An old-fashioned evening

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

A week or so ago I stitched a card – or what would become a card – for friends of ours expecting their second baby. Last Monday it was born (on my birthday!), and so I needed to add name and date to the piece. For various reasons I didn’t get round to it until last night. I scribbled some lettering ideas (in cross stitch over one) and numbers (in backstitch) on the original chart, worked out where to start to get them in the right position so they would still fit into the aperture card I had for it, and got stitching.

I was two letters into the name when suddenly the room went dark. Power cut. I wasn’t too worried as our rare power cuts generally last for about 30 seconds, but this one obviously had other ideas. It stuck. Cue my resourceful husband who had soon transformed the room into a rather romantic and cosy sea of candle light. Stitching, however, was out of the question. Cue resourceful husband again, who found an Aladdin lamp (a sort of oil lamp on steroids, as I understand), set it up, and before you know it I was at the kitchen table, stitching away.

The light was remarkably good, actually! Even so I wish I’d been working on some chunky satin stitch on 22ct Hardanger fabric, but as it happened the lettering was over one on 28ct Lugana using metallics … not ideal, but I managed, and this morning the card was put together, in time to take it to our friends before we set off on my birthday treat, a vintage car weekend in Wales. We travel there in our 1925 unheated, uninsulated Austin 7. And it’s just started snowing again …

A special month calls for special offers!

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

It’s April Fool’s Day today, which was a bit of a blight on my childhood as it also happens to be my birthday. My Oma (gran), a remarkable woman who was very important to me and whom I loved to bits, unfortunately also possessed a sense of humour. One year when I was about 11 I’d been suffering from headaches and colds quite a lot, and so on my birthday she gave me an old-fashioned metal tube of aspirine. That was it. I thanked her politely and put it with the rest of my birthday presents, a bit disappointed and trying not to show it. “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked. When I did, the tube turned out to be full of dubbeltjes, 10 cent coins – a very nice treat!

April, and more specifically Easter Monday, is also when Mabel Figworthy’s Fancies started. Two years ago now – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun! Since then there have been lots of new designs, several classes and of course the Song of the Weather Hardanger SAL. It’s been an exciting and rewarding time.

And so I thought it should be a rewarding time for you too, with some Birthday & Anniversary Special Offers to celebrate and thank you for your support. There is Spice of Life, a Pick & Mix consisting of designs in three different sizes; Coasters Plus, a chart pack of suitably-sized designs free with any order of coasters; and New Projects for Old, which gives you 30% off a chart pack of your choice if you send us a picture of your finished Mabel’s Fancies project for the Stitchers’ Gallery. Enjoy – as they say, a little of what you Fancy does you good .

A simple needlebook

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Remember I said two of the Guildhouse models still had to be made into a needlebook? Well, I decided to do the little stitching that needed to be done before treating myself to my pink alternative version of the course’s first project. I wanted this needlebook to be very simple, with as little stitching as possible, so I’ve been experimenting in the hope that it wouldn’t go so desperately wrong that I’d have to stitch the models again!

First step: work a rectangle around the Hardanger motifs in double running stitch (the picture shows backstitch, which with hindsight is too bulky). Then cut two tiny squares of felt which will only just cover the holes and Kloster blocks and place them on the back. Next, iron a rectangle of iron-on interfacing on the back of your stitching, covering and securing the felt and staying inside the stitched outline. Cut around the running stitch, about four blocks away from it. You now have something looking like the pictures below – as you can see, I used two different colours of felt.

A backstitch rectangle around the two Hardanger motifs

Iron Vilene on the back, covering the felt and staying inside the outline

Fold the rectangle double to make a “booklet” and iron the fold flat. Cut two or three rectangular pieces of felt a little smaller than the cover, place them inside and make a spine by working double running stitch down the middle of the book, going through all layers (the cover and the felt). Fray the edges up to the backstitched line if you wish. Ta-da! A needlebook. And I won’t have to stitch the models again *phew*.

Fold into a booklet and iron the fold flat

Sew two or three rectangles of felt in place with double running stitch down the spine, and fray the edge

Having finished the needlebook I could work on my dusky pink Guildhouse variation with a clear conscience. Using perle #5 on 28ct is quite chunky, but I think it looks nice and plump, and I may well use that combination again. I once bought a kit (a very pretty one which I really enjoyed from Victoria Sampler’s Beyond Cross Stitch series) which used perle #8 and #12 on 28ct; because it was white-on-white the coverage was OK, and it looked very delicate, but anything where the fabric and thread are different colours I’d probably opt for #5 and #8.

The design I’m working on at the moment has no cutting at all so it’s just Kloster blocks and satin stitch, which is very relaxing and quite quick too! The colours I’m using are from DMC’s dusky pink range, 225, 223 and 221 to be precise. I just wish DMC 221 came in #8, but 223 is as dark as they go, so I’m going to have to order a ball of Anchor 896, which the New Stiches thread converter assures me is very much like DMC 3721, a relatively dark shade from that same dusky pink series. Oh dear, what a chore, I’ll have to go stash shopping …

Goodbye Tandem Cottage

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Just wanted to order some hoops for the Guildhouse course, only to find that Tandem Cottage is closing down! I think they had been having family health issues for some time, which may explain it. There are quite a few online needlework shops still left, of course, but it’s always sad when one has to close down; Tandem Cottage were always very helpful and had very reasonable prices. I’ll miss not having them there in my needlework shop bookmarks.

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.

Customer feedback and some bead experiments

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Have you ever written something – a letter, an essay, a report – and gone over it several times, then sent it off only to be told by the recipient that there was a paragraph missing, or that a date was incorrect, or that the wrong picture had been used to illustrate a point? I hope there are at least a few of you out there who have to say “yes” to that; let’s just say that if to err is human, there is no doubting my humanity!

But what a difference it makes how those errors are brought to your attention. Some people delight in pointing out to others exactly where they went wrong, and some accompany it with a condescending, mock-pitying smile. Not so fellow-stitchers. In the kindest tones and without the slightest resentment they inform me that the stitched model does not have all the cutting done (Vienna), that some cutting in the design is not actually mentioned in the instructions (Schwarzwälder Kirsch), or that the light grey in the chart is practically invisible when printed, and obscured by the watermark (Resurrection); and because of that, I can rectify these things. And when I rewrite chart packs (adding instructions for double-sided Kloster blocks, for example) they give me their feedback so that I know whether these new instructions are clear enough. I hope I never forget to thank you personally when you help me improve my designs, but here is a public and communal Thank You to everyone who has sent me feedback over the past two years.

Of course it’s even better to get the wrinkles ironed out before a chart pack goes “live”. That’s one of the reasons why I stitch every design before writing the instructions – especially important when a chart contains new stitches or new variations on stitches which so far exist only in my head and on paper. Will they work in fabric and thread? In real life, will they look like my mental picture of them? Well, sometimes they do, which is a wonderful feeling. When I first tried out the beaded diagonals and beaded woven bars I had scribbled down on a scrap of paper in the middle of the night and they actually looked like I expected them to look, it was really quite thrilling! They became the starting point for Beadazzled, a sampler-type design which will include as many beaded stitches as I can think of (they were also used in Coral Cross, for which they were just right).

And so in between stitching other things I am trying out all sorts of ways to combine threads and beads. Some of them sound good when I describe them to myself, but turn out to be impossible to stitch. Some look a bit of a mess, and I can’t quite work out whether that’s a fatal flaw in the stitch itself, or the fact that I’m using cheap, unbranded and incredibly uneven beads for my experimenting (definitely a false economy, that). Some work exactly the way they should (yay!) and get included in the design. And some are simply a lost cause. Creating a woven picot with a beaded edge seemed like a good idea – challenging and decorative. It was challenging all right. It was also a complete failure which looked like a misshapen Christmas tree …

But don’t worry, I found a different way of incorporating beads in a woven picot!

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)!