Today at Westcountry Embroiderers we enjoyed a day school on Blackwork.  

Blackwork's great fun.  It requires an amount of concentration (and co-ordination) but at the same time it's rather relaxing.


Here's the piece I did today.  As you can see, the technique isn't necessarily always worked in black.

Today's effort

Here are a few more examples:

Shading is achieves by using fewer strands or working less of the pattern

traditional borders

I'd like to tackle this bird one day.

sampler

For information about this technique, see the Royal School of Needlework's website: http://www.royal-needlework.org.uk/content/36/.



This looks a fun blog: http://www.blackworkjourney.co.uk/

Also some good patterns are on this site: http://www.blackworkarchives.com/

... and The Blackwork Guild: http://www.theblackworkguild.com/