Caroline Zoob

"In this workshop our ‘whited brown paper’ will be pieces of timeworn antique French linen. Our grasses will be fashioned with raised stitches..."

Caroline Zoob

Herbarium Sheets in Stitch

4 days: 21st-22nd, 24th-25th August 2023   Fee: £495

Pressed flowers and grasses are inspiring for the embroiderer. Freshly picked, their three-dimensional forms can be dauntingly hard to capture. Pressed, their forms are clearer, and the textures and muted palettes are pleasing. This workshop is inspired by my collection of antique herbarium sheets and botanical illustrations. The practice of preserving plant matter in dried form taped on to large sheets of ‘whited brown paper’ has changed little since it began in the mid-sixteenth-century. Even the labels, written in exquisite, spidery copperplate, are miniature works of art.

 

I have been exploring ways of capturing these herbarium sheets in stitch, relishing the faded colours and serendipitous forms created by pressing the material over time. In this workshop our ‘whited brown paper’ will be pieces of timeworn antique French linen. Our grasses will be fashioned with raised stitches. Our ‘spidery copperplate’ will be finely stitched. We will work with hand-dipped variegated threads to capture the myriad shades of browns and neutrals. We might employ silk paint on the linen or add fragments of antique fabric and papers. The emphasis is not on producing a quantity of ‘pages’ but rather on the process of building up a detailed, textured embroidery, of re-interpreting the precious originals with needle and thread. The workshop will give you the confidence to create more sheets at home.

 

The finished sheet(s) can be framed or stitched into an album; instructions for an album will be given but its creation is not part of the course. This is a project that can be added to after the course.

 

To achieve a satisfying result in the time, participants require confident use of basic embroidery stitches (straight, stem, split, knots) and techniques (eg, whipping/trailing). It is not about perfect stitches, but about using these very simple stitches imaginatively to create texture.

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