Embroidery Silk

Time for a confession. Knitting has not always been my first love as a craft. In fact, I came to it relatively late, only when I was in my mid-thirties. Before then, I did needlework. I started with conventional tapestry – half tent stitch in wool, and then progressed to cross stitch. As well as making the usual cushion covers, I spent a fun time in lockdown copying patterns from an excellent book called Feminist Cross Stitch and creating a portrait of Benedict Cumberbatch for my sister who had jokingly given me a book called ‘Benedict Cumberstitch’. Then, when I was planning the shop, I went to Yarndale and discovered Opus Anglicanum – Medieval embroidery that I long to do. I purchased another book from the medieval embroidery specialist Tanya Bentham and decided that I would try to embroider something from there, but was thrown at the first hurdle, because the work requires silk thread.

My next confession is that for a long time I thought that the DMC threads which I had used in the past for my projects were silk. This is, as many of you would no doubt be able to tell me, not so. They are in fact mercerised cotton – shiny and lovely but not silk. Tanya Bentham asks for her designs to be done in silk. At the point of discovering this, I realised that there is an enormous amount that I do not know about embroidery and I shelved my plans for a while. Over the last four years I have chatted to embroiderers, followed people on Instagram (including the Royal School of Needlework) and read some more books, so I am a bit, but only a bit, better informed than I was.

Since I opened the shop, I have stocked DMC Mouline cotton embroidery threads and Appletons pure wool crewel wool and tapestry wool. In both cases I have built my stock largely through customer orders – I am always happy to help in this respect. Lots of people use the Appletons crewel wool to mend garments, either visibly or invisibly depending on their skills. Similarly, while I have the basic Aida embroidery fabrics here, I have been known to order in Zweitgart canvas for people embarking on a big tapestry project. But until now, I have not been able to get hold of silk threads for the really skilled embroiderers out there.

And then, at the trade fair in Cologne I attended in March, to my great joy, I found on the third floor of the enormous trade centre, some people who are among the most renowned in the embroidery world for their silk threads – Au Ver a Soie. This is a company that was founded in Paris in 1820 and has been producing silk and metallic threads for embroidery ever since. Their most popular silk, Soie d’Algers, is spun silk, perfect for my planned medieval embroidery. The name, Algers, apparently has nothing to do with Algeria, but in fact refers to the process of producing the silk threads. They have over 600 colours – so instead of buying the silk, I have purchased their wonderful shade card which I now have in the shop so that customers can order through me the colours they want. I also have a shade card for their metallic threads. While I was shopping with them, however, I could not resist getting in some of their metallic threads, some ‘discovery’ packs with different kinds of thread and some packs of 6 different colours of the Soie d’Algers.

I am very excited about this new addition to my stock and now I can also add my proposed embroidery project ‘The Reaper’ by Tanya Bentham to my ever growing list of things I want to do. Please do not hesitate to contact me if there is anything you might like me to order to help you with your embroidery projects.