Nicola Jarvis has been a regular tutor for Lady Anne's Retreats and is well-known in the needlework community for her beautiful designs featuring animals, birds and flora.
We are delighted to welcome Hazel Blomkamp as a tutor for the 2021 Lady Anne's Festival. Hazel will teach three fantastic designs during the retreat, all of which are brand new and feature in Hazel's unmistakable style.
Laura was interviewed last week about our Lady Anne's Festival taking place in July 2021. We also filmed the gorgeous Katie dressed up in our replica Lady Anne Clifford costume, which was embroidered by a team of local needlewomen in Appleby with Phillipa.
On Thursday last week the whole team travelled to Muncaster Castle to present our recreated Muncaster Bed Hanging to the owners Iona and Peter and also to perform the final colours and design checks before the final motifs are added to the replica embroidery by our consultant embroiderer Harriet Roberts.
Our All England tour drew to a close last week as we said goodbye to 20 wonderful ladies. We visited no less than 9 destinations of needlework interest and took god knows how many photos. While we sort them out here are a few to keep you going!
We are so fortunate that the UK's original British Festival of Wool takes on our doorstep in the Lake District each summer, and to encourage new businesses Woolfest have a 'Mini-stalls' section where I was delighted to meet Medieval Colours, established by Katarzyna.
The whole team is together this week to chat about the final stages of development of our next project design, the Muncaster Bed Hanging. Laura has flown over from Barcelona and our official kit tester Harriet Roberts is here from Memphis to perform the final colour and design checks ahead of the kit's planned release in mid-November.
We are so excited to release a photo of our almost ready Muncaster Bed Hanging. It is currently being tested by our illustrious kit tester Harriet Roberts and we can't wait to reveal all when it is released at the end of the year. This kit will replace our Glasgow Bedspread which has been on limited edition release since 2016.
My stag has just come off the frame. I enjoyed him very much. Not in any way perfect but I learned such a lot and just love the feel of the fabric and the noise the thread makes. The lazy daisies in the flowers were stitched jointly with my ten-year-old. A great moment of companionship for us. Thank you for the hours of fun and learning. (It turns out I love French knots! :)) I will definitely be back for more in future.
Summer fairs are a great opportunity to share our needlework skills by entering the local craft competitions. This summer we asked for your photos of your crewel work company kits that you had entered into summer fairs either this year or in previous years.
The embroidered bodice, which was expertly replicated and taught by Meredith Willett during our All England Tour Part I in 2018, is currently on display at the Jamestown-Yorktown Federation in Virginia.
The long-sleeved bodice, on loan from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, features an embroidered design of trailing stems and leaves worked in coloured silk and metal threads, with metal spangles.
On Tuesday I left the tranquility of Appleby to travel to the medieval town or York, about 1.5 hours to the south west, to welcome twenty needleworkers and our star tutors Alison Cole and Meredith Willett for the second installment of our All England Tour series.
The beauty of living in a rural town is our connection with nature and the seasons, which has been and continues to be a great inspiration for artists and designers.
As the magnificent trees start to see their leaves take on the golden glory of British autumn, the nation celebrates the wonderful apple. And the start of a new season is the perfect time to start a new needlework project, and what better design than our Elizabethan Oakapple?
These beautiful tartan needlepoints were recently completed by Sandra McFarlane and Pamela Clarkson, who attended the Scottish Highlands Tour in August.
The canvases, which were hand-painted with the MacGregor tartan, were provided by our tutor Meredith Willett who also taught a silk and metal thread design during formal teaching hours (this was much too fiddly to stitch while travelling!). Phillipa taught a beautiful crewel work piece in a deep blue wool. You ca read about all the projects from this tourhere.
For some time we have been working with our Seat Frame manufacture to fix a design fault on the bolt mechanism between the hoop and the stalk. In order to use the frame comfortably, one MUST have nice sturdy hoop, which means the bolt needs to stand up to frequent tightening. Unfortunately, as some of you will have noticed, it sometimes fails such scrutiny and you end up with a droopy hoop.
Although we have only just come down from the excitement of the Scottish Highlands Tour, we are already looking forward to our next one! Beginning in just a few weeks the All England Tour, Part II will take us from York to Windsor exploring needlework treasures in the East of England. We can't wait!
We are particularly looking forward to meeting needlework historian Dr Lynn Hulse, who will lecture on Embroidered Garments and Accessories of the Tudor and Jacobean Periods during the tour.
The Scottish Highlands & Islands Needlework Tour has begun and I have a few days to catch up on so brace yourselves for a few blog posts back to back as I throw out there all the juicy photos we've been taking over the first week.
I recently returned from the beautiful Islands of Scotland, having completed the final checks for our needlework retreat beginning in a few days. This was the last of three trips we have made over the past year to make sure everything is in order and expectations are met for our small group of needlework enthusiasts when they arrive on Tuesday. It seems like an age ago that we first started building this itinerary and I am quite thrilled by what we have in store most of which we have kept a secret until now.
We are pleased to welcome our new tutor to Lady Anne's Needlework Retreats, Mandy Ewing. Originally from Cumbria, Mandy completed the Royal School of Needlework Apprenticeship in 1995 in London and taught for the RSN and worked in the RSN Studio as a studio embroider and then for a period of time the Studio Manager, overseeing a wide variety of commissions.
It's a rare thing to be able to actually visit the needlework stores and destinations you hear about in other countries. It's almost like seeing a famous person in the street, you get slightly tingly. This is how I felt when I walked into three needlework destinations in San Francisco that I'd heard much about from Mum but never visited myself
I have been lucky enough over my career to have been in the presence of some fabulous historic embroideries. But none have taken my breath away quite so much a the crewel work bed hangings at Muncaster Castle. We are delighted to open our interest list for the Muncaster Bed Hanging, our new project design soon to be replacing the Glasgow Bedspread!
At the Crewel Work Company we share a passion for historic needlework and for enabling others to enjoy historic designs through our kits and retreats. Our activities in the needlework world bring us into contact with incredible historic textile collections all over Britain. The people responsible for these collections are part of a network of custodians all over the country who work tremendously hard to house, treasure and celebrate historic needlework.
If you are looking for something unique and definitely not on the tourist trail whilst also enjoying your needlework, you can rest assured you will find it on Lady Anne's Retreats. It would be almost impossible to achieve the experiences guests enjoy on our retreats as a lone traveller.
We are counting down to our next adventures with excitement as we make the final checks and preparations for our Scottish Highlands and Islands tour in August and All England Part II retreat in September.
Andie uses traditional, natural dyeing processes and is dedicated to producing hand embroidery thread and fine knitting wool in Ariège, France. We caught up with her recently as we release three new redwork kits (which come with a FREE redwork Rabbit kit until the end of June) containing Andie's wonderful natural Cochineal-dyed wool.
We are currently working on a new project kit to be released in the Autumn. This kit will feature a section from a large bed hanging from an original 17th century Jacobean Bed Hanging in the collection at Muncaster Castle.
Jenny Adin-Christie is an exceptional embroidery tutor and designer and is widely known in the global stitching community for her intricate features, impeccable detail and perfect finishing. Her international reputation is why we are so pleased she is part of ourLady Anne’s Needlework Retreats.
After what can only be described as a pre-summer summer here in England in February, we entered March with much cooler weather. As we were counting down the final days to the retreat it became clear that the rain wasn't going to let up.
While one might have wished the sun to return, in fact this is quite the most ideal weather for a residential retreat. With the perfect excuse to stay indoors, we could settle into long hours of stitching and watch the blustery wet weather from the comfort of our cosy hotel.
Nicola Jarvis is well-known in the needlework community for her beautiful designs featuring animals, birds and flora. You may remember her Dove Cottage Sampler from the 2018 Spring Residential or have even stitched one of her iconic bird designs, which showcase her immaculate and creative modern crewel work.
We are delighted to introduce Nicola Fairhurst of the Royal School of Needlework as a Lady Anne's Needlework Tutor. Nicola is our 2019 New Talent! Nicola recently received a donation from us to support her studies and help launch her career as a fully-fledged professional embroidery tutor.
We are very excited to soon be releasing a new Crewel, Silk & Goldwork kit - Shakespeare's Bird & Strawberries, a replica 16th/17th century bible cover from The Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust Museum in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
I met Sarah Rakestraw on Tuesday morning when she presented me with a box full of gold and silver threads, wound specially for our new range of Elizabethan kits. The quality of these threads is instantly apparent. They were heavy in my hand and I could sense the vibrancy of the silver and gold within, itching to get out and show off their affluence. The care, expertise and attention to detail used to produce these threads is phenomenal and it is this reason Phillipa and Laura chose Sarah to supply the metal threads for their first foray into Gold Work kits. Like their Crewel Work Kits, the materials simply have to be the best.
We have one copy of Sarah Rakestraw and Susan Hinde's Glorious Goldwork to giveaway. To enter the competition, just comment below or on today's post on our Facebook page about your experience with Goldwork. All comments qualify so there's no right answer, just tell us how you feel about Goldwork!
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