Here is the cover of the Picture Post Coronation Special for 2 June 1953. I plan to use it as the inspiration for a new set of Royal Samplers, for stitching on an 18 count fabric. I love the idea of setting examples of the rich emblematic heritage of the nation within an abundant floral border and this is a glorious example.
I aim to choose material primarily for its decorative potential, although the story behind each will also need to be of interest to give the sampler relevance.
I hope to begin outlining these (I have three in mind) as soon as both the Royal Residences and the Royal Baby Samplers are released.
I planned to use the last hour of Friday to look at tidying up the Royal Residences Sampler, but got distracted by this instead. It is an amalgamation of borders and bits from one of the Birthday Card designs, which I have switched to a black background. I find there is something quite friendly about it and if a good amount of pattern variation were developed, it could work. Although pretty-ish, it is fairly pointless as it is - but I am thinking of using it for a festive sampler with a Christmas message stitched within the inner border. Windmill turns into Christmas tree, cake into a pile of presents, wheat ears into pine branches, birdies into robins, swans into geese. The majority seem to want greens with red for Christmas stitching, but I prefer the pinks, reds and greys showing already. Perhaps we could offer a second version on white with greens? I will come back to it another day...
Ready to go with 14 count Aida stock being packed today, here is the final kit packaging for the dual-purpose Teatime-Birthday Celebration Sampler. The main image shows the sampler with the Birthday details. The highlighted area below shows the design with the stitcher's initials and year worked, if it is preferred to complete in the traditional way - a little extra flower motif has replaced the birthday age numeral.
Although we include a full alphabet and numerals chart in the kit, customers often take up the option of a free chart to add their own details, which is all included in the price of £19.95.
As well as a couple more extras (more cake!) and colour tweaking to finalise, I decided to also add an extra little bit of brighter blue to give it a tiny bit more zing.
The first has gone out into the world today to a lady with the initials DS - is that a co-incidence?!
This was one of the first little cross stitch designs I designed specifically for commercial purposes when planning the launch of Riverdrift House. It has been very popular as a kit, the ice-cream colours help give it the 'ahh' effect, maybe, and the little story of the drab brown lady bird...'which one will she choose?' was fun at the time. The wonky letter placing was done on purpose. All I can recollect is sitting stitching this on a hot summer night with my family who were (quite noisily!) loafing about watching 'The Lady Vanishes'.
I have reached the stage where I have decided to sell a selection of designs as Chart Packs only - and this has now been prepared to sell as one of these. I can still offer the option to buy a materials pack separately if required.
If of interest, please contact me via the website. The original kit version is still showing there for now, but will disappear during the summer when we re-organise. Chart only pack costs £5.95 inc p&p (UK), add £2.90 to send abroad.
Here is a new design I have been working on for a very special birthday sampler. We will offer it as a kit with the option to personalise either with the initials, birth year and age of the recipient, or alternatively, the initials of the stitcher with the year of completion may be added in the traditional way. I will make a little motif to replace the age numeral for the latter option.
I have attempted to keep it celebratory, but hopefully not overtly so - the implied dresser and blue colourway help to restrain, and I have left out too much of the obvious, so no balloons or candles! I have set it in a border that I used on one of the very first samplers I designed for Riverdrift, with a slight variation for emphasis, necessary for the limited colour palette.
I still have a bit of filling out and some final tweaks to the upper garland, but at this stage it is usually best to sleep on it and come back with fresh eyes another day.
This one is for my Granny Dolly, born in 1913, in this her very special year - she must have made more cups of tea in her lifetime than almost any other living person - but keep it a secret until October, please! No need to wait until then for the kit, however... I will be charting up next week and stock will follow soon after.
Here is how my Lace Spot Sampler design looks on black. This is the second stage of the original design, which was converted to be stitched in a single colour (grey) on a white 14 count fabric (with just one 5-coloured motif, hence the 'spot') for selling as a kit. Some people find dark fabric more tricky to work, but I find working with a white cloth on your lap can help, as the light background shows through the holes quite well. Lots of pattern repeats in the design can also make the stitching experience less aggravating, so strong horizontal repeats and a good emphatic border become a pleasure to work - hence the 'dentelle' border design developed for using here.
I hope to be able to produce a few black fabric kits later on this year and may well re-colour this one if I decide to include.
I have now reached the second stage of the design for the large sampler that is in progress to combine the four individual Royal samplers into one. I am now happy with the layout and I am almost there with the colour work. It will be stitched on a cream 20 count Aida - this gives an option to offer as a kit on a 40 count linen as an alternative fabric. I have decided to bring in more of the purples and lavenders, for royalty, but also I need to achieve a relatively refined look overall, and I think this may help. There is a bit more of the darker purple to go in, especially in the upper sections, which will hopefully help the visual balance as well.
I also need to add a stronger motif in the two top corners - perhaps a couple more of the Garter Stars will do the trick. The lower border, which I used in the Coronation Sampler - based on the Queen's Diadem - will serve as a useful area for adding the stitcher's initials, or full name, date and any other personal details to complete the work - and it is a fair amount of work! I will package as a kit and also offer an option to buy the chart separately. Hopefully, it will be ready for printing and packing some time in May!
After a busy morning packing kits, we zipped down to Penzance on a long-overdue errand this afternoon. This Cornwall sampler kit continues to sell steadily since first launched a couple of years ago. Made up of little motifs, and stitched on 14 count fabric, it is quick and fun to do. Designing on this scale can be tricky, and often some of the more obvious content is left out simply because it just doesn't work. I refuse to include half or straight stitches, which could occasionally correct the visual, preferring to design using full cross stitches only on the 14 count.
So, with reasonable success, I did manage to put in Truro Cathedral with the viaduct behind, St.Michael's Mount, choughs, the flag of St Piran, a tin mine, the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, the round houses at Veryan (on the Roseland), fishing boats (based on those at Newlyn), palm trees, a crab, stylised sunflowers for the Eden Project, seagulls and sandcastle, a cream tea, a Kernow mermaid, the Arms of the Duchy... oh, and Cornish Yawl No 1, originally built at Rock and launched at Lostwithiel - our boat 'Greta', back in Cornish waters once again after a muddy time in Suffolk!
Here is possibly my favourite of all the samplers I have designed so far - my own version of the age-old 'band' sampler - strips of horizontal patterns worked down a long strip of fabric. It features in the needlework photographs on the home page of the Riverdrift House website. This is one of two I personalised this morning for today's post. It simply involves switching the initials in the original (which is full of Stevensons!) for those the customer sends by email. First I lay them out, then work on the spacing, and finally, set the colours. The colour choices can have a surprisingly helpful effect on the overall balance. I find this very satisfying and happy work, knowing they will be stitched with all the love in the world. I hope today's ladies are pleased with their finished charts!
Here is the main story for the colour version of the Dream A Little Dream sampler kit. I kept to the cream fabric and although FedEx seem to have lost a 50 metre roll of white 14 count somewhere between Manchester and Cornwall, the cream 18 count fabric for these ones did arrive, so the kit is getting closer to being ready...
The next thing is to allocate the symbols for each colour for the chart and possibly tweak a few of the shades here and there. But it's giving the feel I wanted, a big bag of sweeties - without being too sickly... and using the bright turquoise has done the job of making it sing a little - so that will stay.
Here is progress on the DREAM A LITTLE DREAM Sampler design. It will be released as shown above - the fabric is a sandy beige 18 count Aida and will come with two colours on the chart. There are actually three thread colours included, the dark grey and the red, which is stitched with two different coloured thread lengths threaded in the needle at the same time, a bright red and a darker red. This gives a lovely mottled effect to the red stitching.
Working on a beige fabric can be very forgiving, especially when using few colours, as the tendency, and opportunity, to 'trail' is frequent!
Of course, with a two colour design, the possibilities are endless and there will be an option to purchase the chart only if preferred.
Today I have started to convert the chart for this design for a multi-coloured version, again planned for release as a kit. I began working on white, but somewhere along the way, have decided to switch it to a cream fabric. I am up to 20 colours at the moment and have got to about three quarters of the way through. Too much fun!
This is the fourth in a set of 'Royal Residences' Sampler Cross Stitch Kit designs. These are worked on a white 14 count Aida and are available to buy as kits from my website www.riverdrifthouse.co.uk (The Contact Me Button is set to take you straight there).
The other three are 'Buckingham Palace','Windsor Castle' and 'Sandringham'.
There is always so much that could be included in a design like this, the inspiration is almost endless. So, after all the research, it is then a matter of distillation, followed by a balance of what is required to both please the eye and be fun to stitch.
Even though the Castle went more or less right first time, I was not too happy with the overall progress - until the tartan ribbons went in. Then, I felt, the mood turned Scottish - mission accomplished!
Today I have started work on a large chart to combine these four designs into one, for the more devoted embroiderers to work on an 18, 20 or 24 count fabric. We will sell it with the option to buy the chart only, or as a kit. It has a linking border added, which I want to vary so it is more interesting to stitch. All the colours need refreshing, so there is quite a lot more time involved, but I am very happy to have made a start on this one today, at least.
Riverdrift House really began in the far off days of the 1960s, when a little girl fell totally in love with binca and the tissue-lined boxes of the Anchor Soft Embroidery skeins locked away in the craft cupboard of Grove Primary School,Harpenden, in Hertfordshire.
The postings here in our studio blog will be intended primarily to show and share some of the more interesting work done in the design studio and in the 'backroom' of Riverdrift House, with all the finished successes, and, no doubt, several of the failures! So, for those who may like to share in how a needlework design begins, is developed and - eventually - comes to market, this may be for you...
This square cross stitch sampler is currently on the board and the very first kit we will produce for stitching on an 18 count fabric (rather than the standard 14 count). The next job will be the final decisions on the colourway(s) to offer for the kit production. The little lower case initials in the lower left of the sampler are there for personalising the sampler - and showing are my own initials for Amanda Stevenson. The sampler has been called 'Dream a Little Dream' in my design notes - it will probably stick. Some might say it marks the end of almost thirty years spent bringing up my family in Suffolk, before leaving for Cornwall last summer... but I couldn't possibly comment.... However, I do believe that may be a mirror-imaged wing of the Guildhall in Lavenham in there, winking at me, set centrally to provide the focal point!
