I went down a research rabbit hole recently and discovered a new side of one my hobbies! I thought I'd document the journey here to help me remember where I've been.
How it Began
My birthday was earlier this month, and in the run-up I got asked what I wanted for presents. While pondering this I realized that I wanted to get back into learning embroidery. I've had my eye on a book (The Intentional Thread by Susan Brandeis) and a sashiko course on Domestika for a while. Since we were out of town on my birthday, I ordered the book early and grabbed the course on sale for a dollar, while my parents were kind enough to get me the optional kit for the course.
The Domestika sale required getting a free trial of their pro plan, so I poked around their other embroidery courses while I had access. (An aside: I'm not sure how I feel about the company, having since seen some reviews. Some people didn't understand they needed to cancel before the end of the trial, or didn't even notice that the trial was added to their cart; while I wasn't confused, it seems like a deceptive pattern. If you get a promotion like this, make sure to cancel immediately!)
As I browsed the courses, Introduction to Blackwork Embroidery caught my eye. As I was to learn, Blackwork is (usually) a form of counted-thread embroidery, and it involves using short stitches on even-weave fabric to create geometric patterns (often monochrome, but not always in black, despite the name). It dates back to the 1500s or earlier, likely stemming from North African and Spanish design influences, and was common in England during the Tudor period.
When I started learning embroidery I decided that I wasn't a fan of cross-stitch; it was the only counted-thread form of embroidery I was familiar with, so I stuck to learning about surface embroidery. But it turns out that I love what you can do with blackwork, especially the modern style taught by the Royal School of Needlework. This style uses different blackwork fill patterns and thread weights to create shading, like in this stunning portrait of Carrie Fisher as Leia by Caryn Eldridge. The result reminds me of dithered images or pixel art.
I sped through the Domestika course and started looking for other Blackwork resources. There are quite a few books out there; some are traditionally published and available, but others are self-published and/or out of print. I started with an ebook copy of Beginner's Guide to Blackwork by Lesley Wilkins from my local library. It has helpful information on getting started with fabric and stitches, plus a decent number of fill patterns, but it focuses on historical designs rather than the modern shading technique.
Luckily my library also had an ebook copy of The Royal School of Needlework Book of Embroidery. It includes the content from RSN Essential Stitch Guides: Blackwork by Becky Hogg (which now has an updated edition.)
The RSN book discusses the historical background of blackwork, tools and materials, and patterns (including in what situations each pattern would be suited). But the part that I found most illuminating was the section on shading. It describes how to change from one weight of thread to another smoothly, as well as how to simplify patterns, removing lines to make the pattern appear lighter. (Some of this was described in the Domestika course, but I found it helpful to have it in writing.)
Researching Stitch Order/Pathfinding
After pouring over these resources (plus the RSN Stitch Bank), I felt like I knew enough (or knew where to look) to start designing basic blackwork pieces. But I felt less confident about execution. One detail that was missing in the patterns I'd seen so far was stitch order, and I wanted to get a better feel for it before I started experimenting with samplers.
While blackwork can be done in various stitches (like backstitch and stem stitch), it is commonly associated with Holbein stitch, also known as double running stitch. This allows you to create a reversible pattern, where the front and back of the design look the same. While I probably won't be doing many projects where you can see the back, I tend to get very messy on the back side of my projects and it would be nice to practice being neater. It also feels important to try to keep the technique alive, at least when it makes sense for the pattern. But while a lot of resources describe the basics of how to do the Holbein stitch in a continuous line, taking that and applying it to a complicated pattern is another thing entirely.
In my research I've come across a few different web pages that helped me get a slightly better handle on using Holbein stitch:
- An introduction to double running stitch from Needlework Tips and Techniques (Carol Leather). This includes: a video, diagrams, why you'd want to use the stitch, a tip for straighter lines, how to carry thread to other parts of the design, and how to start and end your thread.
- Developing a Spot Sampler: A Bit of Blackwork, from Needle 'n Thread (Mary Corbet). This introduced me to the concept of "side trips" to create more complex designs. It includes a sample chart with increasingly complex side trips, which I plan to try out for practice. The post also led me to the next two resources.
- Working the Double-Running Stitch on The Blackwork Embroidery Archives (Paula Katherine Marmor). This has very detailed step-by-step diagrams of how to stitch side trips.
- Medieval Egyptian "Blackwork" Embroidery (Heather Rose Jones). This includes a section on how to plan your path for patterns in double running stitch. (The more complicated patterns are currently a bit beyond me due to brain fog, but I definitely want to save this for later!)
Embroidery on the Old Web
Something I noticed during my research is that a lot of those links are fairly old. The Needle 'n Thread article is from 2010, and the website itself dates back to 2006. The Needlework Tips and Techniques website is a similar age, but has a predecessor that dates back to 2002. The article on medieval Egyptian embroidery was last updated in 2005, and the page from Blackwork Embroidery Archives was created in 1998 and last updated in 2001.
I even managed to find some sites that no longer exist, thanks to help from Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. (Thank goodness it's back!) The Blackwork Embroidery Archives includes a bibliography, and at the top were two books of blackwork charts by Linn Skinner, highly recommended. After a bit of digging I found a reference to her and her website, skinnersisters.com, unfortunately now defunct. It includes four issues of a web zine, Stitch On Line, and Issue 1 is about blackwork embroidery! This issue in turn has a bibliography of its own, which mentions Reversible Blackwork by Ilse Altherr.
Aha! With a bit more research, it turned out that's exactly what I was looking for; a book with "pathfinders" for many different blackwork patterns. It's out of print, but with a bit of eBay watching (and perhaps shelling out a little too much), I grabbed a copy along with her second book that has yet more patterns. I can't wait to start trying them out and learning how to think in paths. Hopefully I can apply the technique to patterns from other sources, too.
What's Next
When I first started looking into potential birthday presents, I had no idea I'd discover a whole form of embroidery that I wanted to learn! It's exciting.
It was also really cool to discover a bunch of older websites; aside from Needle 'n Thread, I hadn't come across any of these before. My research took me on lots of paths (many which I condensed here for brevity), and the fact that so many folks have made personal websites about embroidery and blackwork in particular just feels... really warm and fuzzy. I love seeing two of my hobbies combined, and my journey across so many personal websites really solidified just how important it is to link to other sites and people — it's how I found so much! I'm encouraged more than ever to keep doing link roundups, and I've already added quite a few blackwork links to my bookmarks.
It also reminded me of just how many women have been online since the beginning, many of them super nerdy. (Lots of websites I found are by folks involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, for example.)
And now that I've got so many resources about blackwork, it's time to embroider! I've already started a very simple bookmark to practice a zigzag pattern. If it works out, my plan is to make lots of these as samplers for reversible stitches; it's really cool to be able to have the same design (or similar) on both sides. And maybe these can be nice presents for folks? We'll see!
I'm also of course looking forward to my sashiko course, and I've already started reading The Intentional Thread. The latter can be used as a reference, or it can be used as a textbook, complete with exercises at the end of each chapter. My plan is to slowly do the exercises in order, and hopefully post them on this site!
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