I love sewing at Hampton Court and feel very lucky to have the chance to spend time in the classroom there. The Certificate Classroom is on the 2nd floor and has 4 of those lovely round windows to let in lots of light.

There are a number of work stations set up around the outside of the room, with adjustable trellis’ designed to hold your embroidery at the perfect height and angle..

So the challenge is to recreate these conditions at home..

My frame gets moved around all over the place!

As I’ve mentioned I like to sit in our dining room, I have the radio and, although the light is slightly better in the living room I have a daylight lamp which helps!

Here you can see my current piece held up by the table at the top and two storage baskets at the side each on a chair, which seem to be a good height for me! You can see the embroidery is surrounded with tissue paper to keep the fabric and already done bits as clean as possible while I’m working. I also use the tissue paper bits to hold my threads and the photo/ drawings I’m working from.

As you can’t see the actual embroidery so well on that last photo, here’s a close up..

Enjoy. X

Embroidery took a back seat for a while, there was the move, I got side tracked by quilting and generally got scared by the silk shading module of my RSN certificate. Now I’ve run out of excuses and have made myself buckle down and get on with it! Since we’ve moved I’ve made it in to Hampton Court three times for tuition days and I have another day booked a week monday – so have to get on with some homework.. tomorrow!

Here’s my frame all wrapped up, keeping all dust and ladybirds (we have tonnes this year) from harming my work..

and here is my piece so far:

hopefully I only have a couple of days left tuition on the embroidery and then you need a full day for mounting, a tough process I need to prepare my fingers for! Last time I could barely type after we’d mounted!

So that’s Crewel work down, silk shading nearing the end I still have gold work and a choice of canvas stitches or blackwork to go.

I finished Little Ted’s advent calendar just in time.. I decided to make it a week and a half ago, I always loved having a chocolate advent calendar growing up and as our little chap is both dairy and soya intolerant, it’s difficult to find anything he can have. I have actually got him a lovely paper calendar which is a nativity play – ill photograph it when we have more pieces in place..
So I am once again over compensating for the dairy thing by giving Little Ted extra treats

It’s made up of heart and stocking shaped pockets cut from red and white felt blankets from Ikea.
On one side is the number and the back is decorated with embroidery and felt hearts.. Each is different. The pockets are then pegged onto a ribbon with little pegs (it’s actually a kit to hang christmas cards – £1.99 from a local craft shop).

I worked on this for 4 days, with more time I would have put more planning into it, especially the embroidery – I did just make it up as I went. I also might have used templates and appliqué for the numbers, but given the tight deadline I’m fairly pleased!

And so we come to day 1, tonight we’ll be getting out the Christmas books. I love The Night Before Christmas and Raymond Briggs’ books and am looking forward to sharing them at bed time.

At the beginning of July I did my first module in the RSN’s Certificate in embroidery. You have to do four techniques: Jacobean, silk shading, blackwork/canvas & gold work.

For each subject you get 8 teaching days. I’m working at Hampton Court, but there are sites around the UK, San Fransisco and I think Japan – check out their website for a better list..

I did the Jacobean course as a 2 week intensive block and boy was it intensive! We were taught Monday to Thursday for 2 weeks and had the Friday and weekend in the middle for homework. Not realising how tough it would be when I booked it I worked the Fridays, which was fine but I was exhausted! I’m not sure if being local was an advantage or not, I had my family around me to keep me going and bring me food, but also to distract me..
I think I added it up to 60 + hours of work on the piece.

I’m writing this on the train to the first day of my second technique, silk shading.. I have tonnes of ideas and some lovely silk a colleague gave me a few years ago..

Just pulling in to clapham junction, need to change trains..

WARNING!! I MAY GUSH IN THIS POST!

So what did you think?
Over a week after the event, blog posts all over the web discuss the dress in detail so I won’t give you the low down of all the detail, thought the BBC have a good [article](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249018) and [video](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249682) of the embroidery and lace detail.

It turns out I had (Royal Wedding fever!)[http://www.suzical.co.uk/blog/quilting/do-i-have-royal-wedding-fever] I loved it! I was glued to the TV for the arrivals and ceremony – good choices in music too, though my Mum doesn’t think Jerusalem is a wedding hymn and had a huge argument with my Sister about it when she got married! We travelled over to Oxford that afternoon to visit friends for the weekend and gate crash their local Royal wedding party – D came second in the welly wanging competition!

I loved all three dresses – Kate’s wedding and evening dresses and her Pippa’s bridesmaid dress…
I was pleased with the choice of designer and loved that they chose to use the Royal School of Needlework for the lacework. I can kind of understand why some people thought that an Alexander McQueen dress should be more controversial, but really? For a British Royal wedding of that scale?? I think they got the mix just right – the sleeveless bodice with lace sleeves – apparently Royalty have to have sleeves- I loved that lace. I’ve been reading all the details I can get my hands on about the making of it, though apparently the detail will be kept quiet for 30 years, surely this comes under the freedom of information act??

The simplicity of her evening gown was just stunning – hopefully it allowed her to let her hair down on the dance floor that evening, she certainly deserved a good boogy after the formalities of the morning!

I’ve had to hold off on this post until my Father-in-law’s birthday present was delivered!

Richard is both a big Schubert fan and difficult to buy for so this year we decided that an embroidery of Schubert was a good option.

I took this image:

Traced the outline and simplified the detail a little. I used split stitch for most of the design and fly stitch to shape the curly stitches on the hair. I’ve run the picture by a few of my musical friends and they assure me that it is a recognisable likeness! What do you think??