Crewel Embroidery

Over the past few weeks during lock down I have been working on a couple of pieces of crewel work.
It is a few years since I have done any so I had to remind myself of some of the stitches. 
The first piece was an Art Nouveau flower with elongated and elegant lines.

I love the way you can subtly blend the shades of wool together by working long and short stitch.
The second piece was started at one of my embroiderer's meetings where we had to think of a contemporary twist on a traditional piece of embroidery.
I love the patterns on the gherkin and they reminded me of the grids  [laid work] in crewel work. I thought that I would put a grid over a piece of crewel work emphasising the geometric shapes..

I embroidered a flower in crewel work.

I made a grid with ribbon sewn over a sheer. Where the flower was I cut out windows from the sheer with a soldering iron and then attached the grid by cross stitch to the embroidery.

I then embroidered abstract shapes through both layers in the same colours as the flower.

Two different ways for crewel work.