Do you like trying out new materials? I do! Threads, needles, scissors, frames, embellishments, goldwork stuff, and of course fabrics. Sometimes when trying out a “new” fabric it’s actually a familiar one but from a new hand-dyer who may have quite a different colour palette from the ones you already knew; fabrics like that, in novel shades and interesting colour combinations, can be a great source of inspiration. Or it could be a familiar fabric but in a different count, like the 55ct Kingston linen I used recently for the floral cross. But at the moment I’m also trying out fabrics that are really new to me: twill and Normandie.

Normandie is a Zweigart cotton/linen blend for freestyle embroidery, and there seems to be a rather freestyle approach to its spelling among sellers; Willow Fabrics, for example, spells it both Normandie and Normandy on the same page. I’ll follow Zweigart’s own -ie spelling. Anyway, for the needleworker spelling is neither here nor there (unless you’re stitching a motto or a name, of course). The other two fabrics are twill samples which Barbara at Tristan Brooks very kindly sent me; one is Legacy Linen twill in a warm white colour, the other is a much thicker and stiffer Scottish twill in (appropriately) an oatmeal colour. I think it is pure linen as well. What I’m hoping to look at in these trial projects is how the fabrics handle, how they take a transfer, how easy they are to stitch on, and probably (though I hope not) how they behave when – oh dear – there is unpicking to be done.

The Normandie I used for my stem stitch Grace Christie strawberries, but for the twill I needed something smaller, and also something slightly quicker to stitch. I fitted both samples in as large a hoop as possible, which was a 4″ one for the Legacy twill and a 3″ one for the Scottish twill, and decided on two Kelly Fletcher flowers reduced in size. To compare it with the Normandie I really should use the same sort of silks, but twill is so strongly associated with crewel work in wool that I dug out some of my Appleton crewel wools; I may not use all colours in both projects, we’ll see how they develop. As for the stitches, I’ve scribbled down a few ideas for the Legacy twill project to begin with. The Scottish twill one will likely just be stem stitch or chain stitch with perhaps satin stitch for the green bit underneath the flower.

Only one part of stitching a project has been done on all three fabrics so far: transferring the design. In all cases I did this by placing the fabric over the design against a sunny window, and tracing it using a brown Sakura Micron 01 pen, which has a 0.25mm tip. As you can see the fabrics take it rather differently! On the Normandie, I got a very fine line – visible but easy to cover. It didn’t go so well on the Legacy twill; the line is too thick and bleedy and rather hazy looking; in fact it makes my eyes go funny to look at it (I keep wanting to blink), which may turn out to be awkward when it comes to stitching the design! A thin pencil may be a better choice here. The Scottish twill was a bit more difficult, as it’s darker and thicker than the other two fabrics, and the sun had gone in. Fortunately the flower shape is simple, and for this trial piece it didn’t matter too much if the petals turned out slightly differently from the original design. The line is fine and visible enough, but I did find that the pen occasionally got “distracted” by the twill ridges, which might be a problem when transferring finely detailed designs.

The only one that has been stitched on so far is the Normandie (I’m determined to finish Orpheus before picking up anything else, and I’m getting on well). The Grace Christie strawberries were worked in a variety of silks in stem stitch. The heaviest thread I used was the Gumnut silk/wool (which they call Poppies); it’s a little fuzzy and about the thickness of three strands of cotton. It’s easy to work with, but it did leave some fuzzy residue when I had to unpick it. The fabric stood up well to this unpicking, fortunately, and I don’t think you can tell where I had to unpick stitches. This is at least partly because most of the unpicked areas were stitched over again, but the fabric didn’t feel pulled out of shape or slack after unpicking. In order to follow the curving lines accurately I sometimes had to split the fabric threads, and in most cases that was easy to do – any problems there were caused by my eyes, not the fabric.

It’s not really fair to give a verdict when I’ve only used one of the three fabrics, but I do like this Normandie. It’s light and it’s easy to trace on, but it’s got enough body and the weave is close enough to be able to place stitches quite accurately. The fabric has a slight slub and some unevenness (due no doubt to its 45% linen content) which I think gives some character to the fabric, and although it is noticeable it doesn’t get in the way of the stitches. I’ll definitely be using Normandie again.