The brief for this commission was to include the crossed keys of St Peter and the biblical reference to Peter being a fisherman when he called to be a disciple. These pieces began as a series of sketched ideas with…
Author: Elaine Bradshaw
Finishing Touches
A couple of close ups of the gold zig-zag stitching, all those ends now have to be taken through to the back & secured !! Beginning to line the stole with 100% cotton. The long outer edge, lower bottom &…
Sewing Starts
Well here we go ! Every time I start sewing my heart is in my mouth as there is very little room for mistakes once I put needle to silk. Once again my silk was bought from the wonderful Barbara…
The Luytens Window
This is my latest commission, a white stole inspired by the Lutyens window in the crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. A wonderful starburst of light and symmetry. Quite a daunting image I thought !!! I began with a photograph…
Once I had a little fishy ….
The brief I have for this commission is for an altar fall and co-ordinated pulpit fall. The church is St Peter’s, so having spoken with the minister we decided on using the symbolism of fish and the crossed keys of…
Final flourishes and finishing touches !
At this stage I am beginning to see that the end is in sight. The applique leaves are ready to be stitched in place. I do this by hand, wearing my very fetching magnifiers, so that I can keep my stitches…
Leaves begin to appear
Now that the tree trunk is in place I can start to add the leaves. They are worked in exactly the same way as the background and trunk the only difference is the width of the zig-zag stitching. I decided…
Autumn Leaves
One of my favourite techniques is ‘reverse applique’. For this stole I have used it on some of the leaves I wanted to give an autumn feel to. I layered the three colours of silks one on top of the…
The Oak Tree
This stole was commissioned by a priest who wanted an oak tree, as it was her father’s favourite tree. It is worked in dupion silks, with small elements of goldwork. Actual oak leaves were rubbed to create the shapes for…
A hard lesson learnt!
A very salutary lesson was learnt with this stole. I packaged up the silk samples & my full sized original drawing and sent it off 1st class mail to the client. It never arrived !!! This meant going back to…