Working on a few things but nothing's wrapped up this week so here's a project I finished last year. For someone's birthday I embroidered linen so they could make their own tie on pockets using the pattern from Burnley and Trowbridge.
Every motif was stitched with a single strand of thread and this took about 90 hours to complete. The bottle caps help to drive home the scale - 18th century pockets were not small! I stitched this on 1.5 yards of linen and gifted the entire length so that the person could sew the finished project themselves, as they liked to sew historical costumes and I knew they would have opinions on things like the bindings. The main motifs are based on the Four Gentlemen of classical Chinese art - plum blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum, and bamboo. I aimed for a cohesive design but didn't want to create duplicate matching pockets. The borders and floating motifs are largely taken from historical early American embroidery designs.