(via crochet)
Sweetpea Path
...another place to wander around
Welcome to my virtual notebook,
a place for keeping some things I don't want to forget...
A visual wall of inspiration for thought gathering.
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Posts tagged couching:
Evelyn Svec Ward (American, 1921-1989)
collage and couching: ixtle, amate (Mexican paper), blue acrylic paint and cotton threads on linen
stitching from Anna’s Garden Stencil
from Alabama Chanin
lurve this kind of couching…!
like the moon (from moon to sun)
by Judy Martin
stitched art: felted wool with couched fabric
collected lines
by Roanna Wells
stitched lines, mixed threads
Jacket, made in Athens (Greece), 1830-1879
Silk velvet, embroidered with metal thread
Adding embroidery to silk velvet, which is one of the most sumptuous fabrics, can seem unnecessary, but few will deny that the results can be astonishing. This red velvet jacket has been smothered with gold thread, laid on the surface in intricate interlacings and secured to the velvet by minute, almost invisible silk stitches. The use of the couching technique ensured that no expensive metal thread was wasted by being taken through to the reverse side.
Lines of yellow tacking stitches were used to mark out the main areas of the pattern, and were often left in place when the embroidery was finished. Pins would have been used to secure small areas of metal threads in their convoluted swirls until they were couched in place. Because velvet is a pile fabric it is difficult to mark a pattern onto it for the embroiderer to follow. At best only the general outlines could be given, so although the pattern on the two front panels is very similar, it is not identical.
courtesy V&A Museum
Of course the Met would own this treasure.
Pair of gloves, ca. 1600
English
Leather; satin worked with silk and metal thread, seed pearls; satin, couching, and darning stitches; metal bobbin lace; paperPortraits from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are replete with minutely detailed representations of garments and accessories decorated with emblematic motifs. The gauntlets of these gloves are embroidered with motifs which also appear on other objects made in the late Elizabethan era—a disembodied eye raining pale blue and silver tears, a colorful pansy flower, and a bright green parrot with pearls on its wings. The weeping eye is related to a contemporary emblem book, Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna, or A Garden of Heroical Devises of 1612, though this motif was known as a symbol of unrequited love well before the publication of Peacham’s book.
The pansy, watered by the tears of the weeping eye, was a popular flower in the Elizabethan era. It was known to be a favorite of the queen herself and the pansy continued to appear in embroidery well into the seventeenth century.
Despite the present fragile and somewhat degraded condition of these gloves, they retain enough of their sumptuous embroidery to convey the luxury of the highest quality needlework of the late Tudor and early Stuart era.
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