Forward planning was the key to the practical success of The Sunbury Millennium Embroidery in so far as a lot of work took place before ever a decorative stitch was made into the fabric. An important and surprising fact is that close direction and/or supervision was not a feature of the stitching. This would probably explain the vivacity of the work. Contrarily people who see the work assume that it was closely supervised because of how well it all sits together but if every subject is faithfully interpreted then that should be the case because Sunbury is naturally an attractive village of compatible buildings and colours.

To recruit embroiderers the first step taken by the Committee was to invite Sunbury people to an exhibition at St. Mary’s Church Hall to view the design and, if they liked what they saw, then to register as volunteers. Experience was not one of the criteria – any Sunbury resident who wanted to help was welcomed with open arms.

In addition to the display of full scale black and white drawings of the major panels experienced local embroiderers known to the Committee put on a display of their own work as an indication of the standard it was hoped to achieve.

Every subject within the embroideries was drawn in black waterproof ink on individual pieces of calico and attached to the calicoes were coloured photographs or illustrations for guidance in respect of colour and fine detail. Volunteers chose a subject, collected the specific calico, took it home and, from the illustration provided, selected their threads and set to work with no more than a brief description of how it should be stitched, the Committee trusting in their creativity but also trusting that they would be influenced by the work they had seen at the hall that day. If anyone had a problem they only had to call on Pam Judd, the Chief Embroiderer, or, later on, any member of the workroom staff but this was a facility rarely needed. That first day brought in something in the region of 45 volunteers. When their friends saw what the volunteers were doing – how stunning it was and how much pleasure it was generating, the number of volunteers grew rapidly until there was something in the region of 160 stitchers on the register by the time the work was completed.

Those stitchers who felt that ‘free embroidery’ was not their field volunteered to work the 9" canvas squares of the local schools and organisations based in Sunbury. How little they knew – it was no easier. Most of the volunteers to do the canvas work were cross stitchers and whilst circles, geometric shapes and lettering may seem quite straightforward in cross stitch they are much more difficult to achieve in the half cross or tent stitch which was specified and so the ‘free’ embroiderers admired the canvas workers and vice-versa.

The other common misconception, but amongst the free embroiderers, was that a small piece might be easier to work than a large one, but quality in a small piece is much more difficult to achieve when it is representational work and so, again the result was mutual admiration.

In the very early days both the Chief Embroiderer and John Stamp, the Chief Designer, each worked a complete side panel – the Conservation Panel and the Tradition (Swan Upping) panel. This was done in the hope that some of the volunteers might also work a complete panel but none of them felt that they had the confidence or the time to take on such an ambitious task and so the side panels were worked, as was the Village Panel, by applying individual embroidered slips to the backgrounds as they were created.

It took 2 ½ years of people working in their own homes to produce the individual subjects (slips) and a further 15 – 18 months to put the whole embroidery together. During that 4 year period the army of canvas workers produced some 70 individual logos on the 9" squares and an equal number of spacer squares of a heraldic design to match that used for the kneelers in St. Mary’s Church. The logos were worked on 12 to the inch double canvas and the spacers on 10 to the inch mono. Double thickness cotton a broder was used for the logos and Anchor soft for the spacers. All canvas stitchery was in half cross or tent stitch, according to the preference of the embroiderer. Where particularly fine detail was required within a logo the double canvas was split to do petit point.

The stitchery in the free embroidered panels was not complicated. Applied fabrics were used for smooth walls and satin stitch blocks for brick walls. Individual ingenuity came into play where rooftops were concerned – fine Offray ribbon was couched to represent slate tiles – wonderful colour mixes of textured threads were couched down to represent older, moss encrusted rooftops and cloud stitch was worked over painted felt. Windows were another interesting area – some were embroidered in long and short stitch with suitable shading, some had ready-made lace applied, some had sheer fabrics to represent the glass and one even had small pieces of acetate set in front of the general view of the inside of the rooms. Multi-coloured furnishing fabric made a wonderful stained glass window, the stonework being stitched over it.

It was left to the embroiderers discretion whether they padded the fish and fowl that appear in the foreground. Some slips were left flat, some were padded with polyester wadding as they were applied to the background (such as the heads and the crops of the ducks and the heron). The swan was worked on the calico but over multiple layers of felt in the way that padding is built up under gold kid, small contours of felt covered by larger and larger contours, each stitched down individually so that the three dimensional effect tapers to the outer edge, the embroidery then being worked through all layers.

The majority of threads used were traditional stranded cottons and lesser amounts of rayon, silk and even very small amounts of crewel wool. A rayon knitting yarn that could be unravelled into a foam of fine thread was randomly applied and couched to form roughcast walls and was used to create loose foliage for the window boxes, creepers and trees.

Long and short stitch and satin stitch are probably the most used stitches in the work but others include French knots (of course) detached chain (lazy daisy) couching, stem stitch, oyster stitch, fly stitch and straight stitch. Machine stitchery was used to apply the gold kid lettering and for background trees (on vanishing fabric) on the Community Panel and for the background lettering on the Historical/Archæological panel.

After 2 ½ years of working independently the time came for the joint effort of putting everything together in the workroom which was open to the public at all times. As the pieces of work were brought into the workroom they were, if necessary, stretched but as all the embroiderers had been encouraged to work on square frames this was not a big problem. These slips were steamed and cut out. Large pieces were cut out with ¼" reserve to be turned under and they were backed with an iron-on fabric similar to a very fine iron-on Vilene but of a more paper-like and slightly stiffer texture. Smaller or more intricate pieces of embroidery were sealed around the outside edge of the embroidery with Fray Check – a liquid which dries completely colourless –this allows cutting very close to the stitchery without fear of fraying. However, great care was taken to ensure that the Fray Check was only on the background fabric to be cut away and was not allowed to seep into the embroidery. This was a very delicate operation as was cutting out each individual piece, sometimes under a magnifier and using a scalpel.

As the slips were cut out they were stored on table tops and covered with Perspex to protect them from inquisitive fingers (or even light ones).

The eight side panels, being a mere 2ft x 3ft each, were mostly assembled by experienced workers within their own homes but the Village Panel, measuring 9 ft x 3ft., was assembled in the public workroom under the supervision of the three workroom co-ordinators who worked four days each week. Other embroiderers assisted as and when they were able to give the time. Work parties were very limited in size because there was a very specific and close order in which to apply the pieces, working from the back forward. The only time that it was possible to have more than three workers at a time at the frame was to work the sky and the water below the river area, which were worked in single stranded embroidery cotton in long and short stitch.

The cotton duck background fabric for the Village panel was mounted on a slate frame which measured 11.6" x 3.6", the rollers were made from staircase hand rail and the sides from flat hardwood. The cotton duck was nailed to the rollers, stretched to full size and the sides laced. It was set upon three trestles with three wooden bars pushed between the rollers to prevent the work from contracting through the flexing of the rollers. These bars were moved along to help to hold the work at full stretch in whatever area was being worked) and were revised in size each time the frame was unrolled to extend the working area.

11’6 x 3’6 of blank fabric is a very exciting and very daunting spectacle. The earliest fund raising effort for the project was to place a grid over a scaled down drawing of the Village Panel and to sell off the squares to sponsors. Each square took a reference from numbers along the top edge of the drawing and letters of the alphabet down the sides. Taken up to full scale this resulted in 2" squares drawn over the design and this we copied on to the blank duck by tacking the squares in blue cotton and writing the numbers and letters on the outer edges of the fabric thus giving a grid reference for the placement of each piece of embroidery. Not every embroidered building that came in remained square once it came off the working frame and after stretching them it was possible to make them relate well one to the other by visually lining up the truest horizontal or vertical lines within the embroidery with those of the grid tackings creating another use for the grids.

The method of applying the slips to the background varied according to the individual pieces to be applied. Large uncomplicated shapes such as the buildings simply had the small outer reserve of fabric turned under and the pieces were stitched in place by small stitches at right angles to the slip, bringing the needle up through the background fabric only and down through all layers. The smaller and more complicated slips which had been cut close to the stitchery were applied by stitching whenever possible in the same direction as they had been worked, sometimes attaching from within the shape, sometimes enclosing the edges, whatever method was sympathetic to the individual slip. Even with a small slip it may have been necessary to fasten on and off as many as half a dozen times within one small slip just to keep the colour match.

To get a more realistic appearance it was, of course, necessary for some buildings to partly obscure others and where a section was to be obscured this was indicated on the original drawings on the calico so that an embroiderer would not waste time or effort on an area that would be hidden.

The River Thames was worked by John Stamp and instead of working on calico he opted to work on the same cotton duck fabric that was used for the background – very much thicker than calico. He also chose to use all six strands of stranded cotton to get the very bold effect he was seeking. The only problem that that created for the staff assembling the embroidery was that on the odd occasion a small area had to be filled in to fit against one of the slips, to imitate his style the ladies found it necessary to work with a pair of pointed nosed pliers in each hand just to push and pull the needle. Six strands of thread through the needle equalled twelve strands plus the eye of the needle being taken through two layers of duck and that was very hard on the fingers.

The plan had been to work every subject off frame and then to apply them to the background as that was created but as time went on it became clear that several important features that were unfortunately to the back of the work had been overlooked and so these had to be embroidered directly on to the background fabric butting up to the pieces already in place. These included the eclipse (which occurred in August 1999 whilst the embroidery was being constructed), the Lutheran Church and the Police Station.

Stretching the Village Panel was particularly difficult simply because of its size and so it will be allowed to settle and then stretched again (and again if necessary).