Crewel Work Retrospective : 10,000 hours?
A few year ago, in the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to obtain mastery in a field. Have I spent 10,000 hours embroidering crewelwork pieces in the past 7 years? I can't say with certainty, but I've spent many, many hours embroidering with a needle, wool thread and twill since 2010.Since I'm unable to do any embroidery right now (due to my second hand surgery) and since I'm bored to tears, I thought I would take this opportunity to look back at the crewel work pieces I've done since I began blogging in 2010. My own online crewel work retrospective.Each photo has a link below with one of the articles about the piece from my blog. Enjoy!The first piece was undoubtedly my most ambitious. I hadn't done any embroidery since college and I had no idea where to buy thread, fabric or learn about embroidery stitches in Berlin. Thank goodness for the internet! I fell in love with the photo at the front of Jane Rainbow's book Beginner's Guide to Crewel Embroidery and set about reproducing it. Not all the stitches are the correct ones (I now know) but the end result was good enough that I was determined to continue learning and embroidering!
The second piece I did was from the book Crewel and Surface Embroidery by Trish Burr. It was my first foray into a little bit of shading in the large white flower. By now I'd figured out where to order the threads I needed!
The third piece of crewel work I did was from the A-Z Crewelwork book by Barbara Jackson. This is great book as it has loads of patterns which include instructions. As you gain confidence you can use the designs and choose your own stitches and colours.
The next design came from an online source I can't find again.
*** Update! In an email from Barbara Jackson:
I used Renaissance Dyeing threads for this project and was so pleased with how it turned out!
At this point I found out about a class in Burford, U.K. with Phillipa Turnbull. I remember being so excited to finally have someone teach me the skills I wanted to acquire. Phillipa was my first crewelwork teacher and she's a great one!
At this point I considered myself a beginner who had some skills but a long, long way to go. I was beginning to think about more classes or even a course in the future so I could improve as well as broaden my skills. I was on my way to my 10,000 hours!