Well, I’m probably not the only one finding 2021 not quite as hoped… I saw someone saying we should be referring to the current day as December 60th 2020. I can get behind that. Hopefully not so many more days of 2020 left so I actually have time to do anything other than work… One good extra finish of 2020 though was my silly Slouchy Sockhead Hat.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission to help keep running the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here.
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.
After the RSN Day Class, I still had rather a lot of work to do on my goldwork and silk shading monogram. The stem stitch part was completed but I still needed to finish the raised leaf stitch, the shading on the flower, a lot of couching and some chip work too!
A while ago, I blogged about my visit to the wonderful Britex Fabrics in San Francisco and their store-exclusive ‘souvenir’ fabric that I was at a bit of a loss what to do with.
I seem to have been doing a lot of ribbonwork lately and while thinking about some new designs of my own, it seemed like a good time to finally finish the Ribbonwork Heart piece by Sophie Long that I started a very long time ago… This is the piece that is on the front cover of her Ribbonwork Embroidery book that I reviewed a while ago.
The pyjama saga has finally come to an end! They are now with the intended recipient, who sadly was too shy to model them for the blog, but they fit perfectly and look fantastic. Great success all around!
The final steps were mostly making the buttonholes, pressing out the material so it didn’t look like it had been in the bottom of a project bag and tidying up any hairy seams that hadn’t quite gone according to plan. There were also a few finishing touches, like sewing in some loops to the top and bottoms, so they can sit on a hanger.
Buttonholes have a, somewhat undeserved, reputation for being really difficult to do. I think it is because they are generally one of the last things you will do on a garment and there is the lingering terror that you’re going to butcher your project and have months more work to do.
It is always a good idea to have a practice of these things, particularly if you’re doing them for the first time. I also recommend trying a sample on the material you will be using for the garment as well – I’ve found machines have a tendency to chew the polyester with dense areas of stitching.
So how do you make a buttonhole then? As sewing machines have moved a long way from the days of the cast iron Singers, there’s a few different methods, with varying levels of automation, for doing buttonholes.
astitchornine 