Figure Embroidery Close-Ups: the Mind Boggles

Good morning and Happy Monday! I’m so glad to be back from a long holiday weekend, and I hope you are, too!

Summer’s really trucking along! I arrived back home in Kansas early last week after being away for about 9 days. You couldn’t tell I was gone, could you? I planned ahead pretty well this year! Of course, I had my trusty-rusty phone with me to keep up as best as I could while away from home.

When I got home, though, the middle of the week involved playing the inevitable Catch-Up Game, followed by the holiday with some weekend events to navigate – all of which involved falling behind a bit. But now…. now!! We’re back to the Bliss of Routine and Reality! There is much good to be said for Routine!

As the Routine settles back to normal here at the studio, you can expect the following Grand Events this week:

Today, we’re going to look at some figure embroidery up close; Wednesday, we’ll have a little Tool Talk and compare a couple needles that may be of interest, especially for an upcoming tutorial; and Friday, we will finish Cornflowers. Yay!

Recently, a collection of old 19th century ecclesiastical embroidery pieces came my way, and while I had it here in the studio, I took photos.

These pieces are part of a larger item, which we’ll look at down the road. Today, I just thought we’d look at a couple of the figure embroideries.

I love looking at figure embroidery close-up, and the best way to do that, at least for me, is by using a camera. Looking at them under a magnifier is great, but photos allow me to get closer than even a magnifier allows, and photos give me a lot more time to view the pieces closely.

The face above, in all its minute and precise detail, belongs to this figure:

When you look at this whole figure of St. Adelaide from a little distance, you can see that the delicate detail of the face is rather mind-boggling! It’s so beautifully stitched that it looks painted. I think this is “needle painting” at its best.

The face is much more delicately stitched than the clothes, although the robes are beautifully worked as well.

Approaching the face a little closer, we can see the detail better.

Notice that there’s not a lot of color here with the little shading that’s going on. There’s a change in tone on around the jaw line and neck, and a slightly darker tone used in areas around the eyes, the nose, below the nose, and just around the mouth.

The lips are a slightly deeper, rosier tone, accentuated by the darker outline thread.

But the whole face is not a mass of colors or even a wide range of tones. This certainly contributes to its refined, delicate look.

Just to put things in perspective, here’s my index finger next to the face.

The face – forehead to chin – isn’t more than in inch high.

See what I mean by the boggling of the mind?!

This was not embroidered in an era of HD lighting and magnification. It was embroidered around the mid-1800’s.

You can see that the robes are stitched with a slightly heavier thread, in a long-short pattern that aids in creating a shaded effect. Notice that there are not a lot of shades at play – about three shades of blue and three shades of pink.

In the photo above, you can see that there’s some damage on the hand. If you compare the hand to the sleeve, you can perhaps see more clearly the difference in thread weight.

This type of finer silk used on the skin was referred to as “face weight” thread. It is very fine. You can still find very old skeins of face-weight silk in existence here and there, but I don’t know that any current silk thread manufacturers offer a true “face weight” thread these days.

Here’s another example of a figure from the same piece. I especially like this figure embroidery of St. Eugene because of his facial hair.

His beard is magnificent!

The texture and tones, along with the dimensionality of the beard, fascinate me!

I also love the details on the miter (the hat) that St. Eugene is wearing. The couched trellis pattern in gold is so deliciously uniform.

Again, to offer some perspective on size, here’s my hand.

And here’s the tip of my index finger.

The entire medallion in which each figure is situated, including the frame around the gold cloth background, is 6″ in diameter.

I always find this type of figure embroidery exciting to think about. Even if I had the skill to achieve something like this – which I don’t! – I don’t think my eyes could manage it, regardless of our lighting and magnification options today.

Later on, I’ll show you some other examples of figures from this piece. Some of the other figures are not as skillfully stitched or even designed. We’ll also take a look at the rest of the embroidery, appliqué, and trim on the whole greater piece of furnishing that these are a part of. But that’s all for a later date!

I hope you enjoyed looking at these examples of figure embroidery!

On Wednesday, we’ll have a bit of Tool Talk, we’ll finish our Cornflowers scissor envelope on Friday!