Mab's Creations

What is Blackwork?

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History of Blackwork

The earliest surviving examples date to between 1250 and 1400. During the late 1400's Islamic textiles were traded all over Europe and by the early 1500's Italian-influenced designs appeared on European clothing. The first pattern book was printed in 1523.

This work became incredibly popular during the late Renaissance where it appeared in the reversible form on collars, cuffs and ruffs, in non-reversible form on skirts and sleeves (and in every other conceivable place!) and was immortalized by the court painter, Hans Holbein (thus the name, Holbein-work). By the 1620's it was no longer fashionable, but was practiced until the early 1800's as a standard embroidery form.

The original Islamic designs were very geometric and angular and included proverbs and sayings (hence the Italian name, punto scritto, "scribble-point"). The Italian designs of the early 1500's became more pictorial, but retained the characteristic angularity, particularly in strapwork. As the century wore on more stitches were added in the non-reversible forms, such as outline stitch, eyelet stitches and Queen-stitch and the forms became more rounded and flowing. In the mid-to-late 1500's, particularly in England, to the linear designs was added a style of this embroidery that called for large flower shapes, heavily outlined and filled in with various tiny, repeating patterns. Eventually, these forms were translated into wools and became Jacobean wool-work embroidery, the ancestor of modern crewel-work.

(See the embroidery glossary for terms unexplained here.)

This section is intended to be a basic explanation of how to do this work.

• If you are an experienced needleworker, you can get by on what's here and in my Tips & Tricks series #1-3.
  
  
• If you are an absolute beginner, or are looking for practice patterns, I would recommend starting with my Pattern Card Sets, Series A, 1 & 2 as these are a graded series, intended to give you plenty of practice and all the information needed to learn this style of embroidery.

Double Running Stitch

The stitch used in this work is called a lot of things, doubled-running stitch being the most descriptive. Essentially, this is stitched twice, the journey out and the journey back. If you think of running stitch (sewing stitch), it makes a dotted line. If you stitch all the way out and then double back, bringing the needle up where it went down and down where it came up, you will fill in the blanks and create a solid line.

[click images for larger views]

This work is usually counted. If you're stitching on Aida cloth (which I recommend for beginners) your "stitching unit" is "over 1". On linen-weaves, you have more of a choice (and I don't recommend "over one" as you will get threads that disappear into the weave!). Unless you have an incredibly fine fabric with a high thread count your stitching unit will likely be "over two" or "over three".

Usually, you will end up with 11-18 stitching units to the inch, with your end use dictating the count, e.g., my chemise (hard wear) is 18-to-the-inch, while my coif is 14 and my samplers (very light wear) are 11 or 14.

Most of the time, you will only stitch in stitch units, but there are occasional exceptions. Some patterns (usually curves & circles) call for a "knight's move" (up one, over two). If your stitching unit is "over 1" or "over 3" this is done as one stitch. If your stitching unit is an even number of threads this is done as two stitches, each stitch on the "up one" taking only 1/2 the stitching unit. Other patterns call for taking an extra "bite" beyond your usual stitch length to make the pattern look better.

[click images for larger views]

The simplest patterns are those that go out and back, but there are other patterns that take side-trips. Think of this as a journey from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. On the trip out you drive straight there, but on the journey home you visit Chicago and then Houston, always returning to the center line, rather than taking a short cut or driving through Atlanta. (see my Pattern Card set #2 for more on this.)

© Mary Anne Bartlett, May 15, 1995. All rights reserved.

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