I’m enrolled in the Royal School of Needlework certificate of embroidery, mostly because I wanted to get more into their teachings on blackwork embroidery. I started with the self-paced course, which I finished during my long, slow recovery from my first bout of covid in 2022. I stitched the puffin.
I loved the intricacy and detail of it, but also its order and symmetry (that’s what I love about knitting too). For someone who doesn’t excel at maths, I have a deep love for counting (here’s a whole lot more maths than I could ever make sense of). But I was especially drawn to the shaded techniques the Royal School of Needlework have been developing and promoting. I did a bit of reading and researching, but I felt like it was something I needed to be taught rather than something I would be able to instinctively learn.
As is my way, I got a bit too drawn into the idea of mastering it, to the extent that this time last year I was enrolled in the certificate of visual arts at the Adelaide Central School of Art.
I’ve been looking around for some inspiration and ideas from previous or current students, especially the ones working on the blackwork unit. It’s brought home to me, how much richer the internet was in the days of blogging, especially now that instagram has evolved into whatever instagram is these days. There are some posts on instagram and on pinterest, but I’m finding instagram especially hard to search and filter these days (why, why, why did instagram have to take away the ‘most recent’ tab from the searches). Anyway, no use complaining about what isn’t, because instagram isn’t there to help us find beautiful things, it’s there to help people sell stuff to us.
If you’ve come to this while you were looking for blackwork embroidery, here’s some links to some of the instagram accounts and other more in-depth blog posts I’ve found.
Given that she quite literally wrote the book on it, it isn’t surprising that Jen Goodwin probably has the most to look at it in both quantity and quality. Her instagram feed is gorgeous and her shop is one of the few places to sell shaded blackwork kits.
Christina MacDonald (@stinamacdo) has many beautiful examples of blackwork on her insta feed
Alex at Elara Embroidery has so far finished the crewelwork module, and the blackwork module with good overview posts at different stages.
I can’t work out what this person’s name is, but she finished the module in 2018 and has a good number of update posts on her blog.
It’s an old blog, but here’s someone getting started on teaching themselves shaded blackwork techniques.
The String or Nothing blog has a bunch of posts and resources on blackwork all linked on this comprehensive page. It’s not dedicated to shaded blackwork which is my main fixation at the moment, but if you’re getting started on blackwork, you’ll definitely find something here.
I’ll add more as I come across them.