Tuck in and smell the tulips

My last update on the RSN Canvaswork module stopped at a slimmed-down tulip, with the promise of leaves to come before class. Well, somewhat to my own surprise they did! Two of them, both in satin stitch. The first one I was going to stitch exactly as sampled, with the two halves of the leaf in vertical and horizontal satin stitch. In order to have no canvas showing I made sure to tuck the stitches in the second half neatly underneath the stitches in the first half, which also made for a rather effective leaf vein. Unfortunately horizontal and vertical stitches do create a different edge, and I was slightly worried whether the bump caused by the transition from one to the other would be frowned on. Fortunately the tutor, Kathryn, said that I was ending everything in the same line of holes, as I should, and the bump is the natural consequence of the nature of the stitches, which the assessors allow for.

Tucking under the stitches to create the leaf vein Horizontal and vertical stitches along the edge

The next leaf, or rather two leaves that sort of blend into each other, had a stem to contend with. As instructed I had stitched the stem first as it is further towards the front in the design; and I quickly found that working the diagonal satin stitch into the holes directly next to the stem would not do. There was canvas showing, so that meant more tucking, a lot of it, and in some awkward positions! On the left-hand side it meant coming up at an angle from underneath the big pink tulip, trying not to disturb its stitches, and going down at an angle underneath the short and therefore rather tight stitches of the stem. All this while juggling three or four needles holding different thread blends.

Too short a stitch Leaf stitches tucked underneath the stem Coming up from underneath the pink tulip

Still, the end result was worth it I think, especially once I’d added a thin hightlight on the right. I asked Kathryn about that and she said although generally shading and colour changes had to be achieved within the canvas stitches, an occasional outline stitched over the top was fine, especially when the width of the colour in question is so small that any stitch over a canvas thread would be too wide. I also remarked to her that although I realised the reasoning behind the back-to-front rule, it would have been so much easier to have done this the other way round! To which she replied that sometimes there were exceptions to the rule… Hmm, I could have done with that insight a bit earlier!

The satin stitch leaves completed A stem stitch highlight added

To be fair, that usually applies to things like ribbon stitches done over the surface of previous stitches, which is how the very small tulips overlapping the paving in my photograph will be done. But it’s good to know one can occasionally interpret the rules creatively.

Another thing I’d managed before class was a tiny bud. I did get slightly carried away with the possibilities of blending, ending up with four blends of five shades of Madeira silk in four stitches. Still, it makes for a nice bud smiley.

A tiny bud Four blends for four stitches

Finally I sampled two variations of rose leaf stitch, a complicated one involving a crochet hook and a simpler one, both worked over a piece of stiff paper, both interesting, and neither in the least usable in my design. The combination of blue silk and green chenille thread I sampled in class for the lacy tree against the sky didn’t even have the distinction of looking interesting – the chenille was too bulky and just looked messy, besides shredding like mad. Oh well, you don’t know unless you try.

Starting a rose leaf stitch Manipulating the stitches with a crochet hook The two rose leaf variations Messy chenille

In class it was interesting to get Kathryn’s fresh view of my project, as she hadn’t seen it before. It was decided I would tackle some green stuff in the afternoon, but first I would work the pointy tulip. Split gobelin in three directions because two of the petals in the photograph have quite strong diagonal lines, with no splitting along the petal edges. Two petals which in the picture blend into each other were to be treated as one petal. Kathryn wasn’t sure I’d be able to get in the very thin light edge on the left-hand petal, but I thought if I started the stitching from that edge in a light shade and then split into it with a darker shade, it would produce something nearly narrow enough so that it wouldn’t need another outline stitch. I didn’t sample this tulip but worked it straight onto the main canvas, blending five shades of Silk Mill silk and one of Madeira as I went. The last two pictures show the finished tulip under different lighting conditions; what a difference that can make in a photograph!

Six shades for blending Diagonal split gobelin The finished tulip The finished tulip

I will get to the green stuff, but first let’s talk stems for a bit. When stitching the most prominent tulip stems, one had got overlooked – or perhaps I’d temporarily ignored it because unlike the others it was at an angle. Time to remedy that, as with a bit of compensation the brick stitch used for the other stems would work here as well. I started out with the same blend of five strands of dark green with one burgundy and one dark flesh, but that was too red compared to the photograph, so I took out the dark flesh and put in another green. Much better. Unfortunately this did show up the stem of the large bud on the left; it’s quite a different colour, which is fine because that reflects the photograph, but the long satin stitches don’t quite fit in. They are, as Kathryn pointed out, rather too long to be approved of without couching, but couching would break up the long lines I was after. And if those long lines were going to be broken up anyway, I might as well do this stem in the same brick stitch as the other stems and create what is known as a “stitch language” for stems throughout the piece. So one of my homework assignments is to unpick that stem and redo it it, possibly in the perle cotton used for the satin stitch, possibly in something stranded; we’ll see.

Too much red A slanted stem A stem that's for the chop

Right, leafy stuff. Having been on this particular module for some time now, Kathryn is the fourth tutor I’ve had, and she offered a fourth view (after Angela’s and the two Helens’) on the jumble of green among the tulips. Sigh. She said she quite understood I was beginning to get sampling fatigue, but she was worried that the double upright cross which I’d sampled as the largest of the three jumble patterns (as suggested by one of the Helens) would be too bulky, and would look as though it was in front of the large leaves it was surrounding instead of retreating into the background. She also felt that three different stitches was too much of a good thing. There was a stitch she couldn’t remember the name of that was really good for grasses and so on, and which could possibly be stitched on two different scales – then I would be able to do the whole jumble in what was effectively one stitch, giving coherence to it, while varying the colours to add highlights to the texture. While I stitched my pointy tulip and stem, Kathryn leafed (pun intended) through various canvas stitch books, and finally came up with the rather splendidly named Triple Cross Encroaching.

Triple Cross Encroaching

I sampled this in some variegated shashiko thread, at the original size and smaller. The shashiko thread was too thick for the smaller version, which incidentally is relatively narrower than the original size because although the foundation cross stitch can be reduced from over-four to over-two, the slanted stitches only stick out beyond the cross by one canvas thread in the original, which can’t be reduced any further. Still, they both make interesting patterns. I then sampled them in one ply of Caron Watercolours (original size) and one thread of Caron Wildflowers (reduced version), with lighter stitches worked in to see whether that could be used to create highlights. These light stitches will need to be placed a bit more randomly and I can also play with working the stitch upside down, but it looks promising; and the idea of doing the whole green chaos in variations of one stitch definitely appeals!

The leafy jumble stitch in two sizes using variegated shashiko thread The original size worked in Watercolours The smaller size worked in Wildflowers

And that’s where I am at the moment. My next class is at the end of September, but with several busy weekends coming up I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do. Kathryn went through various of my samples for large leaves with me and we decided on the ones that would likely work best, so I will at least try to get the big leaves in the foreground stitched. And I might sneak in a bit of mill, just for a change…

The project after class

Hengest gets company

Once upon a time there was a dopey looking horse on a medieval cope who got turned into a dopey looking unicorn: Hengest. As he took about four and a half years from start to finish you would think he had abundantly scratched any unicorn itch I might have had. And then I came across some paper I bought in the Netherlands years ago for wrapping St Nicholas presents. It was covered in colourful cartoonish representations of the various people and things associated with that festival, among them St Nicholas’ horse. But I did not see a horse. I saw a unicorn. It’s what happens when you have recently become grandmother to a sweet baby girl. Your thoughts go pink and lilac and unicorny. And so I played around with this little horse, added a horn, rearranged his mane, tweaked his saddle blanket to have room for an initial, changed the colour palette from primary to pastel, and there was Esmee’s Unicorn!

Esmee Esmee's Unicorn

But what to do with it? Well, babies use bibs. Why not find a nice plain white bib and unicornify it? Unfortunately our local supermarket had a wide array of coloured and pre-decorated bibs, but nothing plain and white. The closest thing I could find, tucked away on the last-season’s-things rail, was a small white broderie anglaise bib and cap. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to make a baby’s bib out of broderie anglaise, and I seriously doubt that the person who decided on the size of it has ever fed a baby, but one has to work with what is available.

A small white bib

At first I considered stitching on the back of the bib, which is a plain fabric – it could then be used double-sided. It would mean very careful stitching, taking the needle in a sewing motion through one layer of fabric only, and fastening on and off would be tricky (although I had done something similar when embellishing the foot of a memory bear). More problematically, the colours would probably shine through to the front. I dismissed this approach. My next idea was to simply stitch over the broderie anglaise, but I worried that the unevenness of the fabric would make it difficult to keep the lines neat. A patch, then? And preferably something that doesn’t fray, so it doesn’t have to be hemmed or oversewn. I decided on some pelmet-weight non-woven interfacing which I originally bought for a stumpwork butterfly, then traced the design, pricked it, and poked a pencil through the holes to create a connect-the-dots unicorn. Pick the required shades of DMC, and we’re ready to go.

The design transferred, and the colours chosen

By the way, seeing the way my needle marked the interfacing I had a thought: it had been quite difficult to mark the dots with my mechanical pencil going through the holes in the pricked tracing paper, so why not just prick the tracing paper while it sits on top of the interfacing? A quick try showed that this was perfectly feasible, and if you prick with a bit of thought, placing the holes closer together on tight curves, you could actually use these holes for your stitches! In fact I might try this for a workshop or children’s kit – you could pre-prick a small design and let them create a brooch or a fridge magnet. The stitching could be done in hand, no need for a hoop as the fabric is so stiff.

Pricking on heavy-weight Vilene The resulting dots, ready for connecting

I filed that little idea away and set to work on the unicorn. Fasten on with a knot at the front (pink arrow) and a few small stab stitches (blue arrow; neither of them very easy to see because I chose to photograph it while using light grey thread on a white background…) and then just stem stitch over all the lines – it was quite relaxing! The only bits which were not stem stitched were the nostril (satin stitch) and the eye (straight stitches with a doubled single strand fastened on with a loop start).

Fastening on with stab stitches Stem stitch all the way A loop start for the eye

When the whole unicorn had been stitched it was time to attach him (her?) to the bib. First I cut around the outline of the unicorn, as close to the stitching as I dared. I didn’t cut the bit between the head and the blanket, as the background it would be stitched onto was white anyway; if the background had been a different colour, I would reluctantly have attempted to cut that part too. Then I backstitched around the outline using a polyester sewing thread, tucking the stitches underneath the stem stitches as much as possible. And here it is: one unicorned bib.

Cutting around the stitched unicorn Stitching around the stitching The finished bib

But even as I was getting things together for Esmee’s bib, somewhere in the goldwork-loving recesses of my mind an idea stirred. The sort of unicorns that appeal to little girls are, unlike woolly Hengest, sparkly and blingy. Should there be bling in Esmee’s unicorn? But no, a bib needs to be washable. Still, there is nothing to stop me from stitching a metalwork unicorn purely for my own enjoyment, right? There would be gold and silver passing, there might be shiny metallic kid leather for the blanket, there could be spangles…

Esmee's Unicorn with spangles on its blanket Esmee's Unicorn with spangles and an initial

… and there could be colour! Although goldwork suggests, well, gold, and possibly silver and copper, modern metal embroidery materials come in all sorts of pretty shades. How is this for some unicorn-appropriate twist? And I’ve got the same colours in a thinner passing thread.

Colourful bling for a unicorn

Still, although my stash of goldwork materials is fairly extensive (and about to become even more so – watch this space) I don’t have much in the way of coloured metallics for couching; no pink twist or passing, for example, and no coloured metallic kid either. So I paid a little visit to Sarah Homfray’s excellent shop and some colourful shiny goodies are making their way Figworthy-wards! We’ll soon be all set for a blingy unicorn smiley.

The Drago(o)n Guard

Last June I mentioned that because of a fellow stitcher’s chew-happy puppy I’d got myself kitted up to stitch Teresa Wentzler’s Needle Guardian. One of my reasons for choosing this as my after-dinner-watching-telly project was that I really wanted something that took absolutely no design input or decisions on my part, but was still challenging enough to keep my interest. The Needle Guardian, with its blended colours, variegated silk, pulled thread work, rainbow metallic thread and beads ticked all the boxes. Quite apart from the fact that this dragon has character, and makes me smile whenever I look at it smiley.

Blending colours Variegated silk Pulled thread work Beads and rainbow metallics as the final touch

Which brings me to the question: is this a boy dragon or a girl dragon? Throughout the stitching process I mostly referred to him as, well, him. But then a fellow stitcher commented that she realised it was a personalised design but Mabel was in fact the perfect name for this dragon. Hmm, perhaps she had a point – the dragon’s posture (not to mention the hairdo, strangely reminiscent of curlers) suddenly made me think of the battleaxes in vintage British soaps and sitcoms. And if a Nora or an Ena, why not a Mabel? Mabels have attitude!

Battleaxes

Once all the stitching was finished, there remained the question of What To Do With It. I generally feel that if I enjoyed stitching it, then it doesn’t have to be useful in any other way, but it seemed a shame to consign this characterful reptilian to my folder of finished-but-not-“finished” projects. Originally the design was intended as a needle book, folded in the middle so the dragon’s tail and the name of the owner were on the back, and the main bit of the dragon on the front. But it would make quite a large needle book, and I knew it wouldn’t get used; the needle books which I use from day to day and which are dotted around the house are smaller and undecorated versions of my Hardanger mini kits.

Convenient little needle books

However, I do have a box in which I keep my stock of needles, both for kits and for my own use. It is made of sturdy cardboard and is covered in a rather startling pattern of coloured dots on a black ground. It’s useful, but it isn’t pretty. So why not make it pretty by adding a blingy dragon to it?

I didn’t want to have to do any sewing if I could help it, so everything was going to be attached with double-sided sticky tape. It may not be conservation-grade finishing, but then it’s not meant to be an heirloom to be handed down the generations – it’s a cardboard needle box that I’m making look a bit nicer. If I have to restick things every now and then, that’s fine by me. After considering various options from my stash I decided that black felt covering the entire top of the box would make a good neutral background and also show up the pulled thread work, and the addition of a bit of padding would, I hope, make it look more luxurious for only a little extra effort.

Getting ready to prettify my box

First up was cutting roughly around the stitching to get it down to a manageable size, covering the top of the box with tape, and sticking a rectangle of wadding slightly smaller than the stitching in the centre of the lid. Note to self: do not cut wadding with your sticky-tape scissors – it gets messy! Next, stick a layer of black felt over the wadding and trim to the size of the lid. Then trim the embroidery as close as possible to the nun’s stitch edging and put sticky tape around the edges on the back.

Wadding cut and stuck, and fabric trimmed down Black felt covers the wadding and the rest of the lid Trimming the embroidery and applying sticky tape to the back

And finally, stick the embroidery onto the padded part of the black felt, pushing the edges down to create a nicely curved look. Voilà, a dragon-guarded needle box!

The finished box A padded dragon

Boxing not-very-clever-yet

Well, I’ve started. In between tulips and leaves (and a dragon – more of that some other time) I’ve taken time out to work on the kit that came with the RSN Introduction to Box Making course. The pre-cut mountboard pieces (and oh my goodness am I glad they are pre-cut; Heather Lewis’ book puts a lot of emphasis on how accurate the cutting has to be, a challenge I am happy to postpone) are to be covered with fabric using two methods: lacing (expected) and double-sided sticky tape (very much not expected). The latter method feels remarkably like cheating, but as fellow C&D students pointed out on our FB group, the tape is not what holds the box together; it just attaches the fabric to the card for long enough to be able to sew the various parts together. If after sewing things together the sticky tape stops sticking or even disintegrates entirely, it doesn’t matter. It is only if the fabric has embroidery on it that lacing is a better option because of the added weight.

As I want to practice both methods I’ve decided to stick the yellow fabric (which will cover all the inner bits) and lace the patterned green fabric (for the outer bits). And I started with four of the larger yellow pieces, trimming and pinching corners but still not getting them quite as neat as I’d like (Marlous – her of the Stitching Sheep – suggested an additonal small piece of tape to aid corner neatness which I will try next time).

A covered piece of card A slightly too bulky corner

Things I learnt from those four pieces: 1) don’t cut the fabric too large, it leaves flappy unattached bits at the back; 2) even though you’ve pulled the fabric taut, sometimes there are small bulges along the edge, but when using sticky tape you can reposition these; and 3) it is very, very tricky to get the fabric folded around the card on the grain! One of the difficulties is that when you have stuck down two opposing sides and you move on to the other two, their corners are already fixed so when you pull to get the fabric taut you only pull the middle, leading to the grain curving rather than sitting tidily and neatly on the edge of the card. My trusty fellow students on the FB group, especially those who have already done the Creative Box module of the Diploma, suggested starting with the shorter sides rather than the longer ones as I had done, so I’ll try that next time, together with pulling the first two sides out towards the corners (i.e. along the edge of the card) as well as out at right angles to the card.

Fabric cut too large flaps about on the back Small bulges on the edge A curved grain

Now I was planning to take this course at a leisurely, not to say glacial, pace. Cover a few bits of card, put them away, cover a few more a couple of days or a week later, and then when all 19 bits are covered start assembling. But Marlous advised a cover-and-stitch approach because the sticky tape does allow the fabric to relax after a while (lacing presumably not so much). Having read Heather’s book about box making I knew that generally you start by attaching two sides and a bottom; I’d covered two long sides plus the bottom and top, so just cover a short side and get started, right? Wrong. This particular box has a false floor, and the supports for it have to be attached to the insides first. So I quickly covered one of the long supports (too quickly – I pulled the fabric too much one way, resulting in a fraying corner; tchk!), measured out 2mm from the bottom and sides of the larger piece to pinpoint the position of the support, and set about attaching them to each other. Fortunately the frayed corner could be put right at the bottom where it will eventually be snuggled up against two other corners so the fraying can be neatly tucked away.

A fraying corner Measuring out the support's position

All sewing together on boxes like these is done using slip stitch, also known as ladder stitch – I prefer the latter name because it is so descriptive of what the stitch looks like before you pull it together (shown below mitring a corner on my RSN Jacobean piece). As I mentioned above, on a basic box you start by sewing two sides together, but on this one the first thing is to attach the false floor supports to the four interior sides of the box. This means attaching one bit flat on top of another, and I suspect this is more challenging than stitching two edges together at right angles – at least I hope it is, because I found it quite challenging to get neat! Generally I am quite good at ladder stitch, but on this first piece the stitching is much more visible than I had expected/intended/hoped, even though I tried to get my stitches as low on the support edge as possible, and as far in on the main fabric as possible. Oh well, as long as I see improvement on the next three supports, I’ll be satisfied – this is after all my very first attempt at this particular discipline, and as I always impress on my own students, if everyone produced a perfect piece the very first time they had a go, what would happen to the teachers smiley?

Ladder stitch Stitching as close to the bottom of the support as possible The first support attached

The videos that form the main part of the course are very informative and helpful, but I do find that I miss not having written instructions. To some extend Heather’s box making book fills that gap, but that doesn’t, of course, mention this particular box. However, underneath every video there is a summary of what is covered in it, and I’ve copied and pasted that into a document, tidied it up and printed it out, so that as I am stitching away I can have a quick look at what I’m supposed to do next and how to do it without having to fire up the laptop. Most of those next steps will be yellow and not very exciting to look at – apologies for some rather monochrome updates! But I hope to get on to the floral fabric in the not too distant future.

Printed instructions and a lot of yellow

Stitching, unstitching, restitching and just one more stitch…

Looking back on my Canvaswork posts I realise I never updated you on my last class on 29th April. By 28th April nothing much had happened since the February class, but as I really couldn’t attend with nothing done at all I decided on some sampling. Helen McC had asked me to sample another background texture for the leafy jumble between the tulips, as she felt it needed three sizes rather than the two I’d done so far. She liked the staggered crosses, so I tried those using two plies of Caron Watercolours for the large crosses and one strand each of dark green and dark blue DMC for the small ones (the photograph shows only some of the small crosses done). By mistake I reversed the large crosses in the top row and found that I actually like the effect of that better with the other background (upright crosses) next to it, so that was a lucky error!

Sampling staggered crosses

I also sampled the smallest of the three textures, lazy kalem, using one ply of Caron Watercolours only (orange arrow), then adding a strand of very dark green DMC (green arrow), then adding a strand of very dark blue to that (blue arrow). I couldn’t see any difference that wasn’t accounted for by the Caron variegation. Nor could Helen J who taught the April class. So one ply of Watercolour it is.

Sampling lazy kalem

In class I played around with the medium-sized tulips behind the two very big ones, sampling split gobelin in Madeira silk which I liked apart from the colours (not enough blending) and a vertical herringbone variation in vintage silk originally intended for the pointy-petalled tulip which turned out not to work for any of them. A shame, because I did like the texture of the stitch. Perhaps I can use it somewhere else.

Sampling a split gobelin tulip The sampled tulip Sampling a vertical herringbone tulip

My homework for the next class, on 24th June, was to be the second hut and bush, the middle medium tulip and some more sampling for the pointy-petalled one. I managed one roof. Then the class was cancelled because too few people had signed up, and I cancelled one in early July because of a walk in memory of a church friend who had died suddenly and far too young. I was offered a replacement class for the one cancelled by the RSN on 22nd July, and decided to do some homework in preparation for that.

Looking at the roof I’d stitched, I didn’t like it. It’s a slanted buttonhole stitch with the ridge on the top, and the ridge was slightly irregular. I unpicked and restitched it. It was still slightly irregular, so I think I’ll just have to live with that! I also worked the rest of the hut, in horizontal satin stitches to depict the wooden planks, in two shades to show the shadow on the wood, and added two white lines to the roof because they are there in the photograph although I have no idea what they are. Finally the second bush, like the first one in Turkey rug stitch in a number of blends using crewel wool, vintage silk, flat silk and an anonymous matt twisted thread. I do dislike the fact that I’m not allowed to cut them until right at the end, because I can foresee that they will get horribly in the way! Still, it was progress. And then the RSN cancelled the 22nd July class as the tutors wouldn’t be able to get to Rugby because of the planned railway strikes. Oh well, at least it had spurred me on to do some work.

The re-stitched roof The rest of the hut The second bush

The cancellation meant that my next class won’t be until 19th August, a little under four months after the last one. Really, I should be able to show the tutor more than one hut and one bush! As we had extensively discussed the medium-sized tulips and some of the greenery, I decided to have a go at that. First the middle one of the three tulips; using Madeira silk as in the sampling, but more blended. In split gobelin, except where I wanted to indicate the line between petals, where the stitches would abut each other. I was quite pleased with how that turned out, apart from a little too much of the lightest shade (blue arrow). Still, I didn’t dislike it enough to unpick it smiley.

The stitched middle tulip next to the photograph The stitched middle tulip close-up

On to the left-hand tulip. I’d got some lovely Au Ver à Soie flat silk (Soie Ovale) for this tulip, but on reflection the shade was too peachy, so I went with some Eterna flat silk combined with one dark red Silk Mill silk. It uses the same split gobelin approach with abutting stitches for the petal line, and because I wanted that line to be quite clear, I found I had to work a tiny extra stitch before fastening off the lightest blend so the final stitch pulled in the right direction. The things you have to think of when doing canvaswork!

An extra little stitch to pull the previous stitch in the right direction

And then the tulip was finished. And I liked the colour and the blending. But. There were coverage issues, and more importantly, the shape was wrong. Somehow the tulip had got rather bloated, and compared to its intended outline it was too wide.

The left-hand tulip finished The left-hand tulip compared to its intended outline

The next day I bit the bullet and decided that it would have to come out. I printed the comparison photograph and marked it up to show which stitches needed to go. I also outlined the areas for the different blends, chucked the Silk Mill silk which has a slightly different texture from the Eternas, put new blends together and did as much prep as I could possibly do. Then some careful snipping and tweezering and the tulip was a fluffy pile of thread bits.

Marking up the tulip Getting ready to unpick Tweezering away the cut threads A pile of fluff

With twelve instead of ten strands in my needle (or rather, needles), I set to work; Eterna silk has been discontinued but fortunately I had enough left for this revamp! In marking up the tulip I’d also done some remedial work on the petal line, and fortunately I did much prefer the look of the restitched version (on the left in the comparison picture below). On consideration I should perhaps have kept that darker Silk Mill shade, but on the whole it is definitely an improvement, and much more like the intended outline. Phew! There are still some gaps, but I’m afraid they’ll just have to stay – more than twelve strands simply gets too bulky, and a major cause of the gaps is the fact that the stitches are split, which I can’t do anything about.

The restitched tulip

And finally, back to the middle tulip. Or rather, what I noticed when I started stitching it. The right-hand petal of my pride and joy, the big red tulip, was not as pointy as it should be!

A too blunt tulip petal

It was very, very fiddly fitting in one short diagonal stitch in Caron Watercolours, and even more fiddly getting the couching stitches over it. By doubling a single ply of Watercolours I could start with a loop start, which was one less end to secure at the back – a good thing as the stitching is so densely packed there that it is difficult to get a needle through to fasten off. For the two couching stitches I really needed two blends, because one had to be redder than the other, but I got around that by manipulating the four strands in the blend so that the darker strands were more prominent at the very tip (blue arrow), and the lighter ones at the stitch further in (green arrow). Was this tweak really necessary? Probably not; I doubt if anyone else would notice if I hadn’t added the extra stitch. But it was worth it for me, which is what counts in cases like these. If it doesn’t bother you, leave it. If it will irk you whenever you look at it, take it out and re-do it. You’ll be much happier for it smiley.

The diagonal stitch has been added The couching is in place

And that’s where it stands at the moment! Leafy stuff is my task for next weekend – after all the reds and pinks it’s going to be green, green, green. But all in silks and cottons, and not a trowel or pair of seccateurs in sight; very much my sort of gardening!

What the project looks like at the moment

Ticking all the boxes

I get the RSN newsletter. It tells me about exhibitions which I rarely if ever manage to go to, the Certificate & Diploma programme which I’m already on, the Degree and Future Tutors programmes which I will never do, and, slightly more dangerous, new classes and kits. Generally I am well able to resist both the kits (because I know the size of the pile of kits in my craft room) and the classes (because they are either at Hampton Court Palace which is impractical, or online which I don’t like), so I can safely take an interest in all the things the RSN do and organise without being overly tempted. But in the latest newsletter there was a link to a new self-paced course – online, true, but with the various instruction videos watched at your own convenience, as often as you like, at whatever pace you like. Almost like learning from a book, which has long been one of my favourite ways of tackling a new skill, but with the added bonus of having things demonstrated by a tutor over and over again if you need it. And unlike most of the other self-paced courses which I’d idly had a look at before, this one covered something which I have never had a go at before: box making.

The box that you will learn to make

Oddly enough I’d been thinking about box making only a little earlier because one of my fellow C & D students (Marlous, known as the Stitching Sheep) had posted a picture of her project for the Diploma Box Making module. And so this new course was definitely tempting. It got complicated when I went on the RSN website to find it, only to come across another box which immediately took my fancy and which was available as a kit. The curves, the tassle, the little goldwork bird on top – so much more attractive than the nice-but-plain box of the course. But also, very obviously, much much more advanced. Did I really want to risk getting what is without question a very expensive kit only to mess it up and end up with a wonky box?

An attractive bird box

I contacted the designer to ask her about the level of skill needed, and found out that although this particular RSN-themed version of the box was exclusive to the RSN, she was hoping to make the box available with a different theme (colour scheme, decoration) on her own website next year. Plenty of time for me to order and read through box-making course tutor Heather Lewis’ excellent book on the subject, do the beginners’ course and have a go at the curved box some time next year (or the year after – no rush), and so on to the Box Making module of the Diploma if I ever get that far.

Heather Lewis' book on box making

So I signed up for the Introduction to Box Making, and had a look at the first couple of videos which go through the materials and the course programme. Very informative and interesting, so I watched the one about two ways of covering the box pieces in fabric as well. Two days later both the book shown above and the course kit arrived – I hadn’t expected them to get here so quickly but it meant I could leaf through the book and have a leisurely look at the kit materials over the weekend. My very first look at the kit materials was a bit more rushed, as the box it arrived in was quite worryingly battered and our friendly postwoman waited patiently for me to open it and see if anything had been damaged so I could refuse to accept the parcel if that was the case.

A rather battered box

Fortunately all was well, except for a slight crease on the surface of one of the cut pieces of card, but as it wasn’t actually bent I don’t think it will be a problem. Mind you, I didn’t see the crease immediately as all the bits and pieces in the box came wrapped, either in a cardboard tube, a padded envelope or some pretty purple tissue paper, and I’d only checked to see those wrappings looked reasonably intact; well, I didn’t want to keep our kind postie waiting any longer than was necessary!

The box-making parcels that were inside the postal box

Then came the fun of properly unwrapping. The cardboard tube contained the two coloured fabrics for the inside and outside of the box, and white fabric with the word Threads printed on it for the embroidered lid, as well as some yellow ribbon. The padded envelope held the cut mountboard parts, one of them with the aforementioned crease. The purple tissue paper revealed double-sided sticky tape (yes, one of the methods for attaching fabric to the mountboard is sticky tape!), two tiny curved needles, embroidery needles, buttonhole thread, two colours of sewing thread and a skein of stranded cotton. There was also a welcome letter in the thin envelope with the picture of the box on it.

Fabrics Cut mountboard parts Sticky tape, needles and threads

All in all a satisfying collection of bits and bobs, but where to store them for the moment? I decided that the fabric would best be kept in the tube they came in, and all the other elements turned out to fit very nicely into the small purple bag that once held my RSN Certificate Welcome Pack; very appropriate smiley.

The bits and bobs fit nicely into my small purple RSN bag

Tempting though it is to have a go Right Away, there is Canvaswork to be done first. Several of my classes have been cancelled, either because too few people signed up for a particular session or because of rail strikes. Disappointing, but on the other hand I hadn’t managed to do much in the way of homework, so it may be just as well to have more time in which to get a reasonable amount done and have something substantial to discuss with the tutor. Since my last update here I have managed a small roof, a small bush and a medium-sized tulip – not much, perhaps, but it’s progress!

Stitching an arboretum, and a cull

Over the past six years or so our kitchen calendar has often been one by Hannah Dunnett, who combines paintings with Bible verses so organically that it is hard to say whether they are illustrated verses or paintings with lettering added. I have one of her posters in my craft room (Psalm 121, in case you’re wondering). Yes, I really like her work! Last year, some small trees on one of the calendar’s pages drew my attention. They reminded me of Psalm 1, which talks about the righteous being like trees planted by streams of water and bearing fruit. Their shapes were rather satisfying. Would they work in stitch, I wondered.

The Hannah Dunnett trees that inspired me

I decided they probably would, and first things first, contacted Hannah Dunnett to ask whether I could have a go at embroidering these trees as long as they were just for my own enjoyment, not for making into kits or chart packs. She thought that was a lovely idea and asked me to send pictures when I’d finished them. Permission having been obtained, the next step was to create usable outlines for transferring onto fabric. Some day I will start using a vector-based program, but getting to grips with one of those takes time, so until we retire from our main business I’m sticking with the photo editing program I’ve been using until now and which I know inside out.

Outlines for transferring

Then it was a matter of choosing colours. For three of the trees I decided to stick more or less with the colours of the original, but the purply-red tree, having come from a different part of the design, didn’t quite fit in. From the start I envisaged it as an autumnal tree, with its green parts more towards the yellow end of the spectrum and some red, orange and yellow in it. As the green in the other trees leans more towards the blue end this meant that tree number four still didn’t completely match the rest of the set, but there – who says a designer needs to be consistent in everything smiley.

Deciding on a colour scheme

Time to start stitching! Because these trees aren’t meant for anything other than my own pleasure this was a great opportunity to use lots of different threads from my stash, and to play with various stitches without too much planning. (I am constitutionally incapable of stitching without any planning at all, so there were some scribbled stitch ideas and notes on and around the printed outlines, but the process has been as unplanned as I can manage.) For fabric I chose a densely woven linen that needs no backing and allows for very precise stitch placement, and to begin with I picked Splendor silks for the apple tree and Heathway Milano wool for the autumnal one; later I added Caron threads for the tall tree (cypress? poplar?) and both coton à broder and floche for the fourth tree.

Choosing colours and scribbling notes Linen fabric with the transferred designs and a start on the apple tree

The main focus of the apple tree is, unsurprisingly, the apples, and I wanted them to stand out. To give them a bit of height I worked them in Rhodes stitch, but the first one looked a little uneven so I unpicked it and from then on worked split stitch outlines before covering them in Rhodes stitch, which made them much neater. For the green surrounding the apples I had to decide on the look I was after; Hannah Dunnett’s original is solidly coloured, but I felt that would be too heavy in stitch – not too mention far too much work! Seed stitch to the rescue: it looks properly green but still fairly airy.

Outlined apples A finished apple tree with seeding

I was really pleased with that little apple tree! But then at the end of July Covid hit the Figworthy household, and the tree planting ground to a halt. Even though this was just a fun project, I needed something even less challenging, and also smaller and easier to hold. I transferred the autumnal tree to a separate piece of fabric and over the next few months had a go at that, using Danish flower threads. This also gave me the opportunity to try out another stitch combination, as I’d scribbled down two different ones for this tree. It took until January (not least because my initial choice of vermicelli couching for the internal green didn’t work and had to be unpicked), but then I had a little tree worked in satin, split, stem and Palestrina stitch and colonial knots. It looks a bit flatter than I had expected, but it is decorative enough, and a good trial run for the one in the main project.

Experimental vermicelli couching The finished tree

I couldn’t decide which of the other two trees to start on next, so I just worked on them both, alternating between what I’d started thinking of as the cypress tree and the one that didn’t really suggest any particular tree to me. My arboretum was now made up of Apple Tree, Autumn Tree, Cypress Tree and Nondescript Tree. Can you see where this might be going…?

Working on two trees at once

In the planning there was an element of padding or some sort of 3D-ness in all the trees, and in Cypress Tree that was mostly the wavy outline, for which I “bunch couched” a bundle of 8 lengths of Caron Wildflowers – very dark green on one side, slightly less dark green on the other. As these trees were always meant as a slightly experimental project, great for trying out things, I decided on striped raised stem stitch for the centre swirl. It’s a bit fiddly but does produce a lovely effect. With all the needle manipulation necessary for this stitch it would have been sensible to have done it before the couched outline, but heigh ho, it’s all a learning process! The vermicelli couching I had reluctantly abandoned in the Autumn Tree also found a place here, and that was another tree completed.

Bunched couching for the Cypress outline Cypress tree with raised stem stitch and vermicelli couching

Meanwhile I’d also started the Autumn Tree on my main fabric, this time in wool. The raised element here was going to be the padded satin stitch swirls in red, orange and yellow, so after the split stitch stem and whipped stem stitch foliage outline I worked a split stitch base for the red swirl.

The padding for a raised satin stitch swirl

Then I started covering it in slanted satin stitch. But when I got to the tip it didn’t look right. I left it temporarily, did a less challenging orange swirl, unpicked the red satin stitch and re-did it with the slant in the opposite direction. I didn’t like the look of that either. So that’s where the Autumn Tree is stuck for now. I’ll get back to it.

Slanted one way Slanted the other way

The same can’t be said for the Nondescript Tree. The trouble is that it is the least interesting of the four. It doesn’t have the coloured swirls of the Autumn Tree, or the bright apples of the Apple Tree, or the unusual shape of the Cypress Tree. For the “leaves” inside the tree’s crown I couldn’t really think of anything other than padded satin stitch, and that was already in use in another tree. In order to give the creative process a nudge I decided to leave the leaves for the moment and to work the outline of the foliage in yet another stitch (or perhaps more accurately, a technique) I’d not tried before: trailing.

This encompasses laying string or cord (or a bundle of thinner threads) on the line that is to be covered, and then couching this into place with stitches that completely cover the string. It’s very textural, and using a bundle of threads means you can trim some of them towards the end of a line to taper it (a bit like you would in gold cutwork, like Bruce’s tail). I used floche to cover my bundle of string, and found the effect very pleasing – rather smooth and satiny. Taking my couching stitches through the fabric precisely enough was quite tricky, and my line is not perfect – there is a bit of a kink – but all in all I’m happy with the look, and with the taper.

Laying the string Starting couching Beginning the taper A fully tapered end

And yet. And yet I am abandoning this tree. It has been really useful in getting me to try out trailing, which is a technique I will definitely use in future designs, but as a whole I simply can’t give it its own character, its USP so to speak. So my arboretum will be a trio of trees. That is to say, if I can get that padded satin stitch to work…

Nostalgia, holiday stitching and re-stashing

Mr F and I have returned from our holiday, which was a bit of a nostalgia trip; partly because half of it saw us meeting up with family and friends in my home town and going around the old familiar places, but partly because it was all done in our 1933 Austin Seven Box Saloon (which, should you feel inclined, you can stitch in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry) and included a rally in the north of the country for which we dressed the part. Although this was much appreciated by the spectators, it has its drawbacks. It is not easy to eat the local sticky sugar bread and salted herring we were offered at the various staging posts (not together, I hasten to say) while wearing delicate crocheted gloves…

Dressing up to match the 1933 car

One of the many nice things on this holiday was coming across various bits of needlework, sometimes unexpectedly: one day we went for lunch at a pancake restaurant situated in an apple, pear and cherry orchard, which has a farm shop attached. While browsing the various fruit juices and locally produced cakes and biscuits I spotted a poster for a small exhibition of sewing and needlework in the next village. That Saturday, which was National Mill Day, I hired a bicycle and cycled there, only to find that the History Society hosting the exhibition was housed next to the local windmill, so I got a working windmill and local brass band as well as a historic sampler and lace caps!

A historic sampler A lace cap

Another find was this pulpit hanging adorning the church of Hindeloopen, a harbour town in the north of The Netherlands. It is not very elaborate, with only small touches of gold and silver and worked in what looks like full threads of stranded cotton in a variety of fairly basic stitches (including an effective use of twisted chain stitch), but no less lovely with its bright colours and beautiful symbolism.

The Hindeloopen pulpit hanging Close-up of the pulpit hanging: sun Close-up of the pulpit hanging: dove

You may wonder whether all this needlework inspired me to pick up the projects I’d brought with me. Well, it did – much to my own surprise I finished one of the two Victoria Sampler kits and got well over half of the second one done. Quite my best holiday stitching result in years!

The ribbon kit finished A start on the Hardanger kit

So some de-stashing has happened – the second kit has meanwhile been finished as well and both will be turned into cards which by their very nature will eventually leave our house – but I’m not sure what to do with the kits themselves. There is quite a bit of thread etc. left, and of course the charts; I will have to find a good home for those. And then there is re-stashing.

Just before going on holiday I got the Melbury Hill newsletter, which mentioned their new kit in celebration of the Coronation. The design centres around the most endearing Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and I fell in love. I showed it to Mr Mabel who decided I hadn’t had an unbirthday present for far too long, and a day or two later this arrived:

The Cavalier King Charles kit

I’ve written to Melbury Hill because although I understand that colours on screen can be inaccurate, I felt the ones for the dog were very different even from the printed photograph of the stitched model included in the kit, but apparently they are the thread colours she used so the discrepancy is down to photography and printing. I also asked about part of the stitch instructions which I felt might be confusing to someone not too experienced in needlework, but I haven’t heard back about that – I’ll let you know as and when I do.

Further re-stashing came in the form of bulk threads for the Wildflower Garden and Shisha kits – an excusable purchase, I think – as well as some Madeira silk and Soie Ovale for my RSN Canvaswork module. Don’t the flat silks look scrumptious? It won’t surprise you that they are intended for one of the tulips.

Soie Ovale for my Canvaswork project

And finally, a case of re-stashing to de-stash (or so I tell myself). A fellow member of a stitching forum asked for the colour key to Teresa Wentzler’s Needle Guardian (now discontinued), which had been chewed by her puppy. I was almost certain I’d purchased that design years ago, and in fact I bought the Dinky Dyes overdyed cotton and Kreinik variegated metallic braid to stitch it, but never got round to it. I found the chart, sent my fellow stitcher the colour key, and was reminded how much I liked the design. So from my stash I got together all the threads and beads, plus a piece of opalescent Lugana; a blingy dragon can always use more bling! There was one shade of DMC, however, which I lent to someone years ago and through various circumstances had never got back. That would need to be ordered. And originally I had bought the Dinky Dyes cotton because the silk was too expensive. But it seemed silly to order just one skein of DMC. So the Dinky Dyes silk was added. And for the same postage I could add a few more threads. So two Caron Waterlilies joined the shopping basket. I haven’t got a particular purpose for them yet but they go really well with another, lighter variegated green that I already have…

Teresa Wentzler's Needle Guardian Ready to start stitching the Needle Guardian Opalescent fabric Pretty silks (and a stranded cotton)

And so it continues smiley.

Birthday inspiration and holiday de-stashing

Last month I received a very interesting birthday present from a friend in Kenya: a set of six beautiful leather coasters painted with African animals.

Coasters and a leather strap

They look really good dotted around our coffee table and side tables, but what caught my attention, slightly unexpectedly, was the strip of leather that held them together (blue arrow above). Stretched out, it looks remarkable like bark. And, well…

A tree trunk on my canvaswork

I bounced the idea of using it for my Canvaswork project off the RSN tutor at my class last Saturday (FoF about that still to be written) and she liked it! The leather will need a bit of trimming, but sewn down using a beige thread it should resemble the tree trunk in the picture quite nicely.

Another bit of birthday inspiration came from a friend’s 70th. Obviously the occasion called for a hand-made card – but what to stitch? Well, she is a keen gardener, so something floral would be good. And I wanted to get the 70 in there somehow. Rummaging through my stash drawers I came across a beautiful hand-dyed green fabric which I got from Paintbox Threads at the Knitting & Stitching show some years ago, and a floral quilting cotton. How about some appliqué? With decorative stitching to make the numbers stand out. Two shades of Caron Watercolours suggested themselves, so I took a little time to see which one seemed more suitable, the green matching the background, or the pastel variegated one echoing the floral colours of the appliqué fabric.

Choosing materials

There was some preparation to do anyway, so no rush to decide on a colour. First I drew a nice plump 70 on the paper side of a bit of Bondaweb. This correctly mirrored 70 is my second attempt; I’d forgotten to draw the numbers back to front first time round, but fortunately noticed before actually ironing it onto the back of the floral fabric. Then it was a matter of cutting them out and positioning them on the fabric (I chose an off-set layout), peeling off the paper backing and ironing them in place. You can attach the cut pieces with little stab stitches, but as I was going to work decorative stitches over the edges anyway I felt I could take this little shortcut.

The mirrored 70 Bondawebbed to the fabric The numbers cut out The number ironed on

Mr Mabel having been consulted as well, we decided that colourful is good! The green thread was returned to the thread box, and I set about stitching with the floral thread. One of my favourite stitches for this sort of project is raised chain stitch, but for this project it would be a little too chunky, and too difficult to manipulate around the angles on the 7, so I went with plain chain stitch.

A chain stitch outline

Then it was just a matter of mounting it into a card with some wadding behind it, and voilà!

The finished card

The de-stashing came about because I was looking for a project to take on holiday to the Netherlands. As we will be seeing family and friends as well as participating in a rally with our 1933 Austin Seven, there won’t be that much opportunity for stitching, and I wanted any stitching that did get done to be relaxing rather than challenging. It would also help if I didn’t have to take notes or think about writing instructions for the designs. Which meant that ideally, I’d take something that wasn’t my own design. Now I do have a fair few kits lying around waiting to be stitched, but complicated goldwork with lots of pearls or beetle wings (courtesy of Alison Cole) or intricate silk shading (by Bluebird Embroidery) didn’t quite fit the bill.

But I did dig out some other kits recently, when I was trying to create more space in the cupboard where I keep Mabel’s stock of kits. I must have bought them well over a decade ago, and they come from The Victoria Sampler’s Beyond Cross Stitch range. Those are all smallish designs using cross stitch plus something else, in the case of these two kits ribbonwork and Hardanger. The fabric that came with the kits wasn’t quite large enough to fit comfortably into a hoop, so I cut two new pieces to take. Add my faithful squissors and we’re good to go!

Victoria Sampler kits

Like so many stitchers I always take far too many projects because of FORO – Fear Of Running Out. So two small kits didn’t seem quite enough. What about Heather Lewis’ Elizabethan Beauty? It contains a goldwork stitch I’ve not done before, Elizabethan plaited braid stitch worked in gold passing, which I would definitely not attempt on holiday, but it also has some not-too-intricate shading which should be doable. So the passing and spangles get left behind, the mounted fabric (silk dupion with the design drawn on and already attached to a calico backing – this is a very good kit!) and cotton threads come with us to the Netherlands. I’ll let you know when we’re back whether any of it actually got stitched…

Heather Lewis' Elizabethan Beauty

Going dotty

Over the past year or so, more and more of Mabel’s kits have been given a bit of a makeover; they are now packed in sturdy recycleable cardboard boxes, and increasingly come with the design printed or drawn on the fabric so you can start stitching right away. The latest kits to receive this treatment are the two Shisha ones – the flower on blue fabric, and the tile on pale yellow.

Printed fabric for the Shisha kits

After cutting the fabric into squares and ironing them all I realised that the dots on the blue fabric were not quite as visible as I would have liked them to be. They were there, and I could have left it to the individual stitcher to beef them up a bit if they wanted to, but I want our kits to be convenient and hassle-free, so I made a mug of tea (first things first) and set about accentuating 21 dots each on 48 pieces of fabric.

Ready to tackle 1008 dots

Now when I first designed these small Shisha projects, I tried several variations; one of them was the number of petals on the flower. 24 was too dense, 20 for some reason I never tried, but 16 and 12 both worked. The kit comes with the 12-petal version printed on the fabric and the 16-petal version as a transfer pattern in the instruction booklet, so you can try out both.

Shisha flower variations

And here they are, the Shisha Flower kit and the Shisha Tile kit both for the first time with pre-printed fabric. Let me know what you think!

The Shisha flower card kit The Shisha tile card kit