I’m constantly a late comer to all the new fads or in things. I have been since I was a child really, discovering Nirvana after Kurt’s death, finding Riot Grrrl as the scene was fading away. Some things it appears never change when my embroiderer’s guild decided to do a crewel work theme I shrugged and said “neat”. Each month as we were given two stitches to try out the dashing sampler, I filed the newsletters away without a thought. Crewel Work was too “hard” and mine would look “sloppy”. This thinking stayed like that in my brain gnawing away and my embroidery confidence, that is until recently.

Enter my fabulous Victorian black and white day out, gown that I’m working on for the Regional Workday that the guild is hosting. As I worked on the black duchess satin skirt i knew I wants white embellishments on it. originally it was going to be satin Celtic knots but alas my appliqué techniques are not what I would like them to be so I trashed that idea. Mulling through my brain I kept having this idea of surface stitchery specifically crewel work all along the front gore of the skirt. It had replaced the old “you can’t do that” gnawing with “you must do this” gnawing. So I grabbed some waste satin and some white crewel wool and headed off to the monthly social stitch-in. After sketching my design and staring at the tautly stretched fabric in my small hoop for longer then I’d like to say, finally had to admit I had no idea where to start. Son though with the quick help of Frances, Leslie and few questions of Penny I was on my way! By the time I was settling into bed two things had occurred.

1. I had finished delightful little sampler that had me convinced this was the right thing for my skirt.

2. I had fallen madly in love with Crewel work. Not only was it easy but I could do it and make it look good!

I got up at 7am th enext day because I was so excited about sketching out the design on my skirt, thank goodness it was with water soluble chalk because i had to have a couple of goes until I found something I was happy with. Next I machine stitched over my outline with black thread so I would easily be able to see what i was stitching without worrying that that the chalk had rubbed off.  and I started endless stem stitch.

One thing Became very clear really fast While I loved what I was doing if I did just this in white every night I would go absolutely batty VERY soon. I needed something for the pocket of my “work basket” apron that I’m also working on which will not only be for this outfit but for general use, thus can be in wonderful brilliant colour! So I needed a pattern, I checked my number one resource for andything the wonderful and magical GOOGLE! I found some lovely free patterns:

Like this amazing Jacobian scene that is awesome but way too big and not what I had envisioned.

Then there were these great table centers that were stunning but yet again not right for my needs.

After that I stumbled across this wealth of loveliness and there were some that were close but nothing that really called out to me yet.

Fell in love with this beautiful kit but alas I don’t have the time to wait for that now nor could I afford it.

Finally I found Needle N’ Threads a great blog by the very talented Mary Corbet who not only blogs about her beautiful embroidery and the processes in which they are made, but she also posts weekly patterns for free.  at first i found this beautiful design of a stylized pomegranate but it still didn’t feel right. I had the feeling tho this was the right track. Something in my head must have clicked with the pomegranate theme because I eventually found on her fabulous site this pattern which was just perfect! Interestingly enough i could have sworn there was another pattern similar to this one that I nearly considered, but I can’t find it.  Well anyway I grabbed some of the calico I’m making my apron from and traced the pattern(I really could have used a light box for this but c’est la vie) and away I went!