Ribbon Embroidery

I’ve always admired ribbon embroidery and bought a bunch of books a few years ago to teach myself how to do it. But that didn’t go too well and I put sewing with ribbons on the back-burner until I found out that The City Quilter, a charming and friendly needle-arts store in Chelsea that I've been going to for a while, was offering a class—Intro to Silk Ribbon Embroidery. The class fee was a very reasonable $40 and the supplies were an additional $30. I took the class yesterday and spent a very quick 3 hours learning the basic stitches and how to manipulate the ribbon into forming flowers and leaves. I created a small sampler with the “library” of stitches on a 10” x 10” piece of solid cotton cambric.

Back home I decided to continue the sampler and I’ve started adding more leaves and flowers around the ones I stitched in class. I’m not following a strict pattern or design—just going along with a free-form floral motif. I’ve also started embellishing the centres of a few of the flowers with beads. So far, so good.

One thing I’ve learnt is that the end product looks much more elaborate than the process actually is. And I can cover a lot of ground very quickly. I think I’ll make this sampler into the top for a small box, and them move onto embellishing some old cardigans.

If any one wants to take the class, the instructor, Polly Whitehorn, is offering it again in the Summer (tentatively July 25), and you can contact City Quilter to get details.