Beginners Guide to Blackwork Book

Beginners Guide to Blackwork Book by Search Press Limited

Inspired by the past, Lesley Wilkins illustrates her techniques with a whole host of wonderful designs flowers, plants, birds, animals and figures. She covers everything from the materials to use and working with a chart, to getting started and how to stitch. Patterns are created by small stitched units which are combined in many different ways some heavily textured, some delicate and light. Borders can be built up by repeating and joining motifs. Clear step-by-step photographs accompany the author’s comprehensive instructions, and the motifs, borders, fill-in patterns and images are all charted, with inspirational pictures of embroideries showing how to build up finished designs.

Lesley Wilkins discovered embroidered samplers on a school visit to the V&A Museum in London when she was 10, and has been hooked ever since. Her fascination with the craft led her to become not only an embroiderer of extraordinary skill, but also an expert in the history of blackwork and embroidered samplers. She has collected thousands of patterns from all over the world, and her own work is inspired by historical motifs, patterns and borders. Her designs have appeared in Needlecraft, Needlework and Stitch magazines, and she also edited her own Blackwork magazine and embroidered sampler magazine Antique Samplerstitcher for 9 years, all of which can be found on Etsy. She is now editing Quaker Samplers magazine.

Now retired from local government, Lesley self-publishes a variety of embroidered projects, especially Quaker style, online. You can visit her Etsy shop: etsy.com/uk/shop/QuakerSamplerDelight. Lesley lives in Derbyshire, UK.