Royal School of Needlework Goldwork Course — Welsh made clothing | Designer Maker Teacher

Always making stuff…is that you too? If so you probably identify with having something make-ish to do in front of the tv. For me it is usually knitting but recently I have shifted over to embroidery. It is something I have dabbled with since a child but only in the last year or so have I tried seriously to upskill.

I booked myself onto a Day Course at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace. They run courses in several places in the UK but I opted for Hampton Court purely for the arrival procedure – you have to report to the Barrack Block before being escorted into the building…

That process complete for the Goldwork Bee course there were soon five embroiderers plus tutor Becky Quine sitting ready to start work…

Tutor Becky Quine had traced the design onto the silk fabric and placed it in an embroidery hoop for each student. The beautiful glassine tissue envelopes are not a style statement – they help prevent the gold threads from tarnishing.

Three layers of stitching are worked to create the padding to give the bee its three dimensional shaping.

After the layers of padding are completed the eyes are added by creating Bullion Knots.

On to the tricky stuff! This is my first attempt at Goldwork. First step was a process called Cutwork where you VERY CAREFULLY measure and cut fine gold wire to length and stitch it in place. I spend a lot of time measuring and cutting accurately but this is to fraction of a millimetre accuracy! The texture is created by a process called Chipping when the wire is cut into very small lengths and stitched on in different directions.

The demonstration piece by our RSN Tutor Becky Quine.

This is the sample our Royal School of Needlework Tutor Becky Quine worked on to demonstrate the different techniques. Alongside the mechanics of how to form the actual stitches it also demonstrates how you need to put in the hours to become really good at something - watching Becky work was poetry in motion! The mechanics are easy to learn, it’s the time spent just doing more and more of it that creates the poetry! I have pretty good hand eye coordination and fine motor skills but anyone watching wouldn’t have called it poetry! I believe I have made a reasonable hash of my bee so now I have to get on and just DO MORE…

I feel this is not bad for a first attempt. The wires of the cutwork (the horizontal bits) don’t look too mangled. If I’m being really picky I would say maybe the body of the bee looks rather the same shape as a ball of knitting yarn with the paper wrap around it than the beautiful shape Becky drew for me but I’m cool with that!