Christmas 2023

The Christmas tree is up with help from my grandchildren and my daughter. All the decorations have been unpacked and hung in place, and my Christmas angel is on the top. 

This sweet angel was embroidered on felt as recommended by Tricia Elvin-Jensen who had stitched a similar one. It's rewarding to stitch on felt because the stitches show up so clearly. I was pleased with how the angel's ringlets turned out. It was my first attempt at such l-o-o-o-n-g bullion stitches.

This will be my last post before Christmas. There's just a few days to go and there are still Christmas presents to think of, wrapping to do, and some baking I want to finish before Christmas Eve. 

I hope you have a peaceful and joyful holiday season and wish you a very Merry Christmas. 

'Till next time, take care and if you have a few spare moments, happy stitching too!

Hardanger Sample

There's a pretty Hardanger stitch that I've been meaning to try out.  I had prepared the block ages ago and cut and removed the threads ready for the filling. During the dark damp weather over the last week I tried the stitch. I like the slight curvy arms of the big cross in the centre.

There are two separate bars for each arm of the centre cross. A bar is woven over one and under one fabric thread. You can see the individual threads in the unworked corner in the photo below. 

In the beginning working on those single threads felt flimsy. But once the weaving was done it seemed reasonably sturdy, bearing in mind that any form of cutwork does make the embroidery more fragile.

The smaller crosses in the corners of the block are a variation of Dove's eye stitch. Each of the four blanket stitches that usually form Dove's eye, has one an extra wrap. The result is a more distinctive upright cross. I need more practice to get that tension right.

By comparison the lace fillings on my old sample below are the traditional Dove's eye stitch, that is more commonly found on Hardanger embroidery. You can recognize it by the open diamond shape in the centre of the cross.

I like the way the big cross turned out. It's a pretty stitch for a pincushion.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Christmas Craft Fair

If you're in and around Brisbane on Sunday, you'll find lots of lovely hand embroidered gifts for sale at the Queensland Christmas Craft Fair. Shop too for second hand craft materials - including fabric, thread, embroidery hoops, lace, ribbon, books, patterns and much more.

Further information about the Craft Fair is available on the Guild's website here.

Lovely Whitework

I find whitework fascinating. It's a broad term that includes both counted thread work and surface embroidery techniques and covers many different types of embroidery worked mainly with white thread on white fabric.

If you enjoy seeing the whitework that other embroiderers are doing, below are some links that I have happily visited - more than once! 

1. Yolande has stitched a beautiful English Whitework band sampler designed by Darlene O'Steen. There are lots of photos and there is an English translation included on her blog Fils et Aiguilles une Passion. Click here to visit Yolande's blog and see the sampler.

2. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Luzine Happel came up with the idea of creating a joint Schwalm sampler and she proposed the idea on her blog. The result was that 74 embroiderers from 14 nations contributed 91 Schwalm embroideries, all stitched during Covid. These embroideries have been expertly combined into an extraordinary hanging. There are photos of the final piece and meticulous details of what went into making it on Luzine's blog here. There is an option for translating between German and English on the home page of the blog.

3. The Gary Parr interview on Fiber Talk Stitch Hour with Tricia Wilson Nguyen on 16th century whitework has some very interesting snippets. It's a 90 minute video and there are some technical problems, but there's much to glean from the details Tricia unearthed while studying old whitework samplers. The link will take you to the YouTube video here.

4. Mary Corbett alerted me to Janna Jackuszewska's cutwork patterns in her blog post here on Needle 'N Thread. Joanna is from from Poland and conveniently makes her cutwork patterns and copies of her magazines Haft Richelieu available for us in her Etsy shop KIZI MIZI Studio.  Visit Joanna's shop here.

Have fun browsing all this beautiful whitework. 

And happy stitching too!

Back of the embroidery - travelling threads

In her blog post of 6 September, Mary Corbett talks about the back of embroidery, specifically the back of something like a tablecloth where the back remains exposed. Although you don't see the back when the tablecloth is laid out on the table, there are times when the back is visible. The question is just how much attention should you pay to the back while you are stitching. 

You can read Mary's post here where she suggests a nice balance between keeping the back neat but not going overboard and spending too much time on it. Her tip for managing travelling threads by using an embroidered path on the back holds true for any type of embroidery. 

Cupcake pot holder

When considering how neat the back of an embroidery should be, take the type of fabric into account - whether it's a close weave or an open weave. I wrote previously about moving between pulled thread stitches on an open weave linen. Random threads across the back of the embroidery that show through to the front distract from the regularity of the counted work. Here's a link my blog post about how to minimize any show-through to the front of the piece by keeping a constant rhythm to the stitches.

The back does matter and it's worth thinking about how much the travelling threads on the back will show through to the front - whether it's surface embroidery with coloured threads like my cupcake pot holder, Mary's little tablecloth, or whether it's pulled thread work with white thread on white fabric. 

Unless you are entering a competition, I think the back must be neat but it does not have to be perfect. Control travelling threads either by keeping a pattern or rhythm to the movement from one stitch to the next, or as Mary so clearly illustrates, by following a path on the back that's already been stitched.

'Till next time, happy stitching!

RSN Tutor in Brisbane

I had a lovely afternoon at the guild on Saturday. It's not often I get to a meeting and this one was really special. Sally Randle gave us an illuminating insight into her three years at the Royal School of Needlework.  She trained as a tutor at the RSN headquarters in Hampton Court Palace, London and has recently returned to Brisbane to teach embroidery.

Several beautiful embroideries of different techniques such as crewelwork, canvaswork, blackwork, whitework and goldwork were on display. All were accompanied by detailed workbooks. These included the design ideas, thread samples, stitch samples, records of the project's requirements and finally the evaluations. Also noted were the hundreds of hours each project took to complete! Catch a glimpse below of Sally at work over her embroidery frame at the RSN.

Besides her own embroidery, Sally was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time and have the unique experience of working with the RSN team on some of the embroideries for King Charles and Queen Camilla's coronation. How amazing was that?!

Visit Sally's website here to find out more about her new studio and the classes and services she offers. You can also see more about an upcoming RSN Christmas class, suitable for everyone including beginners, that she will be teaching in person here in Brisbane. I've no doubt you will be in good hands.

'Till next time, happy stitching!

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Photos courtesy of Bryna Black from the media team of the Royal School of Needlework

The back of the Embroidery

This is the back of my Daisy Band Sampler Pincushion. There was quite a lot of unpicking on that daisy row because I wanted a sequence that I could repeat all across the row and keep the back looking uniform. Below you can see how the thread enters and leaves each eyelet in the identical way. (Those little fluffy threads on the lower edge of the band of diagonal cross filling were snipped off when all the stitching was finished.)

Because the fabric used for pulled thread is usually a more open weave, threads carried across from stitch to stitch on the back may show through to the front. Any haphazard stitching on the back can often be picked up and it detracts from the finished embroidery. You can check for this by placing the embroidery over a dark background. It's then easy to make sure that no threads are either showing through holes or where they are noticeable and look untidy.

On some types of embroidery where the fabric is more closely woven, it's quite acceptable to carry thread across short spaces, but with pulled thread a little more care is a good idea. For neat pulled thread work it's important to keep a rhythm or regular pattern to the stitches. Each stitch should be worked in the same sequence, and pull in the same direction. 

Daisy Band Sampler Pincushion

Here's the finished embroidery. You can see more about the Daisy Band Sampler Pincushion in a previous blog post here.

Co-incidentally just after I finished writing this post, I listened to the latest interview with Yvette Stanton on Fiber Talk. Yvette and Gary discuss how useful it is to look at the back of the embroidery, not to check how neat it is, but to see exactly how the stitch was worked. There's a lot to learned on the back. 

'Till next time, happy stitching!

Loose Ends helps finish projects

An unusual service called Loose Ends was started by two friends Masey Kaplan and Jen Simonec. After unsuccessfully trying to find a service to complete unfinished knitting or sewing projects for friends who'd lost their mothers, they started one.

Unfinished embroidery from a DMC kit "Victorian Gardens - Leaf Collage"

I've seen many unfinished embroideries donated to embroidery guilds from deceased estates. I can imagine how satisfying it might have been both to the embroiderer and a volunteer to complete one of these embroideries while the embroiderer could still enjoy it.

Masey and Jen have now had over 600 projects completed by volunteer crafters. They carefully match the skills of these volunteers with unfinished projects for those who are unable to finish the projects due to age or illness. What a lovely idea! 

You can read more about Loose Ends on the National Public Radio website NPR, here.

Apologies to some of my readers. I've had a little trouble sending out notice of my new blogposts to everyone on the mailing list. I hope to sort it out soon.

'Till next time, happy stitching.

Winter sunset

 We've had some lovely sunsets again. I went down to the bay at 5pm and low tide.

It had been a very gloomy day. There was hardly anyone walking along the promenade, just a jogger and a dog walker. It was just too cold for the usual bustle, but very pretty with the sunset reflecting off the shallow water on the mudflats.

Pastel Candies

Finding a name for my latest pincushion that I first wrote about in this blog post here started with some flashes of memory. 

These soft Paterna wool colours so reminded me of candy floss. Candy floss and the days spent in the sun eating big swirls of freshly made candy floss on sticks on Durban's South Beach. No photos of that  candy floss, but I did come across this very old photo of Durban South Beach with its golden sand, gorgeous blue rolling waves and the Bluff in the distance.

Durban and the old South Beach* 

That jogged a memory of the wonderful beach holiday I had in Hermanus with my cousins. Each day we could choose either ice cream or a selection of penny sweets to spend our carefully guarded our pocket money on. Usually we would choose from the tempting display of sweets, carry them off in a paper packet and sit basking in the sun on the beach savouring them. Like the candy floss, most of those sweets were pastel in colour.

After considering names for my pincushion and chatting to my daughter about these memories, Pastel Candies seemed apt. She'd reminded me that in Australia 'sweets' are called 'lollies' or 'candies'.

I was delighted by this lovely, carefully chosen gift from my daughter overseas. It's a lustrous pink, Thai silk. And it matches the wools beautifully. 

It was the perfect for the back of the Pastel Candies pincushion. 

These are not quite like some of the ones I remember, but we did find some pastel candies.

Here it is altogether: the final pincushion with the pastel candies, wool and silk. 

Now to enjoy those sugared almonds, and think of beach holidays in the sun.

'Till next time, happy stitching!

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* Photo source: 'Who remembers old Durban', Facebook