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Hawthorne & Heaney inspired by the Making Memory Exhibition

April 21, 2019 by Intern

At the start of last month, we posted a blog by our intern Kiah from her visit to the David Adjaye’s Making Memory Exhibition. Taking inspiration from this, she produced a series of drawings from the elements she found inspiring. With her drawing style being quite graphic, she favoured the staircase elements of Adjaye’s designs, bringing in the play fo the light and shadows on the stairs as you can see from the drawings above.

These were then translated into a repeating CAD embroidery design which she embellished with a variety of techniques that she has been practising from the classes taken at the London Embroidery school

These can be seen in the addition of the sequins at the top and bottom:

There is also the clever use of some very neat satin stitches in stranded cotton

And the more specialist raised cutwork bullion squares to finish it off

We also asked Kiah to show us how she imaged her textiles being used within an interiors context, so she produced these lovely visualisations of her work as used in a hotel or luxury office space.

Hawthorne & Heaney’s Special Project

March 29, 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Here at Hawthorne & Heaney we had a bit of a special project on at the moment for a certain wedding that took place in September 2018. We were tasked with creating the chasuble for the priest to wear for our Director’s wedding.

Approaching a garment like this is a sizeable task because of the importance of the imagery and the congregation that will see it. Designed by our director, the cross shaped design features a large image of the holy spirit as a dove at the top. This was inspired by an old piece of cut work embroidery which we are reinterpreting for machine embroidery. We wanted it to retain some of the original cutwork movement which can be seen in the direction of the running stitches and feathers. This also informed the choice of metallic silver for the details to get that shimmer amongst the sheen of the white machine thread.

The middle section has a series of flowers which we focused on the shading of them amongst the raised scrolls and braid work.

Down the bottom we have the lamb of god: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John 1:29. For his imagery we wanted to emulate a similar texture to that of the dove but with a more ‘wooley’ nature.

Each section of the embroidery has to be tidyed and finished by hand which you may be able to see from some of the earlier photos where the design is still on the machine, the stitching looks a bit rougher than the polished finish we were going for.

We also added some crystals and small hamd details at the end which added those final details to make it sing.

But even when we were done with it, that was not the end of its journey as it was delivered to the tailors who made it into the chasuble itself.

Re-interpretting originally hand embroidered designs in machine embroidery can be quite challenging to give it a style of its own and not to look like a lesser version of the hand embroidered piece. We aim not to replicate it, but to reimagine it.

Hawthorne & Heaney to the Rescue!

March 28, 2018 by Eleanor Rowlands

There is nothing worse when a beloved item of clothing becomes damaged! whether it be a tear or a pesky moth has taken a bite.

While this may feel like the end of an item. Fear not, with a bit of embroidery we can bring your garment back to life!

With some tricks up our sleeves and a creative eye. We brought new life to this cashmere coat with some Goldwork bees!

Even though there were only a few holes we added more bees to make them a feature of the coat.

We have also come to the aid of split seams! this beautiful tartan jacket came to us. One of our very talented embroiderer, designed this stunning humming bird with blues and yellows.

One Bird just want enough!

Let us know your thoughts!

Hawthorne & Heaney Employment Opportunities

August 1, 2017 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Machine Embroidery Technician – Part time/Full Time

We are excited to be looking for a friendly outgoing person to join our small team in Central London. The position will mainly focus on machine embroidery design/production, but will also have the opportunity to expand and develop your skills in other areas. There is also the opportunity to expand this into a full time position. The role will involve:

Machine embroidery digitizing (Wilcom)

Operating embroidery machine

Finishing and quality control

Machine embroidery outsourcing (for larger orders)

Quality control

Keeping a time record for management

Taking embroidery enquiries and orders, both over the phone and in person. (client facing)

Answering the phone in the office.

To Apply for this position, please email your CV to claire@embroidery.london

Hawthorne & Heaney for Anderson & Sheppard’s London Craft Week Beaumont Collection Collaboration

May 4, 2017 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Along side our own London Craft Week Classes, Hawthorne & Heaney also have some embroidery on display in the shape of a navy smoking jacket we embroidered for Anderson & Sheppard. They are part of a collaboration with Jeremy King OBE of the Beaumont Hotel London to create a capsule collection inspired by the hotel:

‘Each tailor has produced an outfit for Jimmy Beaumont, a fictional character invented by Jeremy to inform the interior design of the 1926 hotel building. The collection includes a tuxedo, a three piece suit and night-wear, highlighting the skill of the tailors alongside their ability to respond to their client’s character. Each piece of Jimmy Beaumont’s wardrobe is displayed in the tailors windows along Savile Row. ‘ (London Craft Week)

Here are some of the photos of the jacket in the various stages of production, whilst the pieces were still flat they were provided to us to create the frogging on the front and motifs on the sleeves which are inspired by the symbols on playing cards:

All above images from @jennie_mcwalter

And here is the finished jacket, if you’d like to see this piece and others from the collection, they are all on display in their prospective shops down Savile Row now until 7th May.

Image above by @guy.hills and video courtsey of Anderson & Sheppard.

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London Craft Week has officially kicked off today. Jimmy Beaumont of @thebeaumontldn has commissioned a double breasted embroidered velvet smoking jacket with shawl collar and midnight blue fine herringbone braided dress trousers. Velvet cloth is from @scabal and frogging and cuffs embroidered by @hawthorneheaney. The velvet slippers, of course from @georgecleverley. Please visit us at the Haberdashery to see the full ensemble displayed in our window. #lcw2017 #savilerow #bespoketailoring
A post shared by The Anderson & Sheppard Shop (@andersonandsheppard) on May 3, 2017 at 6:37am PDT

Hawthorne & Heaney on our Dress Making Project

February 9, 2017 by Natasha Searls-Punter

In the studio we like to continue to challenge ourselves and push to create something new with our skills, so at the end of last year, we set ourselves a bit of a challenge to create a dress to wear to the BTBA Festival Dinner in February.

Like with all create processes, it started with some sketching and sampling to decide what style we were going to go for.

We look at both hand embroidery and machine embroidery options, and given the time scale, decided it was best to go for a machine embroidery design which combined a few of our favourite techniques.Using an exisitng pattern, we tweeted the patternt to better fit the design and the body on which it would fit by toiling with the help of our intern Jessica.

Once we were happy with the pattern, we construced the skirt and began applying the embroidery to the flat skirt and top panels.

Along side the main production we also produced some technical samples to deal and test some of the more tricky aspect of this piece, for example, doing a test to insert a sip to see how close to the embroidery we could go because of the stifness of the backing supporting the fabric and the height of the padding under the stitches.

Once all the embroidery was finished, it all went back to Jessica to make it up.

Design/Embroidery by Natasha Searls-Punter and Pattern Cutting/Toiling by Jessica Eykel at the Hawthorne & Heaney Studio

Hawthorne & Heaney Experiments with Machine Ceremonial Military Embroidery

January 25, 2017 by Natasha Searls-Punter

For quite some time now, we have been playing around with the idea of developing a machine embroidery that would communicate some similar ideas to traditional military style goldwork but in a crisper, more modern way. In true Hawthorne & Heaney style, we didnt just want to go in for a little sample that we could get to work on a small scale, but a big piece that would really hit you in the face, so we settled on a version of the Privy Councillors Coatie.

We wanted the piece to not only have a rich gold look of the original piece , but also the different heights to the stitching and surface details that come with applying bullion individually.

The colours are worked in layers, adding layers of padding between colours to create light relief.

Following these processes, the machine then goes back into to add additional details :

Once all of that is done, we give it a little tidy up and it is complete. To give you a sense of scale this piece is 45 cm high which would be the left hand side of a mens jacket. It is really exciting for us to see a large scale outcome for this technique which has defiantely sparked some subsequent ideas, so stay tuned to see what we do next…

Hawthorne & Heaney for Suicide Squad with Chaos Fashion

August 4, 2016 by Natasha Searls-Punter

The New Suicide Squad Movie has been long awaited, but last night was the European Premier in London’s Leicester Square. Hawthorne & Heaney were delighted to be asked to do the embroidery work for an outfit for the ladies of the cast for one of their looks. Chaos Fashion designed and produced these beautiful silk satin tracksuits for Cara Delevingne and Margot Robbie wear to the after party.

Each tracksuit was personalised with the girls names on the front in gold against the suit’s navy.

The back sported, the films ‘SKWAD’ and ‘X’.

The machine embroidery featured a slight fade within the fill which helps to give it it’s shadowed effect.

It was great fun to be part of this super fast project with Chaos’s designers, Charlotte Stockdale & Katie Lyall and it is great to see the finished items being worn so well. To see more picture from the evening, follow the link here.