Two German Band Samplers
These two bands were worked by C. Kathryn Newell a.k.a. Baroness Kathryn Goodwyn, O.L.
Shut-the-Box Gameboard
This is my very first Assisiwork project (and blackwork as well). It is a gameboard for Shut-the-box, a Medieval gambling game. I didn't know how to do long armed cross stitch at the time, so I used regular cross stitch. I designed the blackwork numbers myself, using filling patterns from various sources. The Assisiwork design came out of a pattern book that simply listed it as a 16th. century Spanish pattern. I knew nothing of Assisiwork at the time, but really liked the motif.
I entered this in an Arts and Sciences competition as a single entry. I had lost my original documentation and had to throw together a new one fairly quickly, with no access to the library I had originally done the research for. I got extra points for workmanship, but got marked down for combining Assisiwork and blackwork. I now know where I got the idea to combine to the two forms. When you first outline Assisiwork (which I didn't do in this project) you get something that looks like blackwork (and if you don't fill in the background, you could enter it as blackwork). I had seen several unfinished pieces of Assisiwork and assumed that they were combining Assisiwork and blackwork.
Unfinished Trim
This was my first attempt at Assisiwork with long armed cross stitch. It was originally going to be the trim for a pillowcase. I got the pattern out of Kim Salazar's New Carolingian Modelbook. Up until this point I had only worked with Aida cloth and didn't realize the rate of unravelling the evenweave would reach. I also barely had enough material to make two strips of trim for the pillowcase and had left very little room for seam allowance. Needless to say it unraveled quickly and by the time I realized the danger, it was pretty much beyond salvaging.
I entered this as my Junior Student project in the An Tir Embellishers' and Embroiderers' Guild in January 2000. The only requirement was that the piece have enough worked on it to show that the embroiderer knew the technique. They asked me a few questions and then I was informed I had achieved my Junior Student status. They really liked the long armed cross stitch as none of them had ever seen it done before. I was later informed at the feast following, that I was now expected to teach a long armed cross stitch class.
The class handout has now taken on a life of its own and will be entered as a research paper in the Arts and Sciences competition in February 2001. Teaching the class will also go towards my next ranking in the Embroiderers' Guild. I am currently working on an Assisiwork bag. The in progress pictures and other current projects can be found on my Current Projects page.
