My craft frustration threshold has been feeling rather low of late. I seem to go through phases where every project I touch transforms into a mess of tangled threads and wonkily cut fabrics and please don’t ask how trying to stitch some curved seams went the other weekend. I will have to wait a bit to blog about one particularly glorious failure other the post will need a ‘strong language and description of scenes of great violence’ disclaimer over the top of it otherwise…
The Internet is a very dangerous place. You head online looking for a couple of embroidery hoops and next thing you know you’ve somehow found yourself with a new tape measure, some needles and… well… a whole new embroidery kit.
Last time, I’d managed to get all the preparation work done for starting the bulk of the embroidery on my Poinsettia Paperweight. This wasn’t too arduous as it was just preparing the fabric, transferring the design and getting the split stitch outlines of the petals ready. Now it was on the fun part – lots of silk shading!
After my recent ‘finish’ of the canvaswork pincushion (still needs constructing!) I wanted to get straight back on with some stitching, and with one project nearly out the door, no better time than to start on something new!
Apologies for the unexpected blog holiday for the last two weeks… I promise at least some of it has been for nice, crafty things but unfortunately the rest was more the inevitable pile-up of deadlines and work-related fires that even the most serene levels of organisation can’t keep under control.
What a better way to see in the new year than with a new project? One of the very nice surprises I found at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show was a rather cheerful canvaswork design by Sue Hawkins I’d first seen on the cover of Issue 98 of the Embroiderer’s Guild Stitch Magazine had been on project wishlist ever since. I am glad to say that finding the kit was definitely a small piece of serendipity!
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Sometimes finishing all the stitching is only part of completing a piece of embroidery… Having finished quite a few pieces now that I’ve ultimately ended up framing, the process of mounting it up has become a lot less intimidating. This is great but it also means that it has become a bit routine just putting pieces on square mount board to stick in a frame.
After my RSN Silk Shading Day Class, I still had rather a lot of my little birdy to do and having managed to get quite a lot of the main body done had lulled me into a false sense of security as to exactly how long it was going to take.
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When one of my friends announced she was getting married, I knew I wanted to do something special and handmade for her present. When I saw Sophie Long’s ‘Roses Heart’ embroidery kit, I knew I’d found the perfect project.
I first tried ribbon embroidery at one of Sophie Long’s day classes (working on a larger ribbon heart design) and immediately fell in love with the technique. It looks incredibly effective and grows very quickly, ideal for making gifts to a short deadline. Another bonus of ribbon embroidery is you don’t need to obsess over every stitch; if you accidentally fold or twist the ribbon when making flowers, it just adds some variety to their texture and structure rather than looking like a mistake.
