Leaves

Posted on 13th June, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

For some time now I’ve had leaves on the brain. Don’t worry, my mind isn’t like the railway tracks in autumn, cluttered and obscured by “the wrong sort of leaves” – on the contrary, these were very much the right sort of leaves, inspiring all sorts of scribbles and sketches. Some I photographed to look at in detail later, others I looked up on the internet. Which ones to include? Oak, chestnut, a maple of some sort… Before I knew it I had made line drawings of seven types of leaf, with and without detailed veining. Then I looked at the collection and decided it needed a willow leaf. And an ivy leaf. And then there were nine, ready to be rearranged in various designs, scattered, overlapping, in a line along the hem of a tea towel, who knows?

While these drawings were in progress, whenever I was out for a walk I’d try and look at trees close up as well as from a distance, and I couldn’t help noticing (which the more observant among you probably noticed long, long ago) that trees are not green. Or rather, not all trees are green. Some are yellow, or red, or brown, or orange, even in spring and early summer; and even the ones that are green are not all green in the same way. And what amazed me most, none of these colours clash – they all work beautifully together.

Now of course God has a much broader palette to work with than DMC or Anchor, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to recreate the effect with any accuracy. But then, as mine are quite stylised leaves, perhaps that won’t matter too much. Still, it’s as well to get the colours as close to nature as possible, so off I went with a selection of stranded cottons to bother my neighbours with the request to be allowed to colour-match their trees. Next-door-but-two’s Japanese maple is a DMC 902.

Colour-matching a variegated Norway maple

And so, after extensive and gruelling research (a sunny afternoon on a rug in the garden with some leaves, the cat and my boxes of DMC) I’ve picked a selection of colours that should work with whatever combinations these individual leaves are going to end up in. Watch this space!

Threads for a tree

Posted on 1st June, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Recently I’ve been playing around with different thread ideas for the Tree of Life. The first colour scheme I picked was a selection of Rainbow Gallery Splendor silks in blue, green & purple for the leaves and brown for the stem, all in three shades, with some yellow touches thrown in. Quite a nice combination, although the blue is a bit more blue-grey than I would have liked.

Then Serinde pointed me in the direction of Pearsall’s Heathway wool, and, well, you know what came of that. The blue in the starter collection I got isn’t any brighter than the Splendor blue, and the purple (“Aubergine” the shade is called) is rather subdued too, but even so it would work quite well for a traditional tree on twill fabric, especially if I switch to a slightly brighter blue (Lapis, perhaps) and a more muted green (I’m thinking Willow Green instead of this Laurel). At first I intended to use it for the version of the tree with the bird and lettering. However, will wool go well with small letters? Or would I need to switch to silk for that?

And there’s the matter of the other colourway. I had an idea of doing one in autumnal colours. A bit inappropriate, come to think of it, as these colours are caused by the leaves dying, which is not quite the message you want a Tree of Life to give. On the other hand, autumnal colours are very, very beautiful, and as the dying of the leaves preserves the tree’s energy to grow new leaves when spring comes again, perhaps I can just about pull that idea off. But autumnal colours and caterpillars don’t go together very well either. Will the caterpillar, who strictly speaking shouldn’t be around in autumn, enjoy his hypothetical bite of leaf if the leaf in question has turned orange, however vibrant and lovely? Or am I being too literal-minded about what is rather a symbolic and stylised design anyway?

Very well then, let’s use the blue-purple-green colour scheme for the caterpillar tree, whether in Splendor silk of Pearsall’s wool, and keep the autumnal colours for the bird-and-lettering tree. There are birds in autumn, so that’s OK, and going with silks for this version also gets around the problem of having to use wool for the lettering. But. As with the other version I would really like to use at least three shades of every colour, and I don’t have them in Splendor silk. I have some lovely radiant yellows, vibrant oranges, mossy greens and warm browns, but not three shades of each. Nor do I have them in any other silk. I could buy some, of course (Soie d’Alger comes in a wide range of colours and is lovely to work with), but having splashed out only very recently on the Heathway wool I feel I can’t really justify any further speciality thread purchases for a while. And the Splendor shades do look the part – there would just be rather less shading. One way around that would be to have a dark yellow and a light yellow leaf, a dark orange and a light orange one, and so on. I’ll have to think about that one.

Or I could ditch the idea of silk altogether, and go with DMC Coton à Broder. Size 25 is about the thickness of two strands of stranded cotton, or perle #12, and although it wouldn’t be quite so plump as the Splendor silk (which is absolutely gorgeous to work with) it would show the texture of the various stitches rather nicely. And it comes in quite a lot of colours, some of which would make a lovely autumn tree.

Then there is the question of what to use in the couched leaf. Something gold, but of course that could be either a colour or a metal. In at least one of them I would like to use a pair of gold passing threads, probably on a tree that’s worked in silk. A more economical version could use one of the many Kreinik metallic threads – I’ve got their 1/16″ ribbon and #16 braid to try out. Still less of a strain on the budget, but not quite so shiny, is a golden yellow perle #3.

Besides these versions I have a few other ideas as well, although I’m not sure if they will ever happen; how many Trees of Life do I want to stitch? (I suppose I could stitch as many variations as I want to try out and donate one to each of the churches in our village. Or parish. Or county.) But I can envisage a goldwork tree, for example – the outlines of the stem worked in overstretched pearl purl with a core of dark brown silk on the left and light brown silk on the right; and two curved lines of couched passing thread down the middle, worked in or nué with medium brown silk. As for the leaves, well, where do I start…

More wools – Renaissance Dyeing

Posted on 25th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Serinde very kindly sent me some Renaissance Dyeing crewel wools so now I’ve got two types to try out! You may recognise the design I chose for my comparison – yes, it’s the goldwork pincushion design from Samplers & Antique Needlework. It’s nicely Jacobean looking, so why shouldn’t it work in wools as well as gold? A brief aside – judging the colour of threads by what they look like on websites is very unsatisfactory; the Pale Apple (far right in the picture) is clearly green on the RD website but in real life it is more like a slightly green-tinged pale yellow.

The RD wool is quite fine, and some threads have very occasional thinnish patches. To some extent this may be caused by part of the thread untwisting as I’m using it – as you can see, the thicker part of the thread looks much more loosely twined. However, even straight off the skein there seems to be some unevenness here and there. Still, it is very infrequent and otherwise the thread is beautifully even, and lovely to work with. As for the stitches used in this project, although I’d scribbled a few ideas on the design I’ve been changing things as I go along; one line of stem stitch looked far too spindly for the stem (perhaps I should have used a smaller version of the design) so I added another line, plus a line in yellow – good practice for my Tree of Life trunk! The leaf is outlined in Palestrina stitch (I told you I was going to play with that). I added two-coloured French and colonial knots roughly where spangles were in the original, and a thin yellow stem stitch line to one side of the satin stitch leaves. As for the decoration inside the blue Portuguese knotted stem stitch petals, fairly last-minute (just before starting the lazy daisies specified by the design, in fact) I substituted bullion knots in two colours so I could include the dark navy blue. The red outline on the flower is heavy chain stitch, and the wool behaved very well on that.

Stems and leaves in a variety of stitches

The orange inner line is Hungarian braided chain stitch, and with hindsight I don’t think wool is particularly suited to it. Its slight fuzziness makes it difficult to pick up the inner stitches without catching the outer ones. It doesn’t look too bad but the braided appearance isn’t as distinct as it would be with a smoother thread. Long & short stitch isn’t my forte but it did create the flame-like look I was aiming for. The three yellow French knots on the tip of the flower were added because there was a little dot of ink there which hadn’t been covered by the chain stitch…

The Renaissance Dyeing experiment, finished

I like this type of project – I can do pretty much whatever I like, change my mind half-way through, and add things and change things as the fancy takes me. It’s as close to anarchy as I am ever likely to get; very liberating .

Finally getting started on the goldwork balloon

Posted on 23rd May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

It’s a good thing the kind gentleman at Benton & Johnson didn’t give me a deadline to work to – in fact, I may come to regret my tongue-in-cheek remark, when he said there wasn’t a deadline because this design had been on the backburner for two years, that at least I’d make sure it wouldn’t take another two years. At the rate I’m going, two years is beginning to look distinctly optimistic. I was sent the kit at the end of March, and nearly two months later where are we? Well, the silk fabric is on the Millennium frame…

In my defence, getting it mounted was a bit of a saga on account of the calico backing which turned out to be anything but rectangular. But with the help of the Millennium frame and a spray bottle of water, I got that sorted out and last time you saw the project it looked like this:

The silk pinned onto the now much straighter calico

I hadn’t quite decided yet whether to attach only the top and bottom of the silk, or all four sides, but I thought I’d start with the top and bottom and then see how well that worked. It worked quite well, but not perfectly – the silk obviously needed a little sideward pull. I had worked the top and bottom herringbone with the fabric on a slightly slack tension, but for the sides I stretched it a bit more; not quite taut as a drum with the Millennium frame stretched to its maximum reach, but definitely tight. The result: a perfectly flat piece of silk to work on.

Attaching the silk to the calico with herringbone stitch

To attach the silk I had to use the frame’s side bars at their maximum extension, but for the actual goldwork embroidery I could do with a smaller area; and I much prefer that if it’s possible because I don’t like using the frame at its full 10 inches, for fear of overstretching and damaging the mechanism. So I repositioned the calico on the rollers, cut off the excess fabric, put on the roller guards and my needle minder, and collected my faithful helper. I was ready to roll.

So have I done any stitching at all? Well, no. But I’ve done some more preparatory work! There are a number of felt shapes to be cut out for padding. As I find it very difficult to draw on felt, I decided to make use of some thin Vilene. I traced the outlines of the felt shapes on to the glue side of the Vilene, so that when it was ironed on to the felt they would be back-to-front. This meant that the cut-out shapes, non-Vilene side up, would be the right way round. The design is not quite symmetrical, so this is important.

Tracing the felt outlines onto the back of the Vilene, right way round

The Vilene ironed on to the felt, back to front

The felt shapes cut out, right way round

There is some leather to cut as well, but I will leave that until it’s needed. First I’d like to get some proper stitching done on this balloon, even if it is only attaching the padding.

Finally, a few remarks on the kit so far.

The crease in the silk that worried me, and which I couldn’t get out completely with ironing, is a lot less noticeable when the fabric is stretched, so it should be all right.
The silk is generously cut, with a 2½” margin all around the design.
The felt, too, has plenty of room for all the parts.
The felt outlines are numbered, and the instructions very clearly explain in which order they need to be attached. They explicitly point out that it is unusual for the small shape to be sewn on top of the larger one, so that stitchers who have done some padding before won’t get confused by this.
According to the instructions, the two “half-balloon” shapes go underneath the full balloon shape. Although this is the usual order (smaller underneath larger) in this case I didn’t expect it, as the gap between the two half shapes is there to accommodate a line of pearl purl, and I’m not sure how this will work with the full balloon shape on top. It’ll be interesting to see it develop.

Now stretch up that frame, it’s time to start stitching!

Further twill (and twilling) adventures

Posted on 18th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

It’s been very interesting working on the two twill samples which Barbara at Tristan Brooks sent me last month. The final verdict? I like them both! But that’s not particularly helpful, is it?

So let’s look at them in a bit more detail. I described in an earlier post how the different twills took micron pen transfers differently; now to find out whether they take stitching in crewel wool differently too. First up was the Scottish oatmeal twill. It’s quite a heavy fabric compared to anything I’ve ever stitched on – Lizzie at Laurelin Embroidery described it to me as “a heavy cloth suitable for soft furnishings” and it definitely feels stiffer and a bit coarser than evenweave or plainweave linen. In order to minimize wear on the crewel wool (Appleton’s, which happened to be the only type in my stash) I used a size 22 chenille needle, which feels quite big but works well. The fabric has a nice close weave, closer than the Normandie, and it was easy to pierce it exactly where I wanted to, which makes for accurate stitching (well, as accurate as the stitcher…). I’m not sure I’d use this with silks or goldwork, but I do like it with wool; even using wool that I don’t particularly like!

You may ask why I’m stitching with wools I don’t much like. Good question. It’s because when I wanted to buy some crewel wools to experiment with, several years ago, Appleton’s was all I could find. It also comes in lots of colours, which is convenient, and it isn’t too expensive. But it suffers from varying thickness, getting quite worryingly thin sometimes, and it pills, bunching up when you come to the end of a thread. I have good hopes that the Pearsall’s wool I treated myself to the other day will be nicer to work with.

Back to the project for a moment, and to the non-fabric elements. The design is Kelly Fletcher’s Bloomin’ Marvellous 11, and I used stem stitch (the stem), padded satin stitch (the green bit under the flower), buttonhole stitch (light yellow), chain stitch (the petals), and finally, because the petals looked a bit empty, I added dark yellow lines of Palestrina stitch. I varied the distance between the knots to see which I liked best, but I think they’d all work depending on the effect you want.

Bloomin' Marvellous 11 on Scottish twill - does it need anything more?

Bloomin' Marvellous with a few more lines added

The next project was Bloomin’ Marvellous 4. I’ll get the stitches out of the way first: stem stitch (the stem and the outline of the leaf), loop stitch (inside of the leaf), two shades of buttonhole stitch “slotted” into each other (green ring), French knots (yellow centre), chain stitch and lattice work. The chain stitch and the buttonhole stitch, by the way, show how varying in thickness the wool is.

As for the fabric, it’s Legacy Linen twill as used and recommended by Mary Corbet. It’s a much lighter fabric than the Scottish twill, both in weight and in colour. It also feels smoother and more pliable. But like the Scottish twill it is a close weave which makes it easy to place stitches exactly where they should go, and in spite of being lighter it has enough body to take the stitching well without distorting or puckering. (Both fabrics take unpicking well, too.) Because of its smoother, lighter look I can see myself using this with other threads besides wool, making it a bit more versatile than the Scottosh twill. But as I said at the beginning, I like them both and will hopefully use them both again.

Bloomin' Marvellous 4 on Legacy Linen Twill, half done

Incidentally, have you heard of “twilling”? Nothing to do with twill, which is what I first thought, but a type of stitching used mainly by quilters, apparently. It consists of outlines stitched in Palestrina stitch, originally white on white or at least tone on tone (much like Hardanger), but now also worked in colour. As the outline stitch used is knotted I’m not sure it would work for very detailed pictorial designs, but perhaps a Celtic knot pattern or something similarly abstract? Mary Corbet does beautiful things with it on an ecclesiastical linen pouch, outlining a cross. Definitely a stitch to play with!

How to unwonk calico and tackle an elephant

Posted on 12th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Last weekend, apart from setting up the Wedding Elephant, I also tried out my idea for straightening out the wonky calico backing for the Benton & Johnson goldwork balloon. First I sprayed the fabric with water from the dehumidifier (which I understand is like distilled water), then I drew two pencil lines along the grain a little way in from the short sides, and used these as guide lines to attach it to the rollers of the Millennium frame. As I started tightening the frame, you could clearly see how warped the fabric was. I tightened it as much as I could, and left it to dry overnight with the tension on. The next day I loosened the tension abit, and I was very pleased to see how much it had straightened out! When fully stretched the sides of the calico go a bit concave, but a little in from the sides it is really quite straight; I pinned the silk to the not-quite-taut calico with short pins put in perpendicularly so as not to distort the fabric, and will sew it on next weekend. I haven’t quite decided yet whether to attach only the top and bottom, or all four sides; will have a think about that.

The calico has been mounted, and is clearly warped

My other project for the weekend was the Wedding Elephant. In fact I set up two elephants – one with and one without initials. I’m thinking of offering the elephant as a chart pack some time, and it would of course be easier to have it without initials so anyone could use it; I might offer the option of having one or two initials designed especially. Do you think stitchers would appreciate the option, or would they rather do their own thing with the initials?

The non-initial elephant will have my own wedding date on it, and be worked in apple green, yellow and a corally pink, all from Chameleon’s Shades of Africa range (rather appropriate for an elephant, come to think of it ). But priority must of course go to Susie & James’ wedding elephant, to be finished by Thursday (and no opportunity to stitch tomorrow evening as it is our Small Group meeting). This one is done in Rainbow Gallery Splendor silks, and I must say they are lovely to work with on this sort of embroidery! By the way, the card and the wooden flower buttons are my finishing idea; I wanted something that would look decorative should they wish to frame and display it, without presenting them with a framed fait accompli.

The Wedding Elephant set up, with Splendor silks

An alternative elephant, with Chameleon silks

It’s a bit scary to try things out for the first time on a wedding project – in this case having lattice work surrounded by stem stitch outlines. I decided to do the lattice first, and with hindsight this was not good idea; with no other stitching in place there was nowhere to fasten on and off, so I had to use away knots, which produced quite a spaghetti of unsecured threads at the back, waiting for some stem stitch to be woven into. On the other hand, having done the lattice first it is easier to go over bits of it where they cross the curly bits of the letters or the outline of the ear; it would be a pain to have to stop and start a laid thread for such a tiny break. Perhaps I could take the laid thread underneath the stem-stitched outline when it crosses a single line rather than a voided shape. The second elephant hasn’t got initials but I could try it where the lattice crosses the ear.

On the whole I’m happy with how it’s shaping up. The purple outline is a bit dark, but at least it stands out well. My only niggle so far is that somehow the lettering has turned out a bit more uneven in stitch than it was in pencil…

Pearsall’s, and disappearing silks

Posted on 11th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Some years ago I picked up a small collection of vintage silks made by Pearsall’s Embroidery, called Filofloss. They were stranded, flattish silks with a lovely sheen, made during the 1920s and 30s as far as I can remember. Lovely, and unfortunately discontinued. But Pearsall’s continued with a different stranded silk, Filoselle, which I used for the stems and the blue flower in Mary Corbett’s small cross design. It has more twist than Filofloss, and is a little more springy, but it has the same lovely sheen. Unfortunately, despite the label shown on Pearsall’s home page, Filoselle is no more. When I spoke to Carol at Pearsall’s to ask whether they would be at the Knitting & Stitching Show she explained that the silks had been very much the domain of her business partner John, who sadly died in 2012. Since then, all their silks apart from surgical silks have been phased out.

What they do still do is crewel wool. After my recent re-acquaintance with Appleton’s (about which more when I post about my twill experiments) I felt I would really like to try a crewel wool that doesn’t have thin bits which make one’s stitching look more irregular than it needs to, that doesn’t pill, or fluff, or untwist. Serinde over at the Cross Stitch Forum suggested either Renaissance Dyeing or Pearsall’s Heathway Milano crewel wool.

There is a lot to be said for Renaissance Dyeing’s wool. For one thing, it’s a lot cheaper than Pearsall’s. But Pearsall’s has a wider range of colours, and these are much more conveniently laid out on their website. I’m finding it almost impossible to work out from RD’s page of wools how to put together a set of three or four matching shades of any one colour. For example, presumably Light Orange #0302 goes with Pale Orange #0301, but they are several rows apart, their pictures separated by seven completely unrelated colours; in some cases shades that are probably related are so far apart that you need to scroll from one to the other so you can’t see them together. Another thing, do you go by name or by proximity of number? Does Dark Apricot #1205 go with Light Peach #1203? I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and this confuses me. I will try and work it out because anything Serinde recommends is likely to be lovely to work with, but for now I decided to concentrate on Pearsall’s.

Because Pearsall’s have a Crewel Starter Pack – 30 skeins of wool plus two good-sized pieces of twill at a considerable discount to what it would cost to buy all the bits separately. True, you don’t get to choose the colours, but the picture seemed to indicate that there would be four shades of seven different colour families, plus black and white, which is a useful start to a collection but also varied enough to be useful without having to add to it. I decided to ring them and spoke to Carol, who was incredibly helpful. She actually went through several of the packs she had in stock to tell me what combinations they contained! Determined not to impulse-buy I said I’d go away and think about it. I did. For at least 10 minutes. Then I called back and ordered one of the starter packs. This was about three o’ clock on Friday afternoon; on Saturday the postwoman delivered this:

Aren’t they gorgeous? And the picture can’t tell you how beautifully soft they are – I was fondling them for at least five minutes before putting them away for the moment. When the Wedding Elephant is done, I’ll do a Kelly Fletcher flower with some of them to see how they are to work with.

Talking of KF, I finished Bloomin’ Marvellous 7 (yes, it was on hold; but for various reasons I didn’t get round to setting up the Elephant on Saturday, so I finished this while watching the VE Day concert). Besides some Chameleon Shades of Africa silks (the two yellows) it uses some of Vikki Clayton’s Hand-Dyed Fibers premium stranded silk. A little chunkier than standard strands, and lovely to work with, but it seems Hand-Dyed Fibers is yet another brand that has ceased to exist – the website is down and although I can find references to Vikki Clayton online, I can’t find anything to indicate that she is still producing these silks. I hope not too many silks go the same route or we won’t have anything to stitch with but DMC and Anchor! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen beautiful projects created with stranded cotton, but there is just something about working with silks that is a little bit special, not to mention their place in the long history of embroidery – it would be a shame if they all went.

Thoughts on wonky calico

Posted on 6th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

What to do if your calico backing fabric is wonky? I mean, really wonky?

That was one of the problems I faced as I was trying to frame up the Benton & Johnson balloon last weekend. I had carefully neatened the edges so they were all cut on the thread, and the fabric was still distinctly non-rectangular. I couldn’t see an easy solution to it, or any solution at all really, except to use it in its present off-kilter state and make the best of it, which isn’t much of a solution. But then, in the middle of the night, an idea occurred to me.

Ideas that occur to me in the middle of the night range from the usable to the frankly bizarre (the difference usually only emerging in the clear light of morning), but this one seems to me one of the better ones even now that I’m awake. What if, I wondered, I set up the calico on the Millennium frame, making sure that the horizontal grain is straight on the rollers, then sprayed it lightly and stretched it as tight as possible, leaving it to dry stretched? I’d say that any calico not straightened after that sort of treatment is beyond rescue and may have to be used up as doodle fabric.

I will try it out this weekend and report back!

Hurrah! Oh dear…

Posted on 5th May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Sounds of rejoicing throughout the Figworthy home: I’ve finished Orpheus II! It is essentially a re-arranged and elongated Orpheus I, which is why I’m treating them as two variations of one design. Doesn’t the choice of colour make a difference though! And I love the subtle variegations in the Sparklies fabrics – they bring out the best in the standard DMC perles. Orpheus will go on sale tomorrow, both on its own and as part of the Ukrainian Collection together with Odessa and Lviv.

Finishing Orpheus meant that I was now allowed to start a new project. Or perhaps even projectS – one on the Millennium frame and a few tiddly ones in hoops. The choice of project for the Millennium frame was easy: the Benton & Johnson goldwork balloon. My first step there was to attach the blue silk to a calico backing, and this proved to be more challenging than expected.

I’d done my research, studying both in books and online how various experienced stitchers attached smaller pieces of fabric to larger pieces of backing before mounting the sandwich on a frame. There were some individual variations, but on the whole it seemed to amount to this: Pin fabric to calico. Sew fabric to calico using either herringbone stitch or long and short stitches, starting from the centre of each side. Mount calico on frame. Start stitching.

Having remembered just in time first to transfer the design on to the silk, I began with step one (I’m a traditionalist at heart) and pinned the silk to the calico, making sure that the grain of both fabrics lined up. Not easy as the calico appeared to be a little crooked, and the silk hadn’t been cut straight on all sides, but I did the best I could manage. That was my first mistake – I should have straightened up the fabric before starting.

It looked terribly bumpy even before I got all the pins in, so I removed quite a few of them and made do with about four a side, equally spaced. That was very likely my second mistake. (Can you see a pattern emerging here?) Third mistake: I made my herringbones far too large, especially when I changed from the stabbing method to the sewing method halfway through.

Perhaps if I just put it on the Millennium frame and tighten it up, it’ll miraculously go flat and taut? Alas, no.

At that point I decided to give up and unpick the whole thing. My husband reminded me that there were daffodils to be dead-headed in the front garden, and that I had declared an intention to attack the virulent ground elder that threatens to smother everything else in the back garden, so I went out into the sunshine and got myself some virtuously aching muscles. Then I came back in and did what I should have done in the first place, tidied up the edges of my fabrics. You do this by pulling out threads until you’ve got a straight edge, then trimming the superfluous fringe. And boy, was there a lot of superfluous fringe!

So now that I’ve got two straightened pieces of fabric my troubles are over, right? Well, not quite – the calico really is rather crooked; I mean that the warp and weft threads are not at right angles to each other, so even with neatened edges it is not a true rectangle. And the silk, though by no means as wonky as the calico, is half a centimetre longer on one vertical side than on the other, even though all four sides have been straightened. So I’m taking a while to think this through. I can get the vertical grain of the two fabrics to line up quite well. Perhaps if I attach the silk along the top and bottom only, it’ll work better. I might try this out with a spare piece of satin dupion first.

For now I’ll relax with some of the Kelly Fletcher flowers, trying out my two twills and some other fabric and thread combinations. But I’ll get back to that balloon in time – promise!

A framed bee and a useful gadget

Posted on 2nd May, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

It’s great when you find that you’ve got exactly the right frame for a finished project already in your stash, something which happened to me some time ago with the goldwork watering can; years ago I picked up a frame which I thought would suit a piece of calligraphy I was planning. It didn’t. And then, after years in my chest of bits and bobs, it turned out to be Just Right for that piece of goldwork. It would be nice to be able to say that the same thing happened with my little goldwork bee, but alas, I had to go out and buy something for that. I didn’t want anything too fancy as it is quite a simple piece, and so I decided on an oval flexi-hoop in woodgrain finish. I use flexi-hoops a lot, but really only as hoops; they are, however, actually meant to be dual purpose, in that you can use them to frame what you stitched in them.

The 4 x 5½ hoop turned out to be just the right size (I have a white one in my stash which I used to check whether it would work) so I ordered a woodgrain one from Sew & So. Framing in a flexi-hoop is quite simple, although the amount of time you spend on it depends rather on how nice you want the back to look. First, mount the work in the hoop, and fiddle about with it if necessary until you’re happy with how it looks. Then trim the fabric to within about 3cm of the hoop. Using strong thread, work running stitch all around the fabric, about 2cm from the hoop. Pull the two ends of the thread to gather the fabric, making sure it’s evenly distributed, then knot the ends together to make sure the gathers stay put. You could stop there. Or, if you’re a glutton for punishment, you could cut a piece of felt to the size of the inner hoop, and sew it to the fabric using a curved needle (indispensible, I found – it was fiddly enough even so). And voilà, one framed bee!

One thing I’ve discovered doing goldwork and surface embroidery is that my eyes aren’t as good as they were – middle age must be creeping up on me. Actually, my eyes have been really bad from the time I was a child; I am very near-sighted, which can in fact be an asset when doing detailed work, as I can focus on my stitching close-up if I take my glasses off. However, I don’t want to spend a whole evening’s stitching with my glasses off and my nose practically touching the fabric, so I invested in a little gadget: the rather splendidly named Mighty Bright Vusion LED Craft Light & Magnifier. It’s rather a miniature package compared to some of the proper daylight lamps, but then it was a lot more affordable, too! The magnifier comes in handy when trying to unpick things, or gauging where exactly to place a stitch in a complicated part of the design, but the true hero is the LED light. It makes all the difference not having to strain to see, and the colours look better too .

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Materials & Equipment