The Hunt of the Unicorn - The Stirling Palace Tapestries

Yesterday was a magical day in many ways. My mum`s here for the Spring school break and after anxiously watching the weather forecast (and the persistent snowfall) for days, it finally stopped on the very day we`d planned to go on a day trip and so we could set out in brilliant sunshine to Stirling.

I`ve visited this beautiful place in the heart of Scotland once, back in 2000, well before I got married, had a baby or even toyed with the idea of ever attempting any form of needlework. So little did I know that this time, when I went back with my family, one of the main attractions of Stirling Castle would be The Tapestry Exhibition.

In 2002, a dedicated team of master weavers embarked on a 13-year-long labour of love, recreating 7 tapestries depicting The Hunt of the Unicorn (the original gobelins are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). According to the guide book, "the Stirling Tapestries project has been the biggest weaving task undertaken in Britain for a century, conducted in partnership with the Quinque Foundation of the United States. With contributions by 18 weavers from all over the world, and more than 16,000 hours spent weaving a single tapestry, this has been a labour worthy of medieval master-weavers." I could not agree more and, to honour the 18 amazing people who gave all this time and talent to achieve their goal, here are their names and the length of time they each dedicated to these tapestries:

And here are a few examples of what they`d been working on - everybody should see these tapestries "in the flesh" because photos don`t do them justice but for the now, they`ll have to suffice:

Like the originals, the new tapestries were woven on their sides too; as the guide book explains, "there is a technical reason for this. The lines of a tapestry look softer when it is woven sideways to the warps; whereas a stepped effect is produced when a line is woven vertically". 

In the modern tapestries, silk was replaced by the stronger mercerised cotton, and instead of gilt, gold thread spun around a cotton core was used. However, the main weft thread was, as in the originals, wool: after careful colour matching, large batches were dyed (with chemical dyes, as opposed to the natural dyes that would have been used in the 1500s). The teams also decided to break with the tradition of making the gobelins from the back: "weavers prefer to see what they are working on, and weaving this way is much more interesting for visitors to watch".

In the specially designed studio constructed at Stirling Castle, over 5 million people saw the birth of 4 of these tapestries (the other 3 were woven at The West Dean Tapestry Studio in West Sussex). And now, after the work has finished, the studio houses an exhibition telling the story of this mammoth project and visitors can also watch short films, see the loom and touch the cones of colourful wool. There is also an extensive introduction to the history and symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestries - something I didn`t have the time to read with a 12-year-old itching to see the armoury and the cannons of the castle... so here`s tonight`s reading material - I hope you`ll enjoy zooming in too! 😊

Lesley Teare`s cottage teapot and some Twilleys

Well hello, peeps - the weary traveller has returned. ;) The holiday was great and a lot has happened since then too: firstly, the shoe sampler I`d teased you with in my last post got bumped up into a later issue of Collection; at the same time, I stitched a cute ties (as in `neckties`) alphabet by Rhona Norrie for Cross Stitch Crazy that, it seems now, will be in next month`s WOCS; however, there is the cottage teapot that was supposed to be in that issue and is now brought forward to 242 - and if you think you`re confused, imagine how I manage to follow all this, I who actually have to think for long minutes every morning about what day of the week this is.

So the cottage teapot. What can I say? Dream project. So much detail to keep it interesting, not an overwhelming amount of colours or backstitch and it`s cute to boot, what more does the stitcher need? Hehe, maybe that`s why it`s this month`s Stitcher`s Challenge...? ;) It took 48 hours to complete and I loved working on the evenweave, plus I distinctly remember that the BS on the roof felt positively therapeutic. So all in all, good memories - and a wonky photo:

Luckily, there`s a much better one in the mag (love the pink mat, I`d never have thought of choosing this colour but it complements the flowers on the handle beautifully):

And apropos my wonky pics vs. professional photos: yesterday I had a look at the Thomas B. Ramsden site here to see if any of the projects were available yet that I`d stitched for Twilleys of Stamford - and there is an abundance of them! So here`s a wee photo album and for comparison`s sake, I chose the worst of my lot, sometimes the back of a project or a pic that was taken in pitch dark, just to accentuate how much better the other ones are. ;) Hope you`ve all had a great Spring break, happy stitching! :)

Clearly (?), here I was experimenting with taking photos of phone cases out of focus...

Ah, that`s much better!

The back of my perfume bottles...

... and the finished article

My two pub signs in the twilight...

... beautiful in their frames

Two little sweet pea designs...

... turned into two sweet (pea) hangers

A pair of designs entitled Weekend and Weekday...

... and this is what they look like with the backstitch detail added

A wee tapestry for a change ;)

`Lush Meadow`

And, finally, a larger tapestry (the wee man`s there for scale, lol)

And the beautiful end product, a rose cushion :)

Fizzy Moon - The World of Cross Stitching 237

Another publication hits the UK shops today, WOCS 237, and in it (on it?) is what the magazine`s lovely editor, Ruth Southorn labelled `our showstopper cover project`: Fizzy Moon. :)

Although generally I`m not a big fan of cute cross stitch, I love stitching Fizzy and have made several pics and Christmas cards featuring him - for some reason, I love his small-yet-sweet eyes and stocky-but-soft body. Not to mention that most of the time he`s bearing gifts or brings a flower, which makes him an ideal present, and from a technical point of view, he is `backstitchy`, yes, but not the worst.

This particular one for WOCS is a 100x80 picture that took 25 hours to finish - as I remember, in the build-up to our summer holiday, so I was packing flipflops and shorts in suitcases between stitchy sessions... hard to believe it was half a year ago! :O

Probably it`s due to this pre-holiday frenzy that I didn`t take any progress pics, only one at the end, but at least I have different copies of it to show you: first my own photo, then Fizzy as cover star and, finally, as he appears in the magazine (I love the white frame they chose for him). Oh, and last night I accidentally came across the new Sayings-range on the DMC Creative World website, so I`ll post a pic of my first-ever tapestry too - a wee detour into a different kind of needlework with this saying often attributed to Oscar Wilde but in fact it`s from Voltaire. ;) Thank you for stopping by, happy stitching!