Enabling and two new threads

Posted on 31st May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

There are words which mean something completely different depending on the context. On my favourite stitching forum we often use the term "enabler". It means someone who tells you about a new supplier, designer, fabric, thread, embellishment, piece of equipment, anything stitch-related, really – and thereby enables you to add many lovely things to your stitching stash. Although this may lead to a severe strain on the budget, it is generally seen as A Good Thing. Imagine my surprise when I found out today that out there in the non-stitching world "enabling" may also refer to "unhelpful help", for example by making it possible for an alcoholic to keep feeding his addiction. This "enabling prevents psychological growth in the person being enabled". Oh dear. Well, I think I can safely say that stitch-enabling has no such negative effects; provided you handle your stash budget sensibly, there are few things as pleasant as finding new materials, browsing a site, deciding which colours to get and what you’ll use them for.

My unconditional thanks, therefore, to that kind fellow-member of the Cross Stitch Forum who pointed me to an eBay seller called michigandoctor; she has the most amazing collection of hand-dyed threads including some beautiful silk perles, and is extremely helpful and quick to reply to emails. I should have some Gloriana and Thread Gatherer silk perles coming my way soon …

Meanwhile I decided to alleviate the waiting period by playing with some more of the silk threads already in my stash. I like buying one or two skeins of silks (and other speciality threads) that I don’t know, to see what they might be used for. You may remember the Gumnut silk Hardanger experiment on 36ct linen I did a while back. Well, there were some other threads which might be good for Hardanger but which I hadn’t tried yet.

The first two of these are Mulberry Silks‘ Thick and Medium Silk Twist. Mulberry Silks come in lots of different weights or thicknesses, and most of the sets they sell are Medium and Fine weight. For Hardanger on 25ct these are too thin a combination – Fine looks rather thinner than a #12 perle, and Medium is about the thickness of a #8. Their Thick silk twist feels a bit heavier than a #5. But enough of the numbers, how do they stitch up and are they nice to work with?

Well, the Thick silk gives great coverage on 25ct Lugana – perhaps a little too much even, as it can be tricky to get the satin stitches in a Kloster block to lie neatly parallel. They do look lovely and plump, though, and getting rid of those pesky cut ends is no trouble at all with such a lot of Kloster block to hide them in. The Medium silk has a lovely sheen and produces a well-defined dove’s eye, but if you like a lacier effect the Fine silk may be the better choice. I did not stitch the little backstitch corner motifs I usually include in my Hardanger experiments, but I feel that the Medium silk may be just a little too chunky for that.

All in all lovely threads to work with, the only drawback being the limited number of shades in which the Thick silk is available. As for the Fine silk, I may need to stitch another experiment to see how that one looks "in action" …

A Hardanger SAL

Posted on 26th May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

Over the past years I have entered a number of SALs, or Stitch-Alongs (often late, so that it was more of a Stitch-Catch-Up, but that didn’t hamper my enjoyment). Perhaps you know the sort of thing I mean – a designer releases part of a design every month, people sign up (sometimes paying a small fee to do so) and all round the world stitchers work on that same project, often with their own choices of fabric and threads and colours. A good example is the SAL that has just started at Papillon, which will be running for 24 months.

It’s always fascinating to see how different people’s versions look; some in shades of one colour on white, some in bright colours on black, some in cottons, some in silks. It’s like seeing and enjoying all the possibilities for a certain design without having to stitch them all yourself!

And so the idea grew for a Mabel’s Fancies Hardanger SAL.

Now a SAL can be whatever you want, and so the first thing was to work out what sort of SAL would work for me with my particular style of stitching and designing. And one thing was quite certain, it would not be the sort of project where all the little bits are part of a big design. The Papillon SALs work like that, and they are beautiful. But when I started on the present one I soon realised that I simply cannot work with a big piece of fabric. It gets in the way, I find it heavy and cumbersome, and having had to unpick the first bit several times I have now decided to stitch the parts as individual projects.

What then? Well, perhaps a set of 12 small designs; a common outline or shape, with variations in worked bars and filling stitches, and lots of different surface stitches. Something, in fact, very much like Round Dozen, where all the designs work individually, but they clearly belong together.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. 12 card-sized designs, so that at the end of the SAL you have 12 very useful little projects. But stitchers who prefer a bigger design can still choose to stitch them all together as a 3×4 sampler, or as a bell pull (or possibly two bell pulls, with six designs each).

To see whether people might be interested in a SAL like this, and to get the suggestions and comments of a wide variety of stitchers, I asked my fellow-needleworkers at the Cross Stitch Forum. One very clear wish was that the series would start simple, and gradually get more advanced, so that those undertaking Hardanger for the first time would be able to join in without getting discouraged.

Next I wanted to make sure that no-one would be put off by the cost of the materials needed – so the designs should look good in only a few shades of standard perle cottons, and if any other materials are used (like beads, ribbon or metallic threads) it should take only one pack or skein. On the other hand, there should be plenty of scope for stitchers who like experimenting with speciality threads or hand-dyed fabrics.

At that point I started doodling shapes, scribbling notes, making lists of worked bars and filling stitches and devising a few new stitches to keep things interesting, and by now it is all beginning to come together. To give everyone (including myself!) plenty of time to prepare, the "Song of the Weather" Hardanger SAL will D.V. start in January 2013. More information can be found on the dedicated SAL page, where you can find out about the way the project will be set up, the reason for its name, and what will happen when; in time there will also be a materials list and links to the SAL blog and gallery, and a section where you can join. I’m looking forward to it!

So what do you DO with it? (revisited)

Posted on 23rd May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

I stitch all my designs (*). That may sound rather obvious at first, but for various reasons not everyone does. Some designers use model stitchers. Some offer a computer-generated picture of what the stitched piece will look like. Some offer a picture of the artwork the design is based on. In many cases the problem must be one of time – if you are a prolific designer of rather large and complex pieces, you’d need several lifetimes to stitch them all, and you might manage to offer one to the public every six to twelve months or so – not ideal.

Fortunately Hardanger is a relatively quick needlework technique, and my designs are never on the "tablecloth for a dining table that seats 24" sort of scale, so I have the luxury of choosing to stitch them all myself. Which is just as well, because as I’ve mentioned before I do tend to change things about my designs. Sometimes because it doesn’t look the way I intended; sometimes because it needs such fiddly and convoluted stitching that I couldn’t possibly inflict it on anyone but myself; and sometimes because what worked on paper turns out to be simply impossible with needle and thread. Whatever the reason, stitching the designs brings it out and allows me to change it.

It does mean, however, that I end up with an awful lot of stitched pieces, most of which just lie around not doing anything useful. Some of them get turned into cards, coasters, pen holders, Bible covers, bookmarks and bags (you can see them in the Gallery), but not everything fits into cards and coasters, after a while the supply of Bibles in the house runs out, and there’s only so many pen holders you can use.

Of course you can make them into pen holders, cushions, bags etc. for other people. Hand-stitched items make great gifts. The trouble is that I’m rather attached to all those stitched models – they are the first time each of these designs got stitched. Some of them have as yet been stitched by no-one but me. I feel quite maternal towards them.

But I came to the conclusion that I was just being silly, and so I’m turning some of them into "Mabel Originals" – items which have been hand-finished using an original piece of stitching, designed and worked by Mabel. Because they are useful and relatively easy to post, I’ve chosen to finish most of them as shopping bags, but there will be some other items as well. You can see them on the new Specials page.

Except for one which I’m going to keep for myself. I think it will be the perfect bag for some serious stash shopping at this year’s Knitting & Stitching show!

(*) Apart from the Rage Sampler. I admit it. But as it consists solely of words and uses only three shades (dark brown for the small letters and two reds for the big ones) I don’t think stitching it would have made a great difference to the design.

Double-sided Kloster blocks (II)

Posted on 18th May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

As I was stitching Kloster block squares to test the two methods I’d come up with of tackling double-sided blocks, I thought of a third – or rather, a variation on one of the two. Fortunately the two variations could be tried out in one Kloster block square.

Here are my two test squares side by side. On the left I stitched both the outside Kloster blocks and the two internal Kloster blocks that would be cut on both sides. On the right I stitched only the outside blocks, and I cut and removed the threads as usual (I even tucked in the cut ends).

Then I tried two methods of cutting in the left-hand square. I cut along all the outside Kloster blocks as usual, but of the two internal Kloster blocks I only cut along the two sides of the right-hand one. The two cut areas on either side of that right-hand block were now completely open, but on the left the vertical threads, though cut at the very top and the very bottom, were still held in place by the Kloster block.

I removed those longer threads, pulling them out through the Kloster block. I also removed the short cut threads that were left inside the right-hand Kloster block (and which would normally be tucked in). This proved to be quite tricky by hand (it would be easier with a pair of tweezers) and I did occasionally pull the perle thread, which ended up looking a little fuzzy (not easy to see in the photograph, but quite noticeable in real life).

Back to the second square of Kloster blocks, where all the threads had been cut and removed. Using perle #5 I wrapped the two horizontal bars, keeping the tension quite slack so that they wouldn’t be pulled and become very narrow, like traditional wrapped bars done in perle #8.

I then tucked in the cut ends in the left-hand test square, and used perle #8 to weave the remaining bars in both test squares.

The result? All three methods work to some extent, and each one is easier than the traditional method of cutting both sides of the Kloster block and tucking in the ends. The one where the double-sided Kloster blocks are worked after cutting in the manner of wrapped bars (shown on the right) is least successful, in my opinion, as they do come out a little narrower that ordinary Kloster blocks.

The two methods on the left (cutting only along the regular Kloster blocks and removing the longer threads, or cutting along the double-sided Kloster blocks as well and removing the short threads) both produce quite nice and plump Kloster blocks, which don’t look very different from regular ones. Of the two methods the first gets my vote because it is easier to remove the longer threads – with the second method, it is quite easy to damage the perle of the Kloster block when removing the short cut threads.

I hope this will help you when you encounter double-sided Kloster blocks – if you try any of these methods in your own stitching, let me know what you think!

Double-sided Kloster blocks (I)

Posted on 14th May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

It’s generally a good idea to stitch Kloster blocks in such a way that the needle goes down into the fabric where it will later be cut. For some reason it makes it a little easier to cut close to the Kloster block. But occasionally designs call for a Kloster block to be cut on both sides, for example in the dragonfly’s wings in Resurrection.

There are two difficulties when you come up against a Kloster block like that. The first is that obviously you can’t take the needle down both sides. The second is that you end up with cut ends on both sides of the Kloster block, and if you are very conscientious about tucking in your ends, you’ll have to tuck in 8 instead of the usual 4 – and in opposite directions too! It’s perfectly possible, but it can be a little frustrating when you tuck in a cut end on the left only to see a previously tucked one pop out on the right!

It is for this reason that I try to avoid them when I am designing. Nevertheless, sometimes a woven bar simply will not do, and the chunkiness of a Kloster block is needed. So given that they occur in the chart you’re working on, could there be an easier way to work them?

As I was thinking about this, two possible solutions came to my mind. The first is to treat Kloster blocks like that as a sort of special wrapped bar. Stitch all the regular Kloster blocks first, cut and withdraw the threads, and then use the same thread (usually perle #5) to wrap around the remaining fabric threads very loosely, so as not to pull them together. There won’t be any cut ends to poke in, because those threads have already been removed altogether before the block is stitched.

The second option is to stitch all Kloster blocks, including the ones that will have a cut area on both sides, and then to cut the fabric only along the regular Kloster blocks. Then withdraw the threads, pulling them out through the double-sided Kloster blocks. There will be a bit more friction than usual, but it should be possible.

Very well then, time to put my theories to the test! A report with detailed pictures will follow soon.

Mabel’s sketchbook (V)

Posted on 9th May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

Inspiration can come from many things – nature, colours, a saying, a speciality thread. Or a fabric, hand-dyed, patterned or in some other way special. Someone asking me whether you could work Hardanger on afghan fabric led to a set of four Afghan Squares designed especially for that purpose.

Occasionally a fabric strikes me as being perfect for a design, but unfortunately the design itself has not yet materialised. Last week I ordered some samples from Sparklies, and I just know that I will be using Fire (the bright orange one at the bottom right) for a design at some point; it’s on my To Do list.

And then there was a fabric that I had actually seen before, but which I’d rather dimissed as impractical – Zweigart’s Colmar Carré, a 25 count gingham fabric with a slightly slubby, linen-like look. It comes in four colours, and they aren’t colours I instinctively go for. But suddenly it sparked an idea: how about using white on the darkest squares, and the two shades of green or beige or orange or yellow on the white squares, leaving the lighter squares unstitched? I ordered a fat quarter of two of the shades, and set out to find the thread colours to go with them.

I had a slight set-back when I found that one of the shades I’d chosen is actually not available in perle cotton. Bother. Fortunately I managed to find a replacement. Next was the size. Every square measures 3", so no more than 75h x 75w – just the sort of size I like. I could see this turning into a cushion, or possible the centre of a tablecloth. I sketched a few possible Kloster block frameworks, and some notes on additional stitches, as well as the distribution of the designs on a 12" cushion. And that’s the start of Gingham Gems, which have now been fully charted and will (if all goes to plan) be stitched some time in July.

The inspiration of periwinkles

Posted on 4th May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

I’ve always liked the word periwinkle. The flower, too – it’s such a gorgeous shade, and quite an interesting shape with its wedge-shaped petals. But the word periwinkle will always remind me of the television series Keeping Up Appearances, where social snob Hyacinth Bucket/Bouquet was so immensely proud of her "Royal Doulton with hand-painted periwinkles". The Dutch subtitles insisted on translating the word as "alikruikjes", which are the little sea snails that go by the same name, but which you’d be unlikely to find on hand-painted Royal Doulton. The flower is called "maagdenpalm", or "virgin’s palm", a reference to the blue robe of the Virgin Mary.

But I digress.

You may remember that I mentioned periwinkles in my post about woven picots, suggesting that five fairly wide woven picots in blue could be used to create this flower. Well, even at the time I knew that that was not altogether true. With the right shade it might look vaguely like a periwinkle, but you can’t get over the fact that most periwinkles have petals that start narrow and become wider, ending in a relatively flat edge, whereas woven picots go from wide to narrow and end in a point.

Or do they?

Using the basic technique of the woven picot, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t play with the shape a bit. I soon realised that the number of pins required might make your stitching look like an exercise in acupuncture, but of course if you’re not too bothered with the petals being free-standing you can hold the foundation threads in place with a few tiny holding stitches. And so I tried a few experiments.

The first experiment involved working two tiny holding stitches which would for the corners of the flat end of the petal. Having worked those, bring the needle up on one side of where the base of the petal will be, thread through the two tiny stitches, and take the needle down at the other side of the base. Come up again between those two points (so at the centre of the base) and go down at the centre of the top (between the two little holding stitches). Come up just inside the base, and start weaving until you get to the top.

So does it work? Well, the shape is definitely more periwinkle-like, and if you don’t pull the thread to tightly when you are creating the outline, you can lift the finished form away from the fabric a little in a sort of arch. But the flat top is not completely flat because the holding stitches and the central "spine" stick out a bit, and the curve of the petal is not nearly so strong as when you start out with a regular woven picot and attach the tip to the fabric.

For the second experiment I decided to go the pin route – work the woven picot as usual, but have three pins at the top. Come up at one end of the base, loop the working thread around the two corner pins, and go down at the other end of the base. Then come up at the centre of the base and loop the thread around the centre pin. Then weave.

Well, that was the theory. In practice it was very difficult to make the start of the weaving sit very close to the pins, and when the pins were removed the top started to unravel. I suppose I should have seen that coming …

So is it back to the drawing board for the ultimate periwinkle-shaped woven picot? No. Because I suddenly thought of a much easier solution – as the standard woven picots have a flat base, why not simply work them "upside down", that is to say with the tips pointing toward the centre of the flower? Work five of them (folding finished ones back to make room for the later ones), stitch the tips down in the centre, work a pentagon in white backstitch and a single chunky yellow French knot and voilà, a periwinkle!

But does this one work? Well, I haven’t actually got round to trying it yet, but I hope to create a real life specimen within the next week or so.

Mabel’s Sketchbook (IV)

Posted on 1st May, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

Back to the sketch I showed you some time ago. You may have discerned a pumpkin shape with swirls around it and a girl in it. Well, that can mean only one thing, right? Cinderella!

It all started with a Kloster block shape I’d idly doodled some time ago. It consisted of a sort of oval in the centre, and a curve or half-oval attached to it on either side. If you half-closed your eyes and used your imagination, it might pass for a pumpkin.

To some people pumpkins mean Halloween. But I don’t really do Halloween, so that was a bit of a dead end. They do remind me of Harvest Festivals, and churches decorated with fruit and vegetables, but I couldn’t quite see how to turn that into a workable design. And so it just sat there in my stitching program, forgotten and unloved.

I came across it again when I wanted to tinker a bit with a design that happened to be in the same file, and thought it would be a shame not to do anything with it. So I sketched a pumpkin shape and drew some swirls around it, and then realised it looked rather like a coach. A pumpkin coach. OK, but I didn’t want it orange or any other pumpkin colour. Silvery, or a very very pale blue, that would be much nicer. On a sparkly fabric perhaps? Another memory stirred – Serinde, a fellow-member of the Cross Stitch Forum and an accomplished Hardangerer (Hardangeress?) had mentioned that 28 count white opalescent Lugana went particularly well with a certain pale blue shade of Caron thread. And I happen to have both the fabric and the Caron threads in my stash! So that was settled. But if it was blue it wouldn’t look very pumpkin-like anymore; so add a stalk to the top to counteract that.

Now for Cinderella herself. What if I put her in the central bit, and used cutwork in the two other sections? She’d have to be cross-stitched over one if she was to fit the shape and still have a reasonable amount of detail. What about the colours? I didn’t want her to look like the Disney version – not because I don’t like it, but because I didn’t want to copy some else’s ideas. So a blue and red dress, and some flounces or ribbons. What about her face? Now if you have a close look at the sketch you will see that at this point I got a little bit over-ambitious – not only was I planning some fairly detailed backstitching in the face, but I also considered using open chain stitch to represent her ringlets. Nice idea, and I may use it some day, but not here. Cinderella would be all cross stitch.

Then all I needed to do was decide on colours and stitches for the scrolls that formed the wheels, and, as a last-minute addition, to add some sparkly stars all around the coach. I know the fabric itself will be sparkly, but that’s no reason not to add a bit more! One final idea occurred to me – wouldn’t this make rather a nice decoration for a little girl’s bedroom? And if so, wouldn’t she like to have her initial in there somewhere? So I charted a variation with Cinderella a little lower in the coach, and designed an alphabet to go with it. And there she is, ready for the Planned section, waiting to be stitched!

And what about the tray mentioned in the sketch? Well, I happened to pick up an oval tray with needlework in it a year or two ago, and have been looking for a design for it ever since. This might be just the right shape and size (I’ll have to do a few calculations), so you may see it in the Gallery some day.

More 3D stitches

Posted on 27th April, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

I have long been a great admirer of Mary Corbett’s blog Needle ‘n Thread, for her interesting posts about embroidery techniques and materials, for her inspiring projects, and for her brilliant video tutorials. Are French knots giving you trouble? Not quite sure how to work that chain stitch? Sometimes a description, diagram or drawing is simply not enough, while seeing someone work the stitch, accompanied by explanatory comments, may be just what you need to master it yourself. Highly recommended!

Quite a while ago I’d had a look at her video for cup stitch, but at that time I wasn’t really into 3D stitches, and so I never tried it. But the other day I was having a browse through the video library and came across it again – and noticed something in the written introduction which had completely passed me by before. I know why. It’s because at that time I didn’t have daffodils on the brain. But now I read: "If you combined it with the woven picot, for example, you could stitch some dimensional daffodils". Well, I can do woven picots! So clearly the time had come to try the raised cup stitch.

Obviously it would have to be yellow for a daffodil, and I think I would probably try and add a third row of stitches to make it a bit higher, but I can see definite potential there.

Then another stitch caught my attention, for its name as much as anything: Drizzle Stitch. It’s a twisted three-dimensional little blob pointing upwards from its fabric foundation. It was interesting to try, but I’m not quite sure what I’d do with it. Even so, it was fun to learn, and not nearly so complicated as I feared it might be. Who knows, one day it might come in handy!

3D stitches

Posted on 24th April, 2012 by Flights of Fancy

Hardanger is a wonderfully textural form of needlework – I love the contrast between the chunky satin stitches and the finer fillings, and of course you can add all sorts of surface stitches which, each with its own particular effect. I particularly enjoy using stitches which add a bit of "height", like Rhodes stitches and French knots.

These are pretty 3D already, but you can reach even greater heights without having to learn all the intricacies of stumpwork. I admire people who do stumpwork. I gaze in awe at some of their creations. I even tried a Royal School of Needlework stumpwork workshop at the Knitting & Stitching Show one year, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t for me. One of the things I like about needlework is that you need very little apart from fabric, needle & thread, and so a form of embroidery that uses large wooden beads, stuffing, separate pieces of calico and bits of wire just gets too complicated! But one relatively simple stitch that can add quite a strong 3D effect is the woven picot, and the only extra bit of equipment you need is a pin. Here is the central part of Frozen Flower (I), in progress:

In Frozen Flower (II) the tips of the petals are attached to the fabric in such a way that they are pleasingly curved (making one lady at my stitching group remark that seen from the side it looked rather like a crouching spider …). It’s quite a versatile stitch too, in that with a mere change of colour you can create all sorts of different flowers. Work overlapping petals in warm yellow with a centre of brown French knots – sunflower. Five fairly wide blue petals – periwinkle. Someone at the Cross Stitch Forum suggested working the petals in red to create a Christmas poinsettia. Very striking, especially with a centre of yellow and green French knots.

It’s quite a labour-intensive stitch, so I can’t see myself stitching a couple of dozen woven-picot-poinsettia Christmas cards, but perhaps one or two for very special people. Or you could stitch some on green fabric and turn them into Christmas tree ornaments – expect them to become firm family favourites, first out of the box of decorations when the festive season is upon us again!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Yearly Archives: 2012