London Embroidery School

an embroidery school for all abilities and budgets.

Flower Making

March’s Student of the Month

by Leave a Comment

Feels like Spring is here and with that a new student of the month. So for their lovely works during March the winner is…@rhea_krcmarova

It is so fascinating and inspiring to see what each of you like to do in your spare time and how you manage to work embroidery into your lives. Taking Rhea for example- describing herself as a writer and transmedial text artist, we were delighted to see how our chiffon rose class came out for her and how effective they are when built up in this way.

As a text artist, she also wrote this wonderful poem to go along with the piece which we think is just beautiful:

”my needle

floating

in a field of fingers 

my pulse explodes

in silky-spoken strands

my blood is bound

my knots are softly breathing

my thread is rising

where my lashes bend”

Rhea Krcmarova 2021

 

Do have a look at her instagram page if you would enjoy seeing more of her works and seeing how her other artistic mediums all fit together.

If you would like to be the next #studentofthemonth,  use the hashtag #londonembroideryschool or tag us when sharing your photos from your London Embroidery School class or the things you have gone onto make following one of our classes.

All Images courtesy of @rhea_krcmarova

A Labour of Love

by Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever wondered about how a London Embroidery School class comes to be, the design and development process behind it then we have the answer for you. We have a new short video up on the youtube channel today, showing a little of the process behind the class and how we get it ready to share with you all.

Well to answer that, we need to go back to the beginning…

We start with a nice hot drink and a snack, because all good jobs start with a snack, right?

Then we are ready to begin the real work, whether there is already an idea floating around, or if we are starting from scratch, we do some research to get inspired and inform those seedlings of ideas.

Next, it’s time to start trying things out, where we might start with a paper sample version, much like toileing a garment to access the shape and validity of the approach. Accompanied by more nice drinks. From that we can make changes to make it better and sample it again.

Once we’ve got as far as we can with the paper, it’s time to try it in fabric and see how that reacts.

This sometimes means going back and making more changes now the fabric has provided extra information, and the pattern gets another upgrade. Like in this example, we might try it out on a different fabric this time to see what that does too.

When we think it might be there, it’s time to try a full sample in the fabric.

Taking lots of notes as we go along, it’s nice to see a piece start to come together. The building of the piece always leaves us so impatient to see the result.

It’s pretty rare to get everything spot on first time, so knowing there will likely be more than one sample gives us the opportunity to take some chances and try out so more unusual combinations.

First sample done! It’s good, but not perfect, so back to the drawing board we go, this time trying it out in a cotton so see how that reacts as well as makes the changes to the petals we desired and even playing around with some felt pen details on this one. Sampling takes away the necessity for it to be perfect just yet and allows us to focus on making it interesting at this stage.

 


It’s always a lot of work, but it’s a labour of love which we hope you will also enjoy.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Last Minute Gift Ideas

by Leave a Comment

Are you stuck for last minute gifts?

Monogramming Online Class

Our christmas postage deadline has now past, however, we have lots of online classes which you can gift that dont have kits that require postage. So for that present you need why not consider giving the gift of lettering in the shape of our monogramming online class series, or a practical skill like Darning. Or for the more experienced stitcher, think about the goldwork letters online class. Quite a few of our other classes only require materials that a crafter is likely to have already like the chiffon rose and lace applique classes.

Chiffon Rose Online Class

Failing that, if you dont feel confident enough to choose which class to get for them, gift certificates are also still available which can come in £10 increments up to £150 so you can pick exactly what suits you best. Find the gift certificates in the Christmas section of our website or the online classes in the online classes section.

We will be open for orders throughout the Christmas period and will still be sending out orders until the 20th Dec, but can no longer expect them to arrive before Christmas. After the 20th all orders will be sent out by the 6th Jan when we will return to business as usual. See you in 2021.

Goldwork Letters Online Class

The Endlessly Versatile Chiffon Rose

by Leave a Comment

Available in 4 colours, mix and match or stick with your favourite as you make these soft, luxurious, 3-D flowers.  This class is great value as £15 gets you unlimited access to the class to watch, re-watch, rewind and replay as many times as you like and a mini kit containing enough supplied to make 3 roses.


Be sure to check out the stitch along we did on our YouTube channel, working on the chiffon rose below for more ideas about how to adapt the artwork to give the roses different characteristics and best suit your outcome.

Lucky Dip Organdie Rose Mini Kits

by Leave a Comment

 

Due to their popularity, we have launched a new product for the Organdie Rose Online Class family in the form of a lucky dip mini kit.

These packs will be made up of the off cuts and include 4 colours of organdie to make 4 roses with, the fabric for each colour will be in 2 or 3 pieces rather than the usual 1 piece of 30x30cm, but will still of course we more than enough to make a rose from. The colours included will be a random selection from our main range of colours; sunshine yellow, seafoam green, lavender lilac, rosewood pink and terracotta orange.

The icing on the cake is that these packs which make 4 roses will be only £15, a saving of 25% on the regular single colour packs which means one of your roses is free!

Snap up yours while stocks last by selecting the lucky dip packs from the drop down of the Organdie Rose Mini Kits product.

New Organdie Rose Colours

by Leave a Comment

Seeing as you all seemed to enjoy our organdie roses class and kits so much, we have been very much looking forward to sharing with you the news that are expanding our colour range. In addition to the lovely sunshine yellow we started with, we will now be stocking mini kits in 4 other colours, Rosewood Pink, Terracotta orange, Seafoam Green and Lavender Lilac.

As you can see these colours are great to mix together or match to you own colour scheme. The sculptural nature of the organdie roses means that you can manipulate them to be as big and open, or newly blooming a flower as you wish. Where do you plan on using your organdie roses, I’ve got mine earmarked for millinery, table settings, bouquets, hair accessories, corsages….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CyZrCBNATo&feature=youtu.be

Find these in the kits heading of online classes on the london embroidery school website to have your mini kits sent to you at home.