Hand & Lock Internship: Day 11

The first job of today was finishing an oven glove by hand that had been embroidered on machine last week. The customer wanted metallic thread and as anyone who has ever tried embroidering with metallic thread knows, it has a tendency to snag... a lot... even using machine embroidery, so a touch up was necessary. Another intern had started to fix it last week but as she has finished her stint the job was passed on to me. Here's the glove as it was when I received it:

As you can see the letters 'J' and 'C' are finished but the 'H' and 'L' are quite patchy, so those are the ones I worked on. The glove was rather thick and difficult to stitch through, so I yet again destroyed my fingers, even with a thimble, and the thread kept tangling up too, but the monogram looked much better in the end. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the finished thing because the customer came to fetch it straight away!

After that another intern and I had to run an errand to the Topshop HQ to pick up some equipment left there after the Hand & Lock monogramming event last week. Here's the stand in situ during the event:

Photo from @handlocklondon [Instagram]

That big enormous vase with all the threads inside it you can see was one thing we had to pick up, along with some frames and weights; quite a hefty load but luckily Topshop HQ is only around the corner from H&L HQ. We had to get visitor's passes and got a sneaky peep into 'backstage' Topshop... not that there was too much to see but I still found myself a teeny bit excited!

My next job was another errand; to go back to Selfridges and pick up a lamp we had left there after that monogramming event and also to pick up 2 metres of a particular kind of ribbon from MacCulloch & Wallis. I was given a swatch, a map, some money and a contact name at Selfridges and I set off. I decided to head to Selfridges first as it was the furthest away and ended up having to wait a little while there whilst they located the lamp and brought it down to me. The lamp was much bigger and heavier than I thought so carrying it down Oxford Street through the christmas shopper / lunch hour zombie human traffic jam was no picnic! This was when I realised I should have gone to MacCulloch & Wallis first! I slung it over my shoulder and made my way to MacCulloch & Wallis. I'd never been in there before but the staff seemed very helpful and friendly and didn't mind that I had a lamp appendage and no idea where to find my required ribbon.

After making it back to Hand & Lock successfully my final job of the day was to touch up another metallic thread machine embroidery, this time a cat shape on a velvet hat:

This job was a little easier than the glove as there were less layers to stitch through although the thread still tangled up and slowed me down somewhat. Again I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the finished article. After some more goldwork practise it was time to tidy up and head home!

I'm now on my christmas break (which I desperately need as I have laryngitis and need to recover!) but I will return to Hand & Lock and blogging next week!