found those bits a trifle boring. But they were soon over.  Then we got to play with silk floss, cottons, silks and crewel ( wool embroidery), which I loved.

I learned an amazing amount of stitches. We all know a back stitch when we see it and we have all sewn on a button a few times, but how about Roumanian stitch or Ladderback stitch?

 Roumanian stitch

Then there was the course on Stumpwork! Oh how I loved that. The Raised Embroidery so beloved of those hard pressed folk of the 17th century. I haven't done nearly enough of that since.

 This casket is at Sudeley Castle in Glos. U.K. and dates from about 1660.

Or Goldwork.... Heavens...Goldwork... so incredibly slow and painstaking but so beautiful.

This work is by Tracy Franklin

http://www.tracyafranklin.com/goldwork.asp

Now this was all done in the days when I could see...without any external help.

So when today, I came across a photo of the panel which was my final piece for my City and Guilds examination, ( I sold the original RATS...why did I do that? ) whilst looking for something else entirely ( as you do ), I wondered...could I do that now a days?
Probably not without a great deal of help.
I based it on a curtain for a bed hanging from some Stately Home or other. This one is in silks with a few bits of Goldwork thrown in but the original is in Crewel and I think it's in Cothele Manor in Cornwall. Hard to remember all that time ago.

A panel of silk on cotton by me made in about 1997. It took me three months.

To think...I used to have a memory too....Tempus Fugit!
I wonder if there is a gadget like glasses to help you with your failing memory?