Author: Chris Hodges

Emily Jo Gibbs

At our April meeting we welcomed Emily Jo Gibbs. Emily told us of her journey into the world of textiles. her mother was a strong influence but persuaded her to do other subjects at University as she could teach her the textile side. Emily studied plastics, woodwork and metals for her degree. on graduating she studied shoe making and leatherwork. Her degree show collection was bought by a Japanese copmany and that set her up in her own business making bespoke handbags. Emily continued with her business for ten years and then had a change of direction when she won an award fropm craft central to create a whole new lot of work based on the nature table using silk organza and metals. Her silver birch cnisters are an example of this work. Emily then started making portraits of her family using silk organzas layered and stab stitched together. The results are equisite and very delicate.

Hand and Lock Visit

Ten of us from our group took the train up to London to visit Hand and Lock who have been producing fine embroidery for royalty and celebrities since 1767. We were taken into the ‘BeadRoom’ where two of the embroiderers told us about their work and how they came to be embroiderers for Hand and Lock.

Some interesting facts from our tour:

*Military uniforms for royalty are made with real gold braid (2% gold) film set uniforms use fake gold.

* When making a uniform like the one modelled by Susie, individual pieces are embroidered, it is then made up by a tailor then the embroidery is finished.

*Hand and Lock did much of the embroidery for the coronation but sadly they were not mentioned on the programme about the coronation tailors. They worked on Penny Mordant’s fabulous sea green coat, Queen Camilla’s shoes and 52 goldwork flags for Burberry’s flagship stores and the Household Cavalry uniforms.

* They work with skilled embroiderers in India who are mostly men. * They also do lots of machine embroidery for many other clients.

* They run loads of different embroidery courses on line. Check out their website.

The following photos give you a taster of the embroidery we saw.

Goldwork insects. Online courses are available to teach you to embroider these.

One of the machines used for the machine embroidery

When making a uniform like this the panels are embroidered separately then sewn together by the tailor. The embroidery is then completed over the seams. A hand embroidered coat such as this can take a year to make from start to finish and cost £50,000.

Dinner at the end of a great day after fabric shopping at Macolloch and Wallis and Liberty’s.

Machine embroidered uniforms used in the film industry

An epaulette made from coils of gold wire

Susie modeling one of the embroidered uniforms

A chart of all the gold threads available to purchase

Findon Christmas Tree Festival

This month in our sit and sew session we worked on decorations for our Christmas Tree to be displayed at the Findon Christmas Tree Festival on 2nd and 3rd December, at St John the Baptist Church . The theme was gold hoops with a gold backing and members had free reign to creat a decoration. Watch this space to see the finished items and our tree!