I have started my new Celtic scissors keep and despite spending a goodly amount of time, do not have much stitching progress to show. I scrounged around the house for ages looking for an embroidery hoop that would fit such a small piece of Aida. I'm not exactly sure a hoop is necessary for this piece so why I devoted so much time to searching isn't clear. I guess it was more that I don't like loosing things. Despite the lack of stitches, I do have some treasure to show that I found in a local op shop.
For the progress on the cross stitch, you'll note a completed gold frame for the front and an incomplete gold frame on the back. It's a start. Every journey, single step, all that.
But onto the treasure....I picked up 8 cards of Ginnie Thompson Flower thread for a song.
When I did my creative tapestry course back in 2004, the teachers provided some Ginnie Thompson flower thread for us to use. As part of the course, we learnt a range of embroidery stitches that could be applied to tapestries. And for each stitch we used a range of threads - Perle 5, Perle 3, Wool, DMC, Fine Medici Wool and sometimes Ginnie Thompson Flower thread. At the time, they made mention that the Flower thread was somewhat rare, could be hard to come by and would have to be ordered. In the intervening years, I do not recall seeing it any of the Canberra stores.
So, I was pretty excited to find such a rich seam of thread gold in my local op shop. When I got home I did a bit of research and found this curious history of the thread with the eccentric name. After all, it sounds like something your great-aunt Adelaide made up when she couldn't remember the real name.
From the Ginnie Thompson Flower thread website...
There are two main reasons for using Flower Thread. One, the soft matte colors made to resemble natural dyes and two, the thickness of the thread which equals two strands of six-strand floss.
The colors were originally dyed by the Danish master dyer, Einar Hansen. In the Museum of Applied Arts in Copenhagen there is a series of folios by Einar Hansen in which he has pressed and mounted those plants which made the natural dyes used in the 1800's by Danish peasants. Beside each pressed plant is a wool sample showing the color of the natural dye. These colors were the basis for the chemically dyed cotton thread we call Flower Thread. The name reflects the infuence of Gerda Bengtsson (1900-1996), A Danish designer who is best known for her beautiful flower designs. Miss Bengtsson was trained as a weaver as well as an artist, and was experienced as a dyer.
Another artist and a contemporary of Gerda Bengtsson and Einar Hansen was Else Johnsen, who sought textural uniformity in counted cross stitch embroidery by using the same thickness of basic thread for the background fabric and the embroidery thread. As devotees of Flower Thread know, this similarity of thickness gives a very special look to pieces worked on linen of a thickness equal to a single strand of Flower Thread (26-30ct.) or linen of a thickness equal to two Flower Thread strands (18-20 ct.).
Ginnie and Ken Thompson introduced Danish Flower Thread to the American market in the mid-1980's. When the demand for the thread exceeded the production capacity of the Danish Handcraft Guild, they introduced Ginnie Thompson Flower Thread®, with redesigned packaging, color numbering and a broader color range, as a substitute to meet market demands. The Flower Thread Company is presently operated by their daughter, Meg Shinall.
Here is an image, found here,of one of Gerda Bengtsson's embroideries of an artichoke. I could imagine myself doing something like this one day...
I also found an Australian online supplier here that stocks both Ginnie Thompson and Danish Flower Thread. Ah, projects for another day. Happy to look for now. I have more than enough hand sewing and knitting projects in my rotation system at present.
