About the Queen

Elizabeth I is a class I took at Calloway School of Needlearts. The piece was designed and taught by Gay Ann Rogers, with the help of Carole Lake giving the history lesson and Michael Boren for technical support.

 

This class was very large, taking place in two class rooms, with the teachers going back and forth. While one classroom was getting stitching instruction, the other was stitching and getting the history lesson on the Tudors and the Queen’s reign, fashion, jewelry, etc. during that time period. Some people didn’t care about the historical background, but I thought it was very interesting and afterward did some additional reading about Elizabeth and the Tudors.

 The piece is done on Congress cloth and is not large, especially for all the detail there is. Most of the areas are layered with more than one stitch, then covered with the jewels at the end.  A lot of what I have done so far is the bottom layer of the diagonal tent stitch. Diagonal tent stitches on congress cloth are tiny and very time consuming. For the background, the bottom layer has to be covered with the tent stitch so that the white canvas doesn’t show through the patterned stitch on top.

You can see a gallery of finished pieces by my classmates on the web site of the designer/teacher Gay Ann Roger http://www.gayannrogers.com/elizabeth-exhibition.html . I think there are probably more people who finished and didn't send photos, but there are also a lot of people like me who are still working.

I haven’t done a lot since I pulled this out a few days ago. I’ve worked in a few different areas, trying to finish off some loose ends, but not much on any one area. I worked on the gold braid down the center and a little of the background to see how it will look.  I’ll probably go back to the directions and work page by page.