I love using silk material in my embroidery pieces. It is such a diverse medium coming in all sorts of incarnations: smooth or rough textured, shiny or matt, woven material or loose fibres ready and willing to be manipulated. It dyes beautifully and easily – I use Australian Landscape dyes and my microwave – or if you are not into getting messy then ready dyed silk comes in fabulous colours.
I visited an exhibition at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury on the history of richly patterned, high quality silk material woven in Suffolk. A fascinating story which begins with the flight of the Protestant Hugenots from France in the C17th bringing with them their skills as weavers of magic material. (A lesson to be learnt here about welcoming people from other cultures to our country?) They set up their looms in Spitalfields in London but after the 1773 Spitalfields Act was passed establishing set wages silk production began to move out of London to Suffolk where the employment gap left by the decline of the wool trade could be plugged and workers were happy to accept lower wages – another familiar political issue.
Sudbury was one of the places where silk weaving was established with up to 100 looms in operation by the mid C18th and it carries this history in 4 manufacturers who still produce up market silk material in the town. Long before Beyond Stitch was created I discovered Stephen Walters factory shop and bought a bag of remnants for £2 which I am still dipping into. My second goldwork piece is backed by Stephen Walters silk. I bough tie silk at £1 a yard from Vanners shop in pink, blue, yellow and orange. I have a little bit of history on my shelves.
