My mom, William Morris and Liberty London
This is the story about how I screwed myself over so many times with silly mistakes that I could not foresee. I just wanted to share what happens behind the scenes of a few Instagram posts because it is easy to share the pretty moments of the romantic layout of materials on the frame and a cute timelapse of stitching even though it is so much more than that.
My mother has been asking me all summer to make her a mini purse since I made one for my wedding from Irena Gasha master class, and later on I made another for the first woman in Latvia, Roi Rogers. My mother loves aubergine, sparkle and classy things, so that was my main course of action. I wanted to create something for her big birthday this September and I knew it had to be an accessory.
This project started in July when I was visiting London for my graduation. My best friend has always been a big fan of Liberty fabrics and she has always raved about them to me. To me they always seemed very traditional (more of the negative connotation of the word) and basic. So on one of our last days in London we had to walk in the Liberty’s for a shopping spree and my friend was looking for multiple patterns for her sewing projects to take back to the US, so I was slightly inspired to see if they had any that I would like. I was looking for something that I could use for a gift for my mother. I stumbled upon a small cut of this pretty fabric and actually really enjoyed these colours and immediately I knew I could use it as lining.
After my trip followed a shopping spree in Riga through all the fabric, haberdashery and bead shops which resulted in a challenge. My mothers favourite color is aubergine / beetroot and I tried to match it with my Liberty’s fabric, but the challenge was to find threads, ribbons, beads and embellishments to be matching the base fabric. I particularly enjoy shopping for new projects as I always find new materials that I would like to try and experiment with, also a crucial part always is reminding myself what is available in each of my top stores (an article on my favourite shops is coming soon).
Starting a new project is always very exciting, so the framing up is a happy process as you envision the project being finished and done. But this time, framing up was the last time I knew what I was doing. With this project I decided to let the materials to guide me. A bad decision, looking back at it. I had all my materials, knew the dimensions on the bag and that was about it. At first I wanted to embroider some Art Nouveau ornaments from an old DMC book, it has some great patterns that seem fun to me try to translate them in embroidery. I tried to design with those patterns in many ways, spent so much time and got more and more frustrated. This was not one of the projects where I could use the method “design it like it would be for yourself” obviously, because then it all would be covered in grids and hardware. So in that moment I was left with my materials only. Liberty fabric was my saviour. At that moment I decided to use the pattern that was printed on the fabric, the famous Strawberry Thief by William Morris. Quite intimidating to be tackling such a serious landmark in design history, but ok, I am up for the challenge, I guess.
The part that William Morris plays with the presence of his everlasting works is the heritage that it brings. I have been exploring the meaning and presence of heritage for the past 3 years in different contexts; this time I have been presented with an opportunity to honor the heritage that I studied and have been made familiar with my time in London.
As this opportunity arises, or I just had only one great idea what to actually put on the bag, I transferred the design onto the fabric. One thing I noticed early on, the pattern is very full. So that meant a lot of stitching and a lot of thinking. As I set myself a challenge to work monochrome and mainly matte for this project, it was difficult to understand where to put accents and tonaly where the darkest and lightest parts should be. Then to the mix you add different types of threads - shinier, matter, thinner, thicker; beads - sparkly, matte, small, big, round, bezeled; ribbons and so on, so all together it creates a quite complex brief. As I have not really worked with such an array of restrictions, I was lost. And for a long time.
I started to stitch some areas that I was drawn to which helped to not lose interest in the project, but placing random stitches in random materials tickled my OCD perfectionist side and made me go nuts. And as of now I realise it was because I did not make a stitching plan beforehand. I had my design, color palette and materials ready to lead the way and they were taking me too many places at the same time. This reminds me of the movie Le Mans where the whole movie was about filming a racing movie. They all were working very hard to create an innovation and to show the beauty of racing but in the end it falls apart due to the lack of script.
So, I kept struggling. My base material was not cooperating, frame was awkwardly framed and design awkwardly placed, just to make my stitching time miserable. So after few weeks I managed to finish one of the two panels and I had learned from this panel that the next one won’t be full of embroidery. Anyway, I was back at the designing stage trying to figure out what to do for the second panel. I was trying to learn from my mistakes, good for me, but then my Adobe subscription ran out just in time, so I had to adapt to Procreate, just to add that to the mix. I do have to admit, that having an actual plan, even if it is just a color / tonal plan, helped a lot (wonder why I am so surprised, that's what I did for 3 whole years at Royal School of Needlework); I went to work on stitching the backside of the bag. The challenge wasn’t to create the most amazing bag that I have seen, but literally to finish it presentably.
Suddenly I feel the pressure of timing. I have been stitching every single evening after work for at least 4 hours, and full weekends for about 3 weeks and I am not even close to finishing. I have 3 orders and a Christmas workshop lined up after this bag that has a short window for creating and I started to get very upset with myself. I embroidered my signature on one of the side panels and was ready to start the last stage - finishing and assembly. I glued the embroidery, added interfacing and took it finally off the frame. After lining the panels I was actually very happy with how it looked and it felt like my sufferings were worth it, it was looking good! The main thing that did tick me off when I was stitching it on the frames was that the frame was a big block of color, onto which I put more of the same colour and in the end it all looked like nothing attention worthy was on the frame, just because it was diluted by the amount of the colour.
Upon assembly I did calm down and saw the potential of the design, color and how much my mother will love it. And also, I started feeling some pride creeping in on me as it actually did look good, professional and over-all tasteful.
Once you have been so invested in creating such a special project, there comes a point, I’d say about when you are 85% done: you are close to be finished, you already see the final form the project will take, and that seems like a great time to be adding more tasks on your to - do list. I almost started doing that! There were so many details I wanted to fix and details I wanted to add. My last part where I got stuck was the handles. Originally I wanted to make them from the same material that I used for the base. That was not an option anymore because I wasted some of it in a very stupid way - ironing it and then accidentaly steaming it. Then followed option No.2 - Make stiff ribbons from lining fabric and add them. I liked that idea until I saw that it is clashing heavily with the embroidery, which then becomes a waste on both ends. Final option was the saving grace. I had some high quality double sided velvet ribbons bought recently so I was wondering how that would look, and there it was - it looked absolutely great! Finally something looked good! It brought back all the joy and excitement I was missing all this time. To see it almost done, with the finishing touch found, was so relaxing, honestly. I had only one day to run through all the haberdashery shops before Latvia went under another lockdown closing all shops exept the essentials. I need to find a velvet ribbon that would fit the bag as a handle. The nice double sided velvet was not available in any colour that would suit the bag and I did not want to introduce another colour this late in the project, so I found the perfect match - it was a wider ribbon, one sided and I would say, a perfect color match. When I got home, I was thinking about maybe making a knot at the hole on the panel, but the ribbon was too thin and made the bag look like a gift bag. That is not the feeling you want to feel after struggling with the project for a month and a half, to be honest.
To finish the bag I stitched the seams with piping and beads, and covered the top side with beads as well. The last part was the handles. I saw that I had enough of the ribbon to double it if I took the ribbon through the holes. To stitch it together I was concerned that it would be visible and seen as “unpolished” so I came up with the idea to stitch the doubled ribbon with a running stitch while adding a bead on each stitch. This way I had created a very cute edge for the handle that feels and looks quite luxurious, but also it connects with the embroidery on the bag.
So in the end it was not as bad as Le Mans. I am very happy how it came out and the most important thing when making a gift for someone is that they like it and don’t treasure it too much. I want people to use the items I make, air them out, and show them to the world! That is the main reward I want to see in such conditions. Even though this seems like a very depressive post, in the end I love what I have created and can say wholeheartedly that it was worth all the struggle. I have learned so much, secured some of my knowledge and reminded myself about how important joy is to create a good working environment. Hope I did not depress you too much with this post, as I said in the beginning this is to give an insight of what happens in a real embroidery practice outside the pretty and romantic Instagram filter.
