Disappointing developments and wonky fun

Posted on 29th October, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Some time ago I started a project pouch, on which I was going to embroider “Mabel” in line-sampler letters. These letters to be outlined in stem stitch using Anchor Multicolor perle #5, with each letter being a different colour combination. Nice and bright, as random and freehand as I am ever likely to achieve, in fact the perfect pick-up-and-stitch project. If it weren’t for one or two things.

First, because of the way the pouch is constructed all stitching has to be done using the sewing method, and I am by nature a stabbing girl (only with an embroidery needle, and only on fabric, I hasten to add!) – and all fastening on and off has to be done from the front, and be kept invisible. This makes it rather less relaxing than I intended. In theory the padded lining can be flipped up so you can get at the back of the fabric, but unfortunately some of my sewing motions managed to pick up a bit of the lining, which is now attached to the outer fabric and therefore unflippable.

Secondly, I do not like the look of the stem stitch outline. I thought that would be my favourite part, because normally I really like chunky stem stitch in perle #5, and I love the Anchor Multicolors. But not only was it difficult to stitch, I could not manage to get the rope texture nice and tight, especially around corners. Oh, I know, smaller stitches help. But the fabric is relatively thin, and even with fairly long stitches it get a bit pulled and distorted; too many chunky stitches close together would be a nightmare to stitch, and look even worse.

This will need a bit of thinking. I will probably unpick the outline, and restitch it in Multicolor stranded cotton; it won’t stand out quite so much, but should be easier to do, and end up less floppy-looking around the corners. For the moment, I’m going to put this one aside; it was meant as an easy in-between project, but as it will now take rather more thought and work it no longer qualifies as such. I’ll definitely finish it – for one thing I don’t want to waste that pouch – but not now.

OK, so sometimes a project goes wrong, and that makes it less attractive. But sometimes a project can go wrong, yet be tremendous fun! I needed something easy to stitch while we were down at my mother-in-law’s, doing some sorting and clearing in the house she’s just moved out of. There wouldn’t be that much stitching time, so it had to be something simple, preferably with small parts within the design that could be finished quickly. Something like one of Kelly Fletcher’s monograms, in fact, particularly the one with the leafy border. And I happened to have a ready-to-embroider napkin bought as an experiment at the same time as the project pouch! Perfect.

Or it would have been, if I’d had time to transfer the design before we went. Unfortunately I didn’t, so one evening when there was just about enough light left I tried to do the transfer against a west-facing window. My usual pencil had somehow disappeared from my bag, so I tried one of the many pencils in the house. It was a very hard pencil, and after painstakingly tracing most of the design I thought to check, only to find that it had left no imprint whatsoever. The other pencils I found were either equally hard, or far too blunt, and there wasn’t a sharpener around. A blue pencil seemed the most likely to produce a usable line, so I gave that a try. It did leave a ghostly outline, but to be usable it had to be more visible; I decided that by now I might as well use a pen and be done with it. Tracing over the faint blue lines I realised that when holding a fairly large napkin up against a window for tracing, it is almost impossible to keep it square. It sags. It drags. And so the circular border was anything but circular. To make matters worse, I then put the initial in at the wrong angle – it should have pointed towards the corner. It doesn’t. And let’s not even mention the leaves, which are meant to be uniform in size and spacing. Quite.

But you know what? I’m enjoying stitching this enormously. It will produce a perfectly usable and reasonably decorative napkin, I’m getting lots of practice doing fishbone stitch, and if anything doesn’t go quite as planned it doesn’t matter as it can’t possibly get any worse than it already is . The perfect pick-up-and-stitch project! Unlike the pouch…

The show is over

Posted on 19th October, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

The Knitting & Stitching Show, that is. There was a lot to see, but in between workshops I managed to get round most of it (and quite a bit of London as well – I can recommend Golders Hill Park and the London Wetland Centre!)

There was a wide variety of exhibitions this year, and it was interesting to see the different things people create; some of it I really liked, some of it was not my cup of tea, and some of it I liked in spite of not expecting to, but all of it served to show that there is no “typical embroiderer/knitter/crocheter/quilter”. The pictures below show Toft Alpacas’ crochet display, a beautiful pictorial quilt, a box with a goldwork lid and pompom sushi made by a RSN (Royal School of Needlework) Future Tutor, one from a series of embroideries recording the artist’s mother’s life, including her last years with dementia, and a circular piece of knitting.

This year I taught three workshops: Hardanger, Shisha and freestyle. I got some good and helpful feedback, and pictures of finished projects from several participants. Two ladies actually completed their Shisha flower duing the class, including mounting it into a card, and a Dutch lady doing the RSN certificate (or diploma, I’m not sure which) and taking in the K&S Show as an extra stitch-related activity soon posted pictures of her Hardanger needle book.

Another lady who came to the Shisha workshop bought the companion kit (the Shisha Tile), finished both at home and then used the techniques she’d learnt to embellish a Christmas quilt, creating a diamond-shaped variation of the stitch used in the Tile kit.

Barbara E's Shisha tile variation on a quilt

And finally, did I buy any new and interesting fabrics, threads, designs? With so many stands selling all manner of goodies, could I possibly resist? Well, not entirely. After enjoying a walk-in demonstration by Sarah from Golden Hinde I bought some of the translucent couching thread she recommended, at a grand total of £2.20

Could you use…?

Posted on 28th September, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

When you are known to be a needleworker, sooner or later you will be asked the question “Could you use…?” The item in question may be a great aunt’s collection of half-finished canvases, threads once bought but never used, inherited patterns, or fabrics, needles, hoops or beads which the owner can’t use anymore because of deteriorating eyesight or increasing arthritis. It often includes a great many things which frankly you will never be able to (or want to) use, but there are gems, too. And knowing other needleworkers means that it is rare for these donations not to find a good home eventually.

Recently a gentleman who came to our house to purchase parts for his pre-war Austin Seven (Mr Figworthy’s main line of business, when he is not assisting Ms Figworthy in attaining world domination in embroidery) noticed the various bits of stitching dotted around the house, and asked The Question. In this case it was what he described as “a bag of designs” that once belonged to his grandmother. Last week he dropped them off, and it turned out to be parts 1 to 34 of a series called Embroidery Magic, complete with all the iron-on patterns and two ring binders. Judging by the style they date back to the 1980s, and I’m going to have fun looking through them and picking things which I may want to stitch before taking them to my various embroidery groups for the ladies there to fight over .

Rather longer ago my mother-in-law gave me a box of unidentified silks on cardboard tubes. So far I haven’t done anything with them, but from the start the colours suggested peacocks to me. I’m now thinking of using them for a split stitch version of the miniature cross stitch peacock I designed for a pendant (the picture shows the anonymous silks at the top, followed by discontinued Eterna silks, Piper silks with a couple of discontinued Filofloss, and Threadworx hand-dyed Vineyard silks).

Or perhaps it could become a miniature-stitching-on-silk-gauze workshop? I have acquired a few inexpensive pendants which I hope will be perfect for that. Now to convince the Knitting & Stitching show that silk gauze embroidery is just what they need on next year’s workshop programme!

The mini peacock in my own silver locket

The original pendant and the possible workshop ones

The miniature peacock fits the new pendant

Needles

Posted on 23rd September, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Over the past few months I’ve been trying out different needles (like the Tulip ones Mary Corbet recommends) and although some of them are definitely a lot more expensive than ordinary needles (like the Tulip ones Mary Corbet recommends ), because they are small items the actual cost is still affordable as a treat (unlike being a racing car fanatic and deciding to try out different engines, for example). But are these fancy needles really necessary, and do they live up to expectations?

We all know the needle book belonging to grandma or great-aunt which contains the needles with which she sewed her entire life, apparently with no detrimental effect on either herself or her sewing. On the other hand, it is possible to be too thrifty and to practice the false economy of trying to do fine embroidery with needles that have long lost their plating and are tarnished and rough and doing unmentionable things to your threads (especially silks). Don’t wait until the needle gets so weakened with use that the eye breaks and becomes a health hazard (yes, voice of experience).

But when you change your needle, does it matter what you change it to? If the size and the point (blunt or sharp) are correct for your work, does it make a difference whether it’s from a bargain basement box-of-25-for-50p or whether it is a Tulip branded one costing a frankly eye-watering £1 per needle?

I decided to find out. Normally I use John James needles bought in envelopes of 25 for all forms of freestyle embroidery, and gold-plated tapestry needles bought in bulk from Busy Lizzie (who no longer sells them) for Hardanger. These are probably a little more expensive than an unbranded assorted pack from the local haberdasher’s, but because I buy them in fairly large numbers they are still a relatively economical choice. And they have served me well over many years, doing the job they were designed to do. But various people (experienced stitchers all) singing the praises of Tulip needles from Japan made me decide to give them a try.

The first thing you notice when they arrive is the packaging; you have to do a lot of unwrapping to get at the needles! A well-presented (and colour-coded) cardboard box closed with a decorative tassle holds a glass tube with a cork stopper, which in turn contains the needles. It’s beautifully done, and unfortunately immediately made me wonder how much less expensive the needles could have been with less fancy packaging… Still, you’d expect a Cartier jewel to come in a velvet-lined, gold-stamped box, not an anonymous cloth bag, so perhaps it’s just all a sign of the quality and attention to detail.

Tulip embroidery needles come in a nice cardboard box

Tulip embroidery needles in a tube with cork stopper

And how do they work? Very well. They are nice and smooth, and very sharp so they pierce the fabric accurately. But I’m afraid I didn’t notice the enormous difference in stitching comfort that some stitchers report (saying they can now stitch for much longer because the smooth needles put less strain on the hand), or that much of a difference in accuracy. Do I enjoy using them? Yes. Will I continue to use them? Yes, until I run out. But I won’t buy them again. The difference between the Tulip needles and my ordinary ones is simply not great enough to justify the difference in price.

Next up were Clover needles (incidentally also from Japan). I picked up some gold-eye between needles in the Netherlands some years ago, and have found them very useful; this was partly because they were the first between/quilting needles I’d ever used. I’m a bit hazy as to the exact difference between betweens and quilting needles, but they are both shorter than ordinary embroidery needles and therefore easier to use when you’re trying to manoeuvre in a small space (for example at the back of the work near the edge of the hoop). For smoothness the Clover ones compare favourably with the Tulip betweens, and at less than 15p each there is really no contest there.

Clover embroidery needles in their packages

The black & gold ones are rather more expensive; they come in at about ²⁄₃ of the Tulip needles. The black polish, which according to the description is grooved along the length of the needle, is meant to make it glide through the fabric more smoothly.

I tried some of them out on King Ethelnute (my nickname for the split stitch & gold project started at the medieval embroidery retreat) using two of the black & gold needles, a #9 quilting needle and a #10 between, both with a single strand of Silk Mill silk, doing split stitch. Oddly enough the #10 was more difficult to pull through even though it is significantly thinner than the #9. The #9 was very smooth to use, and pierced the fabric very accurately. I’ve got a whole pack of the #10 betweens so will try one of the others to see whether it was just this one needle being difficult! On the whole, however, I’m not sure the black & gold needles are significantly more pleasant to use than the standard gold-eye Clover needles, so unless further use changes my mind I will stick with the standard ones, which are very good indeed.

And what’s next? Well, I would like to try Bohin needles, made in France, which have also been praised for their smoothness, and possibly Piecemakers (from America). But for now I’m happy with the John James needles for everyday use, and the gold-eye Clover betweens/quilting needles for fine and accurate work.

PS On one of the online embroidery groups I’m a member of, someone asked (having seen the picture of the #12 needle on my fingertip) how you thread a needle that thin. Well, there are needle threaders (although for a needle that size you’d have to use a micro-threader) but so far I’ve managed with the method I was taught at one of the RSN day classes I attended: “bring the needle to the thread” instead of the other way round. Hold the very end of the thread between thumb and index finger, open up so that the end of the thread is just visible, then bring the needle’s eye towards the thread between your fingers, so that the eye of the needle is the only place that the thread can go when you open up your fingers further. It’s not easy to describe in words only but I hope it gives you the general idea. If you decide to give it a try do let me know how you get on with it!

An old adversary

Posted on 20th September, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Something has been niggling me over the past week. It came about as I was stitching Carousel. And it needs Seeing To.

Are there stitches that you love on paper but which don’t live up to expectations? There is one which has been my bugbear ever since I first heard about it. I even devoted an entire FoF post to it three years ago! That post started “Once upon a time there was a stitch. It looked lovely on paper. It had an attractive name. It got itself included in the Round in Circles SAL. It was stitched up in a model, and given a diagram and a description. So far so good.” Substitute “Carousel” for “Round in Circles SAL” and it still infuriatingly holds.

The stitch in question is the Maltese Cross, also known as Maltese Interlacing, and whereas the SAL had it and lost it, Carousel started without it but gained it. It got designed and revamped long before the SAL but I never got round to stitching it until now, when I was forcefully reminded of the problem of this particular stitch. It is that it Never Looks As Good As It Should. In my mind I know exactly what it should look like, a bit like the braided ornamental fasteners on coats which I have always known as “mattekloppers” (“carpet beaters”) but which I am told are officially known as Brandenburg fasteners in Dutch and frog fasteners in English.

Intricate, swirly, braided, beautiful. That’s what Maltese crosses should look like. But they hardly ever do. In order to make them work (for me – tastes differ) they either have to be done in very thin thread in two colours, when they look attractive but not the least bit like the thickly braided effect I had in mind, or in thick thread in one colour (yes, I changed my mind on that since 2015) so that the braided effect shows up without the distraction of the foundation colours.

High-contrast, lightweight Maltese cross

In Carousel, it was charted with a thin dark foundation thread and a thick light interlacing thread – in my stitched model, Caron Wildflowers (Tanzanite) and Watercolours (Celestial Blue). And it looks Plain Wrong.

I was tempted to just chuck the whole idea and put in a different stitch, but I thought I’d persevere and try the thing with two changes: one, to use only one colour, the light one. And two, to pull the thread more tightly as I had seen it done on some Indian embroidery. And then it did work.

So now I need only to unpick the first Maltese cross and re-do it, and then I can get started on the cutting. And before you know it Carousel will be available in all its Maltese glory .

Pretties in the post (II): Goldwork

Posted on 28th August, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

I’ve got plenty of things to be getting on with at the moment, but looking for some deep hoops on the RSN website I also came across a goldwork kit by Helen Stevens, and fell in love with it.

I havered a bit though, as it was quite expensive. Knowing what fees and overheads can do to prices when you sell via somebody else’s shop, I thought I’d see if she had her own website. Well, she does, and it had the goldwork design on it, but it looked slightly different from the one on the RSN website – fewer techniques, and not so solidly stitched. As there was a telephone number on the website I rang them and spoke to Helen Stevens’ husband, who assured me that she did both versions of the kit. I emailed for further information, found that ordering direct from her would save me £22 *shock* so without further ado I ordered it (who doesn’t like saving money ). It arrived in the post the very next day!

There isn’t a hope of my starting this kit any time soon – there’s the trade fair we’re getting ready for and a stitched model that needs preparing for publication, to name but a couple of things – and this is not the sort of design you stitch in little snatches; some nice long stretches of stitching time are called for. Even so, I couldn’t possibly just leave it in its box without having a look at it, now could I?

Thinking of the kit we were given at the Medieval Embroidery retreat, and my own little floral goldwork kit, I expected a box with a lid, but it was purely a postal box, not one you’d use to store the kit in while working on it. I’m not mentioning this as a drawback, by the way – it’s just something I happened to notice. Inside the box, the instructions and materials are contained in a plastic grip seal bag with a small bag taped to the front containing a rather pretty beeswax rose and some plunging thread. Turning it over shows the various materials, the fabric, and a first glimpse of the instructions: some very detailed photographs.

The back of the kit, with all the materials

Time to take everything out for a closer look. And “everything” is an impressive collection! Several more spangles than the design needs, what looks like generous amounts of the various metal threads and wires, a full spool of yellow sewing thread, kid leather & felt all with the patterns ready-transferred, and a very generous piece of fabric with the design printed on it. The instructions say it will fit a 10″ hoop, which will leave a pleasant amount of space around the design and plenty of needle-wielding room when fastening off and securing plunged threads. The instructions themselves are a model of clarity, with well over forty photographs illustrating the various stages of the project. I honestly think an enthusiastic beginner could do this kit, even though it has some relatively advanced techniques.

So when will I get round to stitching this? I don’t know, but I suspect it may elbow its way past a few of the other projects in the queue…

Pretties in the post (I): Bling

Posted on 25th August, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Having stitched with pearls and gems at the Medieval Embroidery retreat I’ve developed a bit of a taste for them and yesterday the postman brought me some to have a play with when my Opus Anglicanum project is finished. The freshwater pearls on the string are like the ones in the medieval king, only ever so slightly larger; it’s very difficult to find them any smaller than this!

The string of pearls with my medieval king

I’m keeping a look out for coloured glass gems – Sarah Homfray told me that the ones they used in the kits were from a discontinued line, and she’d bought them all. But when I saw this mix of white acrylic ones in a sale for a rather ridiculous price I thought they were worth a try, especially as I also found some genuine glass shisha mirrors and an interesting black version of my coloured floral gems in that same sale.

Then as I was putting away the gems and the flowers, and looking up some black beads which might go with them (not plain black, but sort of oil-on-water) I remembered a large black canvas shopping bag I got some time ago – surely the perfect combination!

Black and transparent gems on a black shopper

Black and transparent gems against the black fabric

My first thought was to attach the flowers and gems in a random swirly pattern, but unfortunately I’m not very good at random. Could I perhaps arrange them in letters? I showed this (very provisional) arrangement to my husband, who felt the contrast between the two letters was too high. Yes, I can see what he means. Well, how about letters in black flowers attached with the oily beads, with swirls of gems around them? Watch this space – I may even go properly random after all!

A stitch (back) in time

Posted on 18th August, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Remember I wrote about having lots of projects on the go last time? Even as I posted it it seemed to me that surely five projects couldn’t be the whole lot – and I was right. I’d forgotten a tiny flower started as a travel project (of which I have no picture as there is not much to see yet) and a Kelly Fletcher butterfly.

And now there is one more as a medieval king joins the throng! This is the project Angela Bishop and Sarah Homfray used at the Coombe Abbey retreat to introduce a group of nine stitchers to the joys of Opus Anglicanum, or English medieval embroidery. It includes lots of split stitch in silk, gold couched using both the usual and the underside method, and some Serious Bling.

But before I say more about the stitching, a little about the venue. Coombe Abbey is an impressive building with lovely gardens, and makes a rather appropriate setting for embroidery of the type we were doing. Atmosphere in spades! Its only downside is unfortunately rather inherent in a medieval building, and that is gloom. Even though the room we were in had relatively large windows, we definitely needed the collection of daylight lamps that had been brought along. As for the hotel reception, anyone with less than perfect night vision would be advised to bring a torch. But it would be churlish to complain about such characterful surroundings – and I won’t. I thoroughly enjoyed my two days’ stitching there.

Can something be both intense and relaxing? This retreat certainly did a good job at being both. There is nothing quite like a long period of stitching time when you don’t have to worry about the ironing or the groceries because they are Somewhere Else and you can’t do anything about them anyway. Very relaxing. But trying to learn a technique that originally involved a seven-year apprenticeship in two days? Very intense.

Of course the seven-year apprenticeship involved rather more than just learning the stitches, and Sarah and Angela warned us not to expect perfection quite yet, so we had to settle for getting a taste of this lovely embroidery. We did so by means of brief talks about the background of Opus Anglicanum and other types of medieval embroidery, live demonstrations (using a nifty camera-and-big-screen combination), and of course trying the techniques for ourselves using the kit provided.

Day one had a lot of split stitch; it was interesting to look at pictures of medieval embroideries using this simple stitch so effectively, using changes in direction to create shading even when using only a single shade of silk. In our royal head this is especially noticeable in the way the spiralled cheeks, chin and forehead stand out against the rest of the face (or will do, when I get the rest of the face stitched…)

Day two had us tackling underside couching, a technique apparently almost unique to Opus Anglicanum; taking the couching thread down through the fabric creates lots of little “hinges” which keep the fabric flexible even when covered in large swathes of gold, as on ecclesiastical vestments. We were told to work a little of it in both silk and gold twist, and then to decide whether we wanted to fill in the entire collar and/or crown in this technique, or to go back to ordinary couching instead. This option was not unwelcome, as it is quite a time-consuming technique (the needle has to go up and down through the two fabric layers in exactly the same place, and must be pulled through just enough but not too much) which requires a lot of concentration, not to mention strong fingers. As I was still nursing an injured hand, I decided to stick to the mimimum – but I’m glad I gave it a go, as it’s an interesting technique.

Finally we got to add all manner of bling; beads, glass gems and tiny freshwater pearls fit for a king! In all it was an occasion which I’d be very happy to repeat – stitching with a group of like-minded people, in beautiful surroundings, with leisurely chats over lunch, and learning more about this wonderful hobby of ours. So here are the two things that made the retreat so special: the tutors and fellow-stitchers, and the project. The second picture shows what I managed in the two days, plus a little work on the crown at my library craft group yesterday. I hope to show you a finished king in the not too distant future!

By the way, Sarah and Angela were kind enough to give me some feedback on Forever Frosty, and one suggestion which I may well follow up…

Variety is the spice of stitching

Posted on 12th August, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

First let me play the sympathy card: I hurt my stitching hand in a fall, so for the past week I’ve done no stitching whatsoever. The last thing I did (and probably shouldn’t have) was finish Forever Frosty last Sunday; after that, nothing. How did I manage to restrain myself, I can hear you think. With difficulty, is the answer, and mostly because of the knowledge that this week I will be attending the 2-day Medieval Embroidery retreat at Coombe Abbey (thank you, oh husband-who-understands-the-desires-of-a-stitcher’s-heart) for which I want to be in good shape. Angela Bishop, one of the tutors, assured me that the retreat is “a combination of demos, talk, stitching (and eating!) so not all stitching”, so there should be plenty to enjoy even if I can’t quite keep up with the other embroiderers in the practical parts.

Of course this enforced stitch-less period comes just when I’ve got about five different projects either in progress or hooped up and ready to go! Some people like to stick to one project at a time, and they have the perseverance, concentration and self-control to stick with that one project until it’s finished (all the more astonishing when it’s one of those fully covered pictures consisting of half a million or so stitches). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I start a project, and half-way through I want to do something different. And that’s with designs which hardly ever exceed 10 inches, and generally aren’t solidly stitched. But in embroidery I will allow myself this fickleness – it is, after all, my hobby, which I’m meant to enjoy! And so I gather around me many different projects, preferably in different styles or techniques, and stitch whichever of them appeals to me at any given time. So what projects am I surrounded by at the moment? Here they are, in no particular order.

Line sampler project pouch. This was inspired by pictures posted on the Mary Corbet Facebook group by a lady who stitched line samplers in the shape of hearts and letters. I had just bought a couple of stitchable pouches meant for large tablets, which I think will work very well as travel cases for small-to-medium embroidery projects. Because I find it very difficult to be completely random in my stitching, and because I sometimes need a quick reminder of stitches that I don’t use very frequently, I’ve printed out a list of my stitch diagrams suitable for stitching lines. The letters will be worked in five different colour combinations, each based on and outlined in a shade of Anchor Multicolor.

Carousel, a Hardanger design. After lots of freestyle and other embroidery I decided it was time to get back into Hardanger, and to ease myself into it I started with the non-cut designs of Veiled Delights. This was both a good idea (simple motifs) and a bad one (stitching through organza is predictably less easy and relaxed than stitching straight onto the evenweave), but on the whole I think it did re-ignite my enthusiasm for Hardanger, so I have hooped up a proper Hardanger design with cutting and filling stitches and everything. It’s called Carousel because many stitches in it have a “whirly” quality to them. I had various colour combinations in mind, and may well stitch it in other colours besides this one in the future, but for now it’s bright blues on bright white.

Come Rain, a goldwork umbrella. And yes, there is a Come Shine as well – a parasol. Strictly speaking the umbrella is silverwork, on a teal ground, while the parasol will be done in gold on an orange fabric. Both will have some appliqué as well as a variety of metal threads. I’ve worked out which threads and wires and techniques I want to use where, but only while I’m stitching will I be able to decide which sizes will work best (it wasn’t until I was actually stitching Forever Frosty that I realised the pearl purl I’d chosen for outlining his body was far too thin). This is the one that’s really calling to me at the moment – perhaps I can make a start next weekend.

Soli Deo Gloria, a silk & gold flower. I was so taken with the combination of colours and materials I used for my interpretation of a Kelly Fletcher freebie that I designed a flower of my own to work in those colours and techniques. As I was putting this together I decided on different silks, and possibly some of the gold threads will be slightly different too, but the look and feel of it will, I hope, be the same. I called it Soli Deo Gloria (“glory to God alone”) because the colours of the petals and the use of goldwork threads were originally suggested by a Bible verse about furnishings made for the Tabernacle: “They hammered out thin sheets of gold and cut strands to be worked into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen – the work of skilled hands” (Exodus 39:3).

And finally, a Kelly Fletcher design on a tea towel. You may remember the Classic Creations kit I got a while ago; it comes with fabric for two of the twelve designs, and as I was looking for a suitable fabric for the others I came across some tea towels and napkins I bought as “postage filler” when ordering shopping bags from the Clever Baggers. A tea cup seemed a suitable design for a tea towel, so I’ve ironed on the transfer, making sure it’s far enough from the corner for me to get a hoop around it (I cannot stitch comfortably without a hoop). I will have to remember to finish everything off very securely (not usually a priority when most of my projects end up in cards, coasters or boxes), and keep the back neat (likewise)!

And what about you? Are you strictly faithful to one project from start to finish? Or do you lavish your affections on many different designs? If so, do you work on them according to a strict rotation or do you stitch whatever takes your fancy? Whatever your ways and methods, enjoy your stitching. I hope to be enjoying mine again in a few days’ time!

Any hoop will do?

Posted on 5th August, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

Some people stitch anything from card-sized designs to enormous tablecloths or sheets without any hoop or frame. I have long since learnt that unless a project is less than 2 inches or so across, I simply can’t do it, and even then I prefer to have it hooped up. This might be seen as rather wasteful of fabric, since a small project requires relatively more spare fabric in order to fit into a hoop, but it does make my stitching so much more comfortable that this is one extravagance I am willing to indulge in. (Incidentally, my preference for using hoops combined with my dislike of placing a hoop over areas already stitched may well explain why very few of my designs are larger than will fit comfortably inside a 12″ hoop. For any that are I use my Millennium frame.)

So a hoop I must have, whatever the project. But what sort of hoop? There is a bewildering variety out there! Quite apart from the size, which in my case is more or less dictated by the size of the design, there is a choice of materials, shapes and thicknesses. Hoops come in wood, stiff plastic, flexible rubber, bamboo, and several other materials; they are usually round, but can also be oval or square; and they can be narrow or deep.

I’m not aiming for completeness here, so there will be types of hoop I don’t mention in detail, or indeed at all. For example, I have occasionally used spring tension hoops, which consist of a very springy metal inner ring that squeezes into a plastic grooved outer ring and are often used for machine embroidery; I may even have one lurking in a drawer somewhere. But I would never choose them now, because I found the tension so high that it sometimes distorted the fabric, and the background almost always puckered when I took the project out of the hoop after completing the stitching. Then there are Q-snaps, which some people swear by; more of a frame really, but generally held in hand like a hoop, and made from chunky plastic tubes to which the fabric is attached with plastic clips that look like tubes with a bit missing. As I say, some people love them, but I found them too heavy, and too chunky to hold comfortably. I will leave detailed descriptions of these types of hoop to people who enjoy using them and have therefore used them a lot more than I have.

The most usual hoop, the one which many embroiderers start their first needlework with, and which many of us remember from the workboxes of grandmothers and great aunts, is the wooden hoop. They have a tightening screw on the outer ring (the one with the gap at the top), which can be done up by hand, or with a screwdriver for serious tightness. I have found most wooden hoops to be prone to “sagging” after a while, so you have to keep pulling the fabric, but this may of course be because I didn’t tighten the outer ring enough; I’m still experimenting with that. Binding the inner hoop apparently helps with tension; I have not yet tried this (but see below). And some people prefer their fabric slightly slack, so they can use the sewing method of stitching, where the needle goes in and out of the fabric in a single motion, and isn’t taken right through to the back. Wooden hoops work well for this.

Two variations on the wooden hoop are the square and the deep hoop. The former is square-ish rather than square, for perfectly understandable practical reasons. I find them useful mainly for square designs (and many of my designs are square) as you can get away with a smaller hoop (and therefore less fabric) compared to fitting a square design in a round hoop.

Standard hoops tend to be about 1cm deep, give or take a millimetre. You can get deeper ones, ranging from 5/8″ (a little over 1½cm) to 7/8″ (about 2¼cm). The two I bought from the RSN shop are exactly 2cm. The advantage of the deeper rings is that they grip more of the fabric, so that once you’ve got the tension you want, it’s more likely to stay like that.

Comparing the deep hoop with a standard hoop

My collection of hoops tends to have several sizes of each type, but I have only one of the type shown below, and I think it came in a collection of embroidery materials donated to me by a lady whose elderly relative could no longer stitch because of arthritis. It is a stiff plastic hoop with a lip on the inner ring, intended to grip the fabric more firmly and prevent slipping. It works just fine, but because of the lip any adjustment to the fabric by a quick and gentle tug is impossible, which means it languishes in my hoop drawer unloved and unused. I really should pass it on to someone who does like it!

The type of hoop I use most of all is the flexi-hoop. These consist of a stiff inner ring and a flexible rubber continuous outer ring – no gap at the top. They usually come provided with a decorative metal hanging loop (which sometimes tricks people into trying to use it for tightening); flexi-hoops are meant as much for display as for use in the stitching process. Because the outer ring is continuous, it cannot be tightened; but because it is made of flexible but fairly tight rubber, it generally doesn’t need tightening. To me they are invaluable for small to medium projects where I want the fabric good and taut. As with all hoops, the bigger the hoop the more easily the fabric loses tension, and when you get to the 8″ hoops the fabric is slightly looser, but I find it still compares favourably with the tension on wooden hoops. Although they seem to be made to be used once as a stitching hoop and then as a display frame for that particular project, you can actually use them again and again as a working hoop without the tension becoming noticeably less over time. Some of mine have been in use for at least five or six years and are still going strong.

One type of hoop which I first met only recently is the bamboo hoop; it came with a Kelly Fletcher kit, and I like it very much. It holds the tension well (even when pulling a needle with four strands through top and backing fabric, which can take a bit of tugging) and it is incredibly light, which is nice and easy on the hand that holds it. I liked it so much that I got a set of 12 small ones to use in workshops besides my usual flexi-hoops.

Like a lot of things in needlework, the choice of hoop comes down to personal preference. If weight (or rather, lack of weight) is important, bamboo is a good choice. Flexi-hoops keep fabric nice and taut, but can’t really be slackened off if you temporarily want less tension on the fabric, for example when doing bullion knots or any other stitch where the stabbing method of stitching is impossible or less suitable. Deep hoops grab more of the fabric and are therefore less prone to sagging, but I find them a bit less comfortable to hold, and so use them only when tension is really important, for example in goldwork. Even then I prefer to use them with a stand or clamp rather than in hand. Standard (narrow) wooden hoops are easy to find and good value, and allow for both tautness and slackening off. My advice would be to buy or borrow several types of hoop (preferably all the same size) and work on a single project for a bit using each one of them in turn. That will tell you more about the right hoop for you than any number of reviews can (useful and informative though they may be).

And finally a slight digression; it’s still hoop-related, though, so I’ll allow it . Recently I received an email about the Medieval Embroidery retreat I’ll be attending at Coombe Abbey. It gave details about when to be there, lunches and tea breaks (very important!) and a list of things to bring. Among them was a hoop, which they recommended should be bound. Until now I have never bound a hoop in my life, but many very experienced embroiderers say it is A Good Thing and worth the effort, so this was the perfect time to give it a try. I got some cotton twill tape and set to. And after a long time and some (moderately) bad language, all I can say is: unless the effect is really really noticeable, never again! I know that once a hoop is bound it stays bound for years, if done well, but my goodness what a fiddly job. I may of course have been doing it wrong (despite watching Sarah Homfray’s instruction video and reading Mary Corbet’s blog post on the subject) but I found it impossible to get the tape to lie completely flat. Still, here it is – I’ll let you know after the retreat whether I will ever bind another hoop…

Bound inner hoop, fitted inside the outer hoop

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Yearly Archives: 2018