A bicycle ride and Australian kindness

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

This morning I went off to our church to help with a coffee morning. The three local Baptist churches are sending a team to India this summer to help with a school and various other things, and so a lot of fundraising is going on – today was a sponsored bike ride or walk around Draycote Water, a local reservoir, with coffee and cake at the church afterwards or throughout the morning for anyone who simply preferred cake to exercise. When I arrived at the church it turned out that there were about 30 cakes, and about as many helpers, and about half that number actually cycling or walking!

Well, I may be exaggerating a little, but it was obvious that the coffee morning was going to get along very well without my help, so I went back home, dug out my trusty Dutch bike (back-pedal brakes, no gears, sit up very straight) and completed two laps around the reservoir (5 miles each), the second lap without getting off my bike to walk up the steeper bits *yay!*. I even overtook two of our teenagers on their whizzy modern bikes – although I will admit that this was probably because one of them had some chain trouble.

It was a lovely ride, with gorgeous views over the surrounding countryside, oodles of swallows or swifts or martins skimming the water for insects, a duck with a train of ten ducklings behind her, one of the girls from church doing part of the lap on a unicycle, a wagtail and a crested grebe; I really ought to do this more often!

I came home feeling very virtuous having done all that exercise, and for a good cause too (if anyone would like to sponsor me retrospectively, drop me an email!), and picking up the post on the way in I noticed an envelope from Australia. What a lovely surprise: Stitchinkitty from the Cross Stitch Forum had sent me eight skeins of lovely Australian hand-dyed perles! The brand is Minnamurra, which she tells me has been discontinued; a shame, of course (the more thread hand-dyers out there the better) but it does mean I won’t feel guilty if I don’t use them in some new design – I can just use them for my own pleasure and enjoyment. Aren’t they lovely?

My parcels have arrived!

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Having been held hostage for a week by Customs (don’t get me started on the extortionate Royal Mail handling fee!) my two parcels from Margaret at the Little Thread Shop arrived yesterday. Unfortunately work doesn’t stop just so I can play with new threads, so it had to wait until the evening. I’d sent Margaret two rather long lists of Caron Watercolours and Wildflowers, and on the invoices it said how many of each she was sending but not which particular numbers, so although I knew that one Watercolours and about five Wildflowers weren’t available, I didn’t know which ones. The first thing to do, then, was to sort through them, a very pleasant occupation and one that my husband thought deserved a photograph (apologies for my bad posture).

And here is the complete haul, in numerical order. Already I’ve identified some very promising combinations, like Old Brick with Turmeric, and Caramel with Almond (apart from the Old Brick it’s beginning to sound like a recipe! Mind you, some of them do look good enough to eat). The parcel also confirmed how good Margaret’s customer service is – one of the Wildflowers she didn’t have was Parfait, but she sent me a skein of Blossom at no charge saying it was quite close to Parfait and might work (it does).

One of the things I did notice while having my little thread feast was what a difference dye lots can make. I have two skeins of Watercolours Caramel (one I bought in Holland because I didn’t remember it was part of my order from Margaret) and they are really completely different colours, one more golden brown, the other almost with a reddish, brick-like cast. The pair at the bottom are Watercolours and Wildflowers in what is meant to be the same shade, Sunglow, but you can see from the picture that although they look good together, they are definitely not the same. No fault of Margaret’s at all, but it is another reminder that there really is no substitute for seeing the threads in the flesh (or in the fibre), and also that if you’re going to need more than one skein for a project you’d better make jolly sure they’re the same dye lot!

Now all I have to do is wind them all on bobbins …

Threads, threads and surprise threads

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

I’m having a bit of a thread orgy at the moment for various reasons. The first one you might call neutral – an order from West End Embroidery with threads I wanted to try out. These are mostly Threadworx hand-dyed perles, pairs of #5 and #8. I haven’t got particular projects in mind for them, except for one: the rather startlingly bright one on the right, called Bradley’s Balloons. I fancy that would work well on a sky-blue and white fabric for Windmills; it reminds me of the bright colours of those toy windmills you get at the seaside.

The second reason is rather sad: Margaret Roberts is closing down the Little Thread Shop for health reasons. This is of course first and foremost a blow for her and her family, but in a much smaller way it is also a loss for stitchers everywhere who benefited from her great customer service, helpfulness and competitive prices. As she is now clearing out her remaining stock, I’m afraid I went a bit mad and placed a big order, then (encouraged, would you believe it, by my husband) another one, as this was a once in a lifetime chance to stock up on Caron threads without breaking the bank! The first half of the first order has arrived – two more parcels to look forward to …

And finally the very best reason of all for a stash acquisition! Sally, a wonderful fellow stitcher from Australia, sent me some gorgeous hand-dyed threads under the pretence that she wanted my help in identifying a thread from her grandmother’s sewing box. If I tell you that in the picture below the solitary pink thread on the right is what she wants my help with, and all the other threads are her very generous gift to me, you will see why I think she is a star, and a brightly shining one at that. There is a hand-dyed medium silk (the light turquoise one) from Jennifer Gail Threads, a perle #5 (pink/blue) and #8 (dark turquoise) from Jane van Keulen, Cottage Garden stranded cotton (red/green) and the absolute gem of the collection, a skein of Colour Stream’s Ophir silk perle (red/orange/yellow/purple). I have long wanted to try that one out, as I suspected it would be the same sort of lovely cord-like thread as Gloriana’s Princess Perle Petite and Treenway’s Fine Cord. I haven’t had time to try it yet, but I’ll let you know – it definitely feels delectable!

Stash & stitching in Holland

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

While we were on holiday in my native Holland we visited family and friends, the beach that I used to go to both as a child and as an adult (this time with a force 7 wind blowing), the Keukenhof which was a riot of crocuses rather than the hyacinths and tulips you’d expect mid-April, and a lovely little village called Oud-Zuilen where we delivered an Austin Seven wheel (of course). We also went to the market in my home town, and one stand had some craft materials. Mostly card making and stamping stuff, but suddenly I noticed two metal rings laden with Caron Watercolours! One of the great difficulties when buying online is getting an accurate idea of colours, so being able to see them for myself was lovely, and then on top of that they turned out to be cheaper than here in England. And I’d just been given a belated birthday present by one of my aunts (the other one gave us dinner at our favourite Greek restaurant), so I spent it on some of these lovely threads.

I acquired some less unexpected stash as well; before we left for Holland I’d ordered several fabrics from the Hardanger Atelier, to be sent to my mother’s address, thus saving postage to England. I got some unexciting-but-useful Lugana and Oslo, and two small pieces of other Zweigart fabrics to try out: Colmar, a 25ct which is slightly textured (I’ve used the check version, Colmar Carré, before) and Modena, a 35 or 36ct with an unexpectedly open weave.

I also had time to stitch, and I’d brought the materials for those two Round Dozen variations that I wanted to try. Well, here they are. They are absolutely identical except for the materials – the one on the left uses white DMC perle on white Lugana with Caron Wildflowers (086 Tahiti) for the coloured bits, the one on the right is stitched on maize Lugana with standard DMC perle #8 (353 and 744) and DMC Variations perle #5 (4100). I’ll be using that combination again, those pinks and yellows look so cheerful together! And don’t the two look different; I think you could stitch quite a few birthday cards based on one design before anyone noticed they were all getting “the same one”, as long as you varied your colours!

Round Dozen variation with Caron Wildflowers

Round Dozen variation with DMC Variations perle

Different threads, different look

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

If you’ve been following Flights of Fancy for some time you may be aware that I like silks. A lot. My budget doesn’t, but I do. Unfortunately most of these beautiful silks seem to be produced by people a long way away from the Midlands (of England, that is) – America, Australia, South Africa … One of them is Treenway, and I wrote a while ago how helpful Susan had been choosing various shades that go together. I picked several combinations with the Song of the Weather SAL in mind, but because there are so many great threads to use only one of them made it into my final selection. All the other silks just sat there, being stroked occasionally, waiting for a project.

They got their opportunity to shine when I decided to have a little stitching holiday and just do some variations on small designs I’d stitched before. Very relaxing, and very interesting to see the difference colours can make. Here, however, it wasn’t just different colours, but different textures – the difference between cottons and the lustre of reeled (or filament) silk; between the medium twist of perle cottons, the slight twist of Treenway’s 8/2 silk and the strong twist of their Fine Cord.

There is one more “variation” that I want to do: a white-and-bright, slightly adapted version of one of the Round Dozen. After that I’ll be good and go back to stitching for the SAL, and from my Planned list. Promise.

Stitching alternatives

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Some of you may have noticed that the Planned page no longer has “expected” dates for each of the designs. That is because I kept having to push the dates forward when once again a deadline whooshed past me, and I was beginning to find it quite depressing and not a little stressful. Time to remind myself that all this designing and stitching is meant to be first and foremost a hobby – something I enjoy. So out went the dates, and I feel much better for it!

But even without dates there’s enough to stitch, really. I generally try to put a new design on the website roughly once a month, or a bit more often if things happen to go smoothly. But the SAL (which I am enjoying tremendously – it’s such a joy seeing all those different versions!) needs pictures of all the stitches-in-progress for the twice-monthly blog, which means stitching a second version of each month. And then friends decide to have a baby and so a card needs to be stitched (juggling colours because they have chosen not to know whether it’s a boy or a girl). And the Hardanger course at the Percival Guildhouse starts in three weeks’ time, so I’d better start getting the materials packs ready. All very pleasant things to do, but it means the Planned list gets pushed into the future once again.

So do I really need to stitch an alternative version of the first project in the Hardanger course? No, of course I don’t. The model is stitched, as are all the others for the first course (though two of them still need to be made into a needlebook), so I should sit back, relax, and get on with stitching Blackthorn. But as I was going through my perles (do you ever do that? Just have a play with all your threads and fabrics, try colours together, pet any of the really strokeable threads?) I thought, “wouldn’t it be nice to try this one on 28ct – make it a slightly better fit for a card, too, and still OK for beginners as there’s no cutting – and those dusky pinks would go together very well with that dusky pink Jobelan I’ve got somewhere in the bottom drawer; pink on pink for the neutral shade – quite a different look, just the thing to demonstrate what a difference colour and count can make” and before I knew it the dusky pink Jobelan had snuggled into a spare hoop and was showing off the perles to me. Well, how could I resist? So here’s what I’ll be stitching with over the next few evenings, and hopefully in my next post I’ll be able to show you the two versions side by side.

A silly mistake, pretty threads and a new idea

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Last Sunday I was sitting with an elderly friend so his daughter and wife could both go to church for Mothering Sunday, and I’d taken Happy Hour 1 with me to stitch. Of the four designs in the set, it is definitely my favourite, and it is the one that uses the threads which inspired the set, those lovely Australian Cottage Garden perles. I’d picked an opalescent 28ct Lugana to work the model on, and as we were chatting I settled down to some serious stitching. #12 satin stitch centre in Oregano green, #8 satin stitch, almost Florentine, around it in Dahlia pink. Looking good! Leaf stitch in Oregano, and then on to some triple chain stitch. I’m sure I must have seen something like it somewhere, but I couldn’t find it in any of my stitch dictionaries, so I did my own stitch diagram, and wrote the instructions. It’s basically like a detached chain stitch (also known as a lazy daisy), but instead of only one loop of thread held down with a little securing stitch, I wanted to have three loops.

I had drawn a detailed diagram. I had written a description of every step. And yet it wasn’t until I actually tried to work the stitch that I realised its fatal flaw: I would have to come up in the hole that I’d just gone down in, not once, but twice. And I hadn’t noticed!

I decided to work the plain chain stitch border instead, and re-chart the triple chain stitch when I got home. Having considered two possible solutions to the problem, I eventually settled on a small anchoring stitch, and all three loops going underneath it but all starting in separate holes. The other solution, by the way, was to start all three loops in the same hole, and to anchor each one with its own little securing stitch, which would form a line together. Either way there are three different-sized loops siting inside each other, a very pleasing effect though not what I had in mind originally. You’ll be able to see what you think about the stitch when Happy Hour goes live.

And when will that be? Possibly sooner than I had originally thought – I’m enjoying them so much that they are my main project for the moment. Having finished three of the four there was a slight wait because I didn’t have the Threadworx perles needed for the last one, but they arrived this morning from trusty old Sew & So which means it’ll probably get finished tonight after choir practice! There is more #5 than #8 in this design and so it’s a bit of a shame that the lavendery #5 is not nearly so variegated as the #8, but I was pleased with how well it went with the green; it’s always a bit of a gamble, matching colours based on what you see on a computer screen!

And finally, the new idea. As I was writing the church newsletter and looking at illustrations for the Easter services I came across one I did some time ago, which said “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!” in various languages. One of them was Old English, the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, and I was thinking it would make rather a nice Easter project to have those Old English words surrounded by a knotwork border or something of the sort. There is no way I’m going to get anything like that charted by the end of this month, however, so watch this space when we’re getting into Lent 2014

Needlebook thoughts and Happy Hour revisited

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

A while ago I finished the last two models for the first Guildhouse course. Well, they are two halves of one model, really – two small, simple squares to practice cutting, dove’s eyes and square filets. But as the course is for “refreshers” as well as for beginners, I did want to add a little twist so it wouldn’t be boring for those who had done all this before. So I decided to add a bit of bling. The students can decide whether to have the metallic thread only in the borders, or for some of the filling stitches as well.

The reason I stitched the two together is because I thought they might make rather a pretty needlebook; but as we won’t be turning it into one in class, I need a simple method which I can explain in a few lines so anyone who wants to can turn their project into a needlebook at home. Nothing too complicated with whipstitched edges, then, and preferably a method that needs hand sewing only. I’m leaning towards a double running stitch edge, backed with Vilene inside the backstitch line with some coloured felt sandwiched between, and then just cut and fray and sew in some felt pages with double running stitch down the spine. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Some of you may remember that I wrote a number of posts about how designs got their names; one of them was about Kaleidoscope, which started out life as Happy Hour because the four designs were meant to provide a happy hour’s stitching (if you’re a very quick stitcher …) and then be made into coasters. However, they got renamed and so I was left with a name without a design to go with it. This is not as unusual or as odd as it sounds; in my Notes folder there is a list of names which I hope will one day lead to a design. Last week, the time was finally ripe for Happy Hour.

Why? Because last week Tracy sent me those beautiful Cottage Garden threads. I wanted to do something with them, now – well, very soon, anyway. But what? I could use them for one of the Stitch-Along months, as I’m stitching them all again for the SAL blog using speciality threads, but that didn’t seem quite right. They should have a new design of their own! Something small and simple that would show off the threads. Something like Kaleidoscope … four small designs … lots of satin stitch but also some other stitches for variety … two colours each … why not use a different brand of hand-dyed perle for each one? … but Cottage Garden only comes in #8 and #12, so do two of them on 28ct? … and not much cutting, with the option of not cutting at all … Happy Hour was taking shape! You’ll have to wait and see what threads and colours I eventually decided on, but here is a small peek at what the foursome will look like:

Stitchers are the kindest people

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

The Australians do some beautiful hand-dyed threads, but some of them aren’t easy to get hold of if you’re not in Australia. One of the companies producing these variegated and multi-coloured pretties is Cottage Garden, and – of great interest to any Hardanger enthusiast – they do perles. #8 and #12 to be precise, so particularly good for 28ct or 32ct fabric; they’d probably work on 25ct as well as long as the contrast between thread and fabric isn’t too great.

The wonderful thing is that I will now be able to try that out for myself, since a very kind fellow-stitcher sent me two shades in both thicknesses – what a lovely surprise this morning when it turned out that the postman had brought, besides the usual bills, a parcel from Australia out of which dropped a gorgeous combination of pink and green! And just when I had been struggling with my email program which had managed to lose all its data and do the same to the main backup (good thing I keep a second backup). Tracy-from-Australia, you’re a star; thank you for brightening up my day with your kind and thoughtful gift!

West End Embroidery are brilliant!

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

If I were wearing a hat I would take it off to Yvonne at West End Embroidery. Throughout the ordering process she has exhibited the patience of a saint as I kept asking for things that weren’t available or changing my mind about the colours I needed. And very reasonable prices too – highly recommended!

One of the problems, as I explained a few posts ago, is that West End Embroidery are pretty much the only online shop in the UK to stock Dinky Dyes perles, and they are phasing them out. Sew & So will order them in for me with no minimum order, but they are quite a bit more expensive; and both Yvonne at W E E and Margaret at Little Thread Shop said they couldn’t just order one or two skeins, which is perfectly understandable. Now for the Guildhouse project I showed you last time I will need about 50 yards of a hand-dyed perle #8; the one I used in the model is Dinky Dyes 095 Airlie which is very pretty and of which I have about half a skein left. Yvonne had only the one left, so on to Plan B – email Margaret as she had said she could order in if I wanted at least three of one shade. Unfortunately Margaret had already placed her order with DD and wouldn’t re-order in time for the course. It was clearly time for Plan C.

Earlier this week I telephoned West End Embroidery to make sure that all the chopping and changing I’d done hadn’t irreparably messed up my order, and she was very patient and helpful; for one thing I learnt that it was not just my imagination that there can be an awful lot of difference between Dinky Dyes dye lots. It doesn’t matter too much in my designs as I tend to use them as the only colour in an otherwise neutral piece (like Douglas, Heather and Round the World), but it’s something to bear in mind. She then suggested that I look at Threadworx perles as a possible alternative.

That was inspired. I do, in fact, use them already (in Scotland the Brave and the coloured version of Lviv), but they are not one of the “default” brands I think of when choosing threads. And there are so many lovely colours! The one I would have used for preference in the Guildhouse piece is the one I used for Lviv. It’s not a direct match for DD Airlie, but it’s got that same multi-coloured pastel look.

Unfortunately it only comes in stranded cotton and perle #5, so I took the Threadworx perle #8 page as my starting point to find a few possibles. The only pastel rainbow one is a bit too sweet for my taste, and Bradley’s Balloons, though fun, is perhaps just a touch too bright. In the end I settled on a colour that isn’t in the least like Dinky Dyes Airlie, but which I think will look quite striking – 1040 Shanghai Nights. I’ll let you know when the threads arrive (and whether I managed to order what I meant to order)!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Materials & Equipment