Saturday, October 1, 2011

Embroidered scene from Codex Manesse

After last week's adventures in modern dress making, I thought I'd show you my latest embroidery project. Since I first saw them, I've adored the love scenes from Codex Manesse, from the first half of the 14th century. Once again, I am using split stitches, each stitch splitting the one before it.
Yes, once again I'm doing the embroidery on a piece of pink linnen. Why? Well, that was the colour of the linnen I happened to have at home... and I think it's pretty! 

So far I've used colours similar to those in the original, though the purple is a bit too light. The eventually I will have to decide which is best; to keep the background as it is, or cover it in stitches as well... It might look good? Or it will just be a whole lot of work not worth the trouble. For now, I'm thinking I'll let it stay pink. What do you think?

7 comments:

  1. Du är så duktig på att brodera! Jag är helt fascinerad. Du borde inte ha några problem alls med att lära dig kärleksknutar. Busenkla! Och tack för uppmuntran på min blogg, det kändes bra. :) Vet att jag har en del släktingar i 50-60-årsåldern som kanske tycker att det blir jobbigt nu med bara engelska, men i längden tror jag att det blir bra.

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  2. Åh men tack! Ja det känns som att jag börjar få ordentlig koll på favoriten, klyvsöm, iallafall!

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  3. Verkar mycket intressant broderi, att hitta en bild och sedan brodera av den. Vilka gränser finns då, inga?!

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  4. Precis! För mig är ju i det här fallet poängen att göra ett broderi som lika gärna kunde ha varit från medeltiden - även om jag den här gången använder en målad bild som förlaga så är typen av bild vanlig också som broderi från den här tiden... Och just det tycker jag verkligen om, att man i princip broderar berättelser... det är ju inte bara en bild av en man och en kvinna (i det här fallet), det avbildar ju deras HISTORIA. Det betyder något... Och som du säger, vad finns det egentligen för gränser? Man kan ju brodera vad som helst! :D

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  5. Hi! I've been reading your blog for a while now, and a very good blog it is too.

    A beautiful embroidery project! I love the faces on your embroidery. They have so much expression on them.

    What kind of thread do you use? I think you work could benefit from using a smoother and thinner thread. But looking at the linen one can see that you are already using quite thin thread, so that might not be an option.

    I think the background would look gorgeous in gold. Yellow or pink would be nice too, but I wouldn't leave it as it is, since the linen is so much coarser than your embroidery.

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  6. Thank you so much Elisheva, I'm very happy to have you reading my blog since I am quite a fan of yours too!

    For this embroidery I am using single strands of cotton mouliné, as that was what I happened to have at home when I started (though in retrospect I wish I would have bought thread that was a bit more common 'back then'!). So it really is quite thin thread already, it just looks a bit coarse in the close-ups. Though I'm sure it would have been gorgous in silk!

    Good point about the background colour, I hadn't really thought of it that way but I think you are right. I just gotta find the energy to fill in the backgound! Right now I am working on filling in the large chunks of red, which takes way too long and is very quickly getting a bit boring. So I'm afraid progress is a bit slow at the moment...

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  7. It must be the close up. Cotton mouline is not too coarse, though silk is always so much finer.

    Split stitch is not the fastest stitch to use. I like it because of it's properties on fine details. But for background it is faster to use different kinds of couching.

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