Featured Artisan : Annelies de Kort
The lovely Annelies has been exhibiting at our shows for about 5 years, but she has been creating miniature needlework for so much longer. Her most recognizable pieces are her hand knitted Norwegian fair isle jumpers which are usually her own designs. She does all kinds of needlework though, from lace making to knitting to embroidery; all things she has mastered in real size too.
You need to practise the technique full size first, then you can try it smaller and smaller. You need persistence, patience but above all pleasure in what you are doing.
Her micro skandi style knitted sweaters always make me smile, but she also takes on much bigger & more ambitious projects too, like her 17th Century cabinet with embroidered doors and sides that is the centrepiece of her showcase work this year.
The original is on display at the Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Annelies immediately fell in love with it, although a lot of the original embroidery had vanished. She contacted the museum and later, when the cabinet was not on display, she was allowed to photograph and measure the cabinet from all angles.
The wooden cabinet was made by her friend in France, then, for the embroidery, she dyed all the threads herself to get the colours correct. Fun but a lot of work. She embroidered the design on silk gauze; 30 stitches/cm. It took more than 700 hours & over a million stitches to complete this incredible piece. Pinning the embroidered panels to the doors & sides of the cabinet was tense work, but it was successful & the piece was completed.
You can see more of Annelies’s beautiful work HERE.
