CHAPTER 1 

GETTING STARTED

You really don’t need a lot of equipment for this type of embroidery. One advantage the modern stitcher has over those who worked on the Bayeux Tapestry is our access to magnification and electric light, but even these are optional – I like a nice bright work lamp, but I find magnifiers an irritation. My best advice is to use a magnifier if it helps you, but by no means should they been seen as obligatory.

FRAMES AND TENSION

You will get the best results with this technique as long as you have good tension on the canvas. It should be drum-tight and evenly maintained, and you will need something to hold your canvas in place.

Hoops

The most obvious choice for many modern embroiderers is a hoop; in fact, I’ve spoken to many who think it’s the only choice. However, I do not recommend using a hoop for laid and couched work for many reasons.

The first is tension: hoops don’t hold enough tension. You can’t hold even tension over a square woven cloth on a round hoop – it’s almost impossible to get the canvas properly square. If the canvas isn’t square, it can lead to distortion, especially on larger pieces.

The second is size. Hoops tend to be on the small size with the expectation that you will move the work around on the hoop, and this doesn’t work for laid and couched work. The standard-sized 15cm (6in) or 20cm (8in) hoop will often be much smaller than the span of a stretch of laidwork, as for instance on the Hólar Bishop project, and although there are techniques you can use for joining areas of laid and couched work, it’s not advisable to move the work around on the hoop before the laidwork is fully stabilized.

The third is crushing and distortion. As you move work around on a hoop, the hoop itself can do damage to your work.

Finally, hoops aren’t medieval. If you want the real medieval embroidery experience, use a frame because that’s what medieval embroiderers used. Hoops really don’t work well with medieval embroidery because they aren’t designed to.

Frames

There are several types of frame to choose from.

Slate frames

These are the most medieval choice. Easy to use and adaptable, you simply lace the canvas squarely onto the frame and add extra tension using the pegs to hold the whole thing together. Smaller slate frames can be held in the hand or leant against something, but they’re traditionally used in conjunction with a set of trestle legs. I have a slate frame set up with trestles when I work at demonstrations of medieval embroidery so that I can show the medieval way of working, but in truth I never use my slate frame at home.

The big disadvantage of a slate frame with trestles in a domestic context is the amount of space it takes up. You really need a dedicated studio space for it, which isn’t always available in a modern home. Trestles aren’t something you can clear away easily because getting them positioned correctly can take longer than lacing up the frame. The other big problem I have with my slate frame is that I’m forever losing the pegs that hold it together – if you look closely at the photo you might notice mine is held together with chopped-up pencils!

The slate frames themselves are reasonably priced at between £30 and £60, but a set of trestles can run to a couple of hundred pounds.

Floor standing frames

My preference is for a floor standing frame with screws at the sides. These are Elbesee type B screw-sided frames, of which I think I have seven, possibly eight, in various sizes. The smaller frame at the front is an older model that I was given, which has screws at both sides; the larger frame at the back is a newer model with only one set of screws.

Floor standing frames are very quick and easy to set up. You just sew your canvas to the tapes along the bars at the top and bottom, screw out to get tension, and then lace the sides, which is important for even tension.

I don’t like being hunched over my embroidery as this gives me backache. I like to sit upright on the sofa, and these frames are comfortable for me because I can sit without hunching, put my feet on the lower bar and lean the frame back towards me – rather than me leaning over the frame. Finding a comfortable working position is important; embroidery is meant to be fun, and sore necks and backs are not.

These frames are ideal if you need something portable and don’t have a dedicated workspace because they fold quickly and easily out of the way. You can take them apart quite simply for transport or storage, but even assembled they don’t take up a lot of space. At Christmas I stacked my eight assembled frames against the wall and their combined depth was only about 30cm (12in).

The Elbesee frames I use cost between £60 and £80, depending on width, and I can personally attest their durability – I bought one from Bainbridge’s in Newcastle when I was nineteen and I’m still using it every day.

Square frames

A cheap and practical option if you have a pet woodworker is just to use a square frame. My partner makes these by the dozen for me when I’m teaching. You can even adapt a sturdy picture frame for this use by taking out the glass and pins, so it’s a cheap option for the beginner.

I actually prefer these to slate frames because they don’t have bits sticking out at the corners. You can see I’ve been using this one as a demo canvas for my online classes.

TOOLS

All you really need is a decent pair of scissors, something to mark your design onto the canvas, and very occasionally you may need a sewing stiletto for poking things and making holes.

CANVAS

Throughout the book I offer the choice of using a wool or linen evenweave canvas, save for the final project which requires a very fine canvas. Cotton wasn’t an option in the medieval era, and silk was generally too expensive for this type of embroidery.

Wool might seem like an odd choice and, like most people, I assumed for many years that all medieval embroidery was done on linen, because after all that’s what the Bayeux Tapestry was done on. Then I started work on a full-scale replica of the Reykjahlid Antependium. I dyed all the wools specially and spent two days drawing the pattern onto my linen canvas. When I was about halfway through, I read what little information I had back through and realized the Antepedium was stitched on wool. When I started looking I found others too. I was so intrigued by this that the next project I did – an embroidery of Beatus of Liebana's, The Commentary on the Apocalypse, The Ark of Noah. (chosen because the animals are very silly) – was done on wool, in this case an undyed Manx tweed.

It was an absolute revelation. As someone who has problems with textures, I often find certain threads or canvases so unpleasant to work with that I avoid them – especially cotton. But wool on wool is an absolute joy. I often find that sewing wool onto linen leads to lots of thread tangles and wearing of the thread, but wool on wool is just more harmonious. So, most of the time I use a fine even-weave wool canvas, because I prefer it. I recommend you try it at least once.

MARKING OUT PATTERNS

I prefer to draw my patterns directly onto the canvas. The medieval way to do this is to use the prick and pounce technique, but this is only really a practical option if you want to repeat the same pattern several times, because the initial pricking is a lot of work. I have long suspected that large embroidery workshops kept a selection of stock designs and borders in ready pricked-out sheets and combined them with drawing for the more bespoke images.

An LED lightpad is a cheap purchase to help with transferring a design, but some people prefer to use the method of taping everything to a window. With the wool canvas I use, it’s enough to place the canvas over the top of a black-andwhite drawing, as the wool is translucent enough to see through. However, linens can vary quite considerably, hence the need for a lightpad to boost the image.

You will get a much better transfer of your design if you tension the fabric properly beforehand, as this will prevent the canvas from sliding around and distorting the pattern. Because the wool canvas transfers very easily, I tension it to my frame, then lay the frame on a pile of books to sandwich my drawing between the books and canvas for a clear image.

Laid and couched work works best in a larger format, so most of the designs in this book will need to be scaled up from the designs given. A home scanner and printer is handy for this.

I prefer to use a permanent ink to transfer my designs and then completely cover the marks. All the designs in this book should be read as covering the lines, rather than working to the inside of them.

Always test whatever pen you use for water...