Silk Ribbon Embroidery (SRE)
A Personal Journey
Somewhere along the line, my life long love of arts and crafts and my obsession with roses collided. I learned to crochet as a child, and after a few decades of practice, I was good enough to successfully sell my designs and my work. The more I crocheted for money, the more I ventured back into other crafts for fun. I have been doing needlepoint since I was a teenager, and moved from preprinted canvas work to counted needlepoint to my own designs. While working on wedding apparel for friends, I became fascinated with embellishments and renewed my love for costuming and garment restoration. I worked most often with beading and dimensional embroidery, specifically, ribbon craft and silk ribbon embroidery (SRE), combined with Brazilian dimensional embroidery (BDE) and stump work. With dimensional surface embroidery, I have found a perfect medium to express my creativity.
What is so special about SRE?
First, you can make some lovely realistic and interpretative designs and individual folded roses. Like embroidery and needlepoint, it is a very old fine art. The texture and allure of the materials themselves is almost decadent. The great ribbons, the rich threads, the beautiful fabrics and the wonderful, rich palette of colors available in both is astonishing. But, the finished item, the Victorian pin cushion, the rose covered jacket lapel, the lush garden designs dancing across painted fabric, once seen and experienced in person, are simply irresistible!
People have one of two immediate responses, either "I could never do that" or "I would never have the time to do that." But with good materials and an idea of design, ANYONE can do this and it is one of the least time consuming of all of my hobbies. The best way to start is with a kit, many of which can be found at your local needle shop or craft retail chain store.
What is involved? A good pair of scissors, embroidery hoops, cotton, silk or rayon floss, needles, virtually any fabric, and of course RIBBON! Click on the Supplies link to find out more about the types of ribbon and other materials used in this art form. Included here are some wonderful miscellaneous supplies that I have appropriated to serve a purpose in my SRE designs.
I have a HUGE collection of books. I already owned several regular and dimensional embroidery books, but I went through what can only be termed an obsessive period of acquisition of ribbon embroidery books and leaflets. I have read and absorbed a lot of information and wanted to offer a peek into this section of my library. The page is a little slow to open, because I included thumbnail photos of many of the books I have, but I think it represents a nice variety of books I found useful when doing embroidery. Also, since I gleaned a lot of knowledge from these sources, it will also serve as the bibliography for this web page. Click on Books to see the list.
If you are interested in seeing some completed projects, check out my section on Personal Projects.
Last, but not least, there are links to stitch dictionaries, free patterns, retail outlets, manufacturers, designers and artwork available in the Resources section.
