Red Leaves

My Cotinus bush has been beautiful this Autumn and some of the leaves have developed the most beautiful patterns as they die and fall.

Medieval Linen Embroidery

  Last year the Heron Corn Mill, Beetham provided seeds for people to grow flax as part of a  Heritage programme exploring the flax industry in Cumbria from the Middle Ages. 

Flax plant

Retting of flax

The flax was then cut and the fibre extracted. It was woven into a narrow cloth which you can see below on the embroidery frame.

You can also see the linen threads which were dyed with plant based dyes.

The Corn Mill put out a request for embroiderers to reproduce the plants used for dyeing and I volunteered to embroider Madder.

I designed my  madder plant set within a loose frame with a medieval dyer at work. Part of the frame was a range of sample colours obtained from madder varying from pale colours to pinky-reds.

The dye is obtained from the root so I made sure that was given prominence.

The dyer was embroidered working with Madder. 

As another part of the frame I stitched some of the Medieval beasts using a range of plant dyed threads.

The name madder was also stitched

Below is the finished panel.