Normandie and a tale of two twills

Posted on 30th April, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

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

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

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

Appleton crewel wools for the two Kelly Fletcher flowers on twill

Stitch ideas for the Legacy twill project

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

brown Sakura Micron pen on Legacy Linen twill

brown Sakura Micron pen on Scottish twill

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

The strawberries finished (direct sunlight)

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

Close-up of stitching on Normandie fabric

Smoked eels, pleasant post at home and abroad, a cross and some flowers

Posted on 22nd April, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

It’s been a while – we’ve been to The Netherlands to visit family, but now I’m back from the old country, and as usual I’ve brought back lots of things I can’t get here, like my favourite shampoo, various types of biscuit and sausage, salt liquorice, and (a special birthday treat) these:

They’re smoked eels. All right, so they don’t look particularly attractive, but they are very very tasty, apart from which they remind me of my grandmother with whom I used to eat them. Lovely smoked eels and memories of Oma – an unbeatable combination.

With the Euro looking encouragingly weak against the pound this was obviously a good time to order things from the Netherlands, especially as I could have them sent to my mother and so save on postage. So when we got there, two interesting parcels were waiting for me: one contained several very thin marker pens for transferring designs on to fabric, the other a piece of Kingston linen and a piece of Normandie fabric (a non-count cotton/linen blend). I’ve never tried the latter before, but it feels very nice so I’m looking forward to stitching on it; perhaps a pretty strawberry design from the out-of-copyright book Samplers and Stitches by Mrs. Archibald Christie. I have a fancy to stitch it relatively large, in stem stitch outline only.

Of course when we came home there was a stack of post waiting for us; the usual pre-election leaflets, bank statements and other decidedly less-than-exciting stuff, but some gems as well. The first one was almost literally a gem, as it contained some goldwork materials from Golden Hinde. Two thicknesses of Rococco in gold, silver and copper, some lovely lacy milliary wire (one of which is destined to become a caterpillar in a toadstool design I’m working on), and some spangles.

The next one was rather surprising – I’d ordered a few things from Sew & So last month, and they’d emailed to say the parcel had been sent but without the 5″ flexi-hoop I’d ordered, which was out of stock and would be sent later. However, when the parcel arrived, it contained the whole order, including the flexi-hoop. “They probably got some new ones in just after they’d emailed me,” I thought, and went off to the Netherlands. But there among the post was another S&S parcel, with another 5″ flexi-hoop. I rang them to find out how to return it, but they said not to worry and to keep it with their compliments. Great service, as always.

And finally there was an envelope from America. After an email conversation following some enquiries of mine, Barbara at Tristan Brooks (who was extremely helpful about the cost of sending things to England, and describing fabrics) sent me two samples of twill fabric: the Legacy Linen Twill they sell (and which is one of Mary Corbet’s favourites) and a Scottish twill more like the ones that are sold in the UK (which they don’t sell but she happened to have a bit of). This way I could feel the difference before deciding what I needed. Customer service beyond the call of duty is obviously going strong on both sides of the Atlantic!

So, while on holiday, did I manage to stitch the floral cross plus a few of the Kelly Fletcher flowers I’d taken along? Ha! Or in other words, no. I didn’t even finish the cross. But I did get quite a long way, with only the blue flower left to do. Having no access to Mary Corbet’s version as there is no internet at my mother’s, I rather made it up as I went along: split stitch outline and long-and-short stitch for the cross, in three shades of brown which unfortunately weren’t the best combination as the two lightest ones were nearly identical, and the darkest one was quite a lot darker. Oh well, I did say I’d work with the silks I already had in my stash (this is the Alyce Schroth silk). I’m not altogether happy with some of the stitches on the curved edges of the cross, but couldn’t quite work out how to make them into a smoother outline while covering the split stitching. Some work needed there.

The cross filled in with long and short stitch

Next was stem stitch in one strand of medium green Pearsall’s silk for the stems (with slightly padded satin stitch for the little bobbles on the ends of the tendrils), fishbone stitch in one shade of green (light or medium) for the small leaves, and long and short stitch in two shades without first outlining for the larger leaves; I can’t say I see a great difference, but perhaps a closer look in good light with my glasses off will show that there is one. As I said before I haven’t got much experience with l & s stitch, and on some of the leaves it looks more like split stitch filling, but on the whole I’m pleased with the way it turned out. Oh, the little rosebud is also l & s, in two shades of pink/red Soie de Paris using one strand. The blue flower will be outlined in split stitch and then filled with l & s in two shades of blue Pearsall’s silk, with the centre and some little lines in yellow. I picked up most of these Pearsall’s Filoselle silks in a lovely needlework shop in Cumbria some years back, where they were in a half price sale. They are lovely to work with and have a beautiful sheen – it really is a shame Pearsall’s have discontinued them. Incidentally, the difference between the two greens isn’t very big, but it is more noticeable in real life than in the photograph; very annoying that the camera won’t simply see what our eyes see!

So all the prepared flowers are still waiting, drawn on the fabric but unstitched, in my little surface embroidery folder. But although I haven’t been stitching them, I have been thinking about them, and I’ve decided I will probably make them into single-stitch projects – or as much as is feasible, anyway. That is to say, one flower will be done in buttonhole stitch only, and another in chain stitch (or the heavy variety) only, and a third in closed Cretan stitch only and so on, with a bit of stem stitch (possibly knotted) or back stitch for those parts that can’t easily be worked in the stitch chosen for that particular flower. Together, they should then become a sort of floral stitch sample; I may even turn them into a little fabric book.

Silks, shisha and a SAL

Posted on 8th April, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

In preparation for a holiday (and because I simply want to do some more surface or free style embroidery) I’ve been putting together a project folder. Five Kelly Fletcher flowers transferred to 55ct Kingston linen, and this: a box of silks from my stash – Chameleon Shades of Africa, various Gumnut silks and a wool/silk, Kreinik Silk Mori, Caron’s wool/silk Impressions, Au Ver à Soie Soie d’Alger, and Vicki Clayton’s Hand-Dyed Fibers.

There is another small project I set up over the Easter weekend; it’s a floral cross, one of Mary Corbet’s designs (from which I have omitted the crown). It seemed just perfect to stitch at Easter, but my husband cruelly but rightly reminded me that I was trying to finish Orpheus, so back to the eyelets it was. This will be added to the holiday project folder (although I do not for one moment believe that I’ll have time to finish a cross and five flowers!) The threads here are Alyce Schroth‘s fine silk, very matt and dyed with natural dyes; Pearsall’s Filoselle, which seems to have been discontinued while I wasn’t looking, and Au Ver à Soie Soie de Paris. I’ve only got two shades of green and blue so my shading won’t be as delicate as in the original (and not just because of the limited number of colours – I’m still finding my feet with needle painting), but I hope it will look all right anyway. From the pictures it seems Mary used stem stitch for the cross; I may go for long and short stitch. We’ll see.

Fun though it is to put together quite unnecessary projects, other things were getting a little urgent – coming up with a shisha design for the Percival Guildhouse day class, for example (not to mention having to produce a stitched model of it). Going with variations on the shisha-mirror-in-a-paisley-motif theme, the first one was too simple (can’t have students finishing before lunch!), the second one too big (I want it to fit in a 6″ hoop as I have lots of them so I can lend them to students), but the third one turned out to be my Goldilocks design, just right .

Enough detail, and fits a 6-inch hoop - just right

Someone wrote to me recently to ask whether there would be another SAL. Well, I’m certainly working on it, and the aim is January 2016 – but I’ve run into a problem. Planning the SAL (if planning isn’t too grand a word; “thinking it would be a jolly nice idea” is probably more accurate most of the time), I doodle shapes and make lists of possible filling stitches, bars and surface stitches whenever they happen to occur to me (a notebook by the bed is essential). It soon became clear that I wanted a circular theme; unfortunately a large proportion of the surface stitches I’d like to include are linear. The solution?

Christmas. (To be continued…)

Stitching props

Posted on 6th April, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

When you’re stitching or designing, it’s very important that your stitching nook is comfortable (so you can settle down for a good long time without getting cramped or stiff) and has all the necessary equipment right there (so you don’t have to keep getting up to find things). Some things are the same whether you stitch or design: comfy chair, cup of tea. Then for stitching add a stitching stand, a hoop or frame, scissors, needles, chart and all the necessary threads. For designing, substitute paper, pencils and graphic pens, rubber, lap tray, cat…

Cat?

Yup.

Always helpful, our Lexi. She does assist me with my stitching too, patiently worming her way onto my lap and underneath the frame. It’s not too inconvenient except when I need to flip the frame to finish off at the back of the work.

And talking of frames, I’ve been using the Millenium frame a bit more, getting on with Orpheus *virtuous glow*. It is really good, keeping the tension beautifully when I pull for all I’m worth to open up the eyelets. There is really only one disadvantage: it wobbles. The Lowery stand clamps it on the left only, and the Millennium is a big and fairly heavy frame (relatively light for its size and solidity, but still quite a bit heavier than any other frame I’ve used), so it vibrates whenever I pull the thread through unless I steady it at the same time, which is not always possible. I did consider Needle Needs’ matching Aristo lap stand (check out the video review by Nicola Parkman) but although it does offer room for a cat (very important) I’m not sure a frame resting on my lap would be very steady. And even if the Aristo is absolutely ideal, it won’t be mine any time soon, being quite a major purchase. So what to do in the meantime? This is where it comes in very handy to have a husband who is an engineer. He likes solving problems. He thinks laterally. He came up with this:

It worked, let’s be clear about that. No more wobble. But, well, it’s a tray shoved down the side of the chair. Surely we can do better! A bit of wooden shelf, nicely sanded and varnished, with the top carefully jigsawed into a series of sloping steps, would be lovely – but far too complicated to make. So we dug out two ancient tubs of Lego, and I set to building a narrow wall with a stepped top. It looked very colourful, and it didn’t work at all. It wasn’t flexible enough, so it just buckled and fell apart. What we needed was something you can build with which has a bit of give in it. Enter the old Meccano set. Some experimenting later we had an upright prop with a foot that slides under the chair cushion and a small ledge to balance the bottom right-hand corner of the Millennium frame on. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it works, it’s easy to use, it’s adjustable, it’s a lot cheaper than the Aristo, and it has the Lexi seal of approval. I’m happy.

More flowers!

Posted on 4th April, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

This morning I bobbinated the Colour Stream silks that arrived earlier this week, and it struck me again how beautifully tactile these threads are. The thicker of the two especially, Exotic Lights (which is very like Kacoonda’s Thick Silk and Treenways’ 8/2 silk), is incredibly soft and smooth – fluffy angora bunny rabbit soft and I-wish-my-legs-felt-like-this smooth, and I had a lovely time just feeling the threads pass through my fingers as I wound them on the bobbins. You don’t need to stitch with threads to enjoy them !

But I was going to write about flowers; the first being Bloomin’ Marvellous (so there is a bit of a silk connection there), which is finished. The double row of up & down blanket/buttonhole stitch worked well, with but one mistake, and that not made with the needle: because the transfer line for the petal had faded rather I went round it with a pencil to make sure I’d be able to see it, and added a fairly strong line down the centre. That line wasn’t the problem, as it got covered up, but because the stitching has gaps in it on the outside edge the outline, of course, didn’t. It showed. Not, perhaps, very noticeably to anyone who didn’t know it was there, but it was very visible to me. Nevertheless, it’s only pencil, so with a bit of luck you should be able to erase it, even on fabric. I took a rubber to it, a new one which still had sharp corners, to get at the lines between the stitches, and fortunately most of it came off – there are still traces there if you look closely, but I’ve decided simply not to look closely. Among my (rapidly dwindling) stash of little frames I found one that was just the right size, and Bloomin’ Marvellous now adorns our mantelpiece.

And then there’s a few more shisha flowers. yes, I know, I’ve stitched quite enough already, but these are different variations; and variations on variations. The first one is worked in long-armed fly stitch, with 24 petals in perle #5 or 32 petals in perle #8. In the latter version the stitches overlap, which gives rather a nice cross stitch effect around the edge of the flower.

Long-armed fly stitch shisha variation, 24 petals in #5 perle

Long-armed fly stitch shisha variation, 32 petals in #8 perle

And possibly my favourite (as well as being very easy), a herringbone variation: 24 petals in perle #5, 24 petals in perle #8, and 16 petals in perle #5. I’m thinking of turning this one into a kit, probably using the middle version, but with a sort of scrolly frame around it rather than a leaf and stem. I’ll do some sketching over the weekend!

Herringbone shisha variation, 24 petals in #5 perle

Herringbone shisha variation, 24 petals in #8 perle

Herringbone shisha variation, 16 petals in #5 perle

Golden (and silver, and copper) temptation

Posted on 31st March, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Ah, ’tis cruel, ’tis cruel. My dear sister-in-law, who allowed me to have an order of Alison Cole goldwork materials sent to her address in Australia to save on postage, brought the parcel back with her last week. My original plan was for her to leave it at her parents’, where I would then pick it up at our next visit in late May. My second plan was to pick it up from her at her daughter’s wedding, which would be a week or so earlier. Both these plans would definitely exercise my patience, and be a good character-building opportunity. And then she goes and sends the parcel to me – in the middle of a working week and just when I am in the throes of getting some designs ready for publication! It’s not that I don’t appreciate it; I do, greatly. But imagine receiving this and not being able to unwrap every little bit of tissue paper, lovingly decant the sparkly contents into acid-free envelopes and mark them and organise them and play with them.

Oh all right, just the one then!

By the way, this was in the parcel as well, bought from the Embroidery Den with a voucher I got for Christmas from my two step-sons: two shades of Colour Streams Exotic Lights and Ophir. Aren’t they silky and beautiful?

An in-between flower, green cats and great customer service

Posted on 29th March, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

I shouldn’t have. But I did. We were going to go away for a few days and as I usually take a small stitching project on such occasions I decided I might as well, why not, take one of Kelly Fletcher’s freebies. I know it wasn’t strictly speaking on my To Do list, but after all Time Away is meant to be different from Time At Home, isn’t it? As it happens we had to come home early, so I either had to abandon the project for the time being or redesignate our unexpected Time At Home as Time Away Within The Meaning Of The Act. Guess which…

When considering materials for the KF designs I wasn’t sure I actually had a suitable fabric, as I haven’t done that much surface embroidery up to now (by the way, can someone explain to me why it is called surface embroidery? Surely most embroidery is done on a surface?), and what I have done has been on dupion silk or coloured cotton. For this I wanted a very fine linen. Now you may remember I did order some recently, but as it was from a Dutch shop the fabric was sent to my mother, where we will pick it up on our holiday next month. I do have a nice piece of 36ct Zweigart Edinburgh linen, however, which judging by Mary Corbet’s blog and other sources might work. Off I went to my linen bag (that’s a bag of linen fabrics, not a bag made from linen) and found to my pleasant surprise (and slight embarrassment in having forgotten all about them) a piece of 40ct Zweigart Newcastle linen in a stony colour, a piece of cream 48ct Gander linen, and a piece of antique white 55ct Zweigart Kingston linen. I bought them some time back for stitching miniatures on, but then found that silk gauze was easier to work on. Never mind, they will now Come In Handy!

Feeling very virtuous in having found the right fabric (or several right fabrics) in my stash, I added to this by deciding to use some of my collection of silks instead of the prescribed DMC cottons. Do you know how you sometimes keep certain special threads, fabrics, embellishments for a special occasion, and somehow there is hardly ever an occasion sufficiently special? Of course sticking to that principle rigidly enough will only lead to leaving behind an impressive collection of untouched silk threads in the hope that one of your nearest and dearest will want to use them. Now I’m not quite that bad – I have used several of my silks, but I’ve decided to use them more, and these two projects seemed the perfect start to my resolution.

So here is the set-up for Bloomin’ Marvellous 2: The Gander linen with four shades of Chameleon Shades of Africa silk, which is overdyed Soie d’Alger. I plan to use the recommended number of strands, but as I shrunk the design a bit that may come out too chunky, so I may change it for some or all of the petals.

And here is the set-up for Cats on a Wall; well, the materials – I haven’t transferred the design yet (like the flower it’ll be smaller than intended by KF). The fabric is the Newcastle linen (the shade is called Flax), and the threads are Rainbow Gallery Splendor stranded silk. The design uses four shades of green but I had only three in this series, so I’ll use the lightest one for two cats. Incidentally, I wound these threads several years ago but never noticed until now that I put the initials wrong on two of the bobbins. “RSG”. Tut.

Talking of using up “special stash”, I’ve been doing just that in putting together the shisha kits: the variegated green stranded thread used for the leaf comes from my collection of Carrie’s Creations stranded cotton and silk. However, they are not easy to come by here in the UK, so it would be a good idea to have an indigenous thread standing by for when I run out. Like Tamar Embroideries’ Fine 5-Stranded Cotton, shade 243. It looked just the thing on their website, but would it go with the DMC coton a broder I am using for the stem? I contacted them to ask, and instead of having a look themselves and replying Yes or No (or, as some companies might have done, simply ignored it) they sent me a generous sample so I could try it out for myself!

And I think it’s a pretty good match, wouldn’t you say?

I haven’t stitched with it yet, but from the look of it the strands seem to be about the same thickness as DMC stranded cotton; the whole thread looks more tightly twisted so the strands have a more wiggly look than DMC. The only other difference I can see is that it is 5- instead of 6-stranded. There’s another shisha variation I want to try so I’ll use the Tamar thread for the leaf and I’ll let you know how I got on with it, and how it looks with the coton a broder stem.

Unexpected goldwork

Posted on 26th March, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Remember I said there was another project for which I wanted to use the Millennium frame? It’s an unexpected piece of goldwork. No, not the little Jacobean design I mentioned last time – I’ve written to the magazine again with my husband’s clever proposal but haven’t heard from them yet – this one came to me more or less by accident! A few weeks ago Mary Corbett wrote about Benton & Johnson goldwork kits, and in the comments someone mentioned the intriguingly named “Air Balloon Goldwork Kit” which unfortunately doesn’t have a picture with it. I’d visited B & J’s website before in my search for goldwork materials, but they sell in rather large quantities more suited to resellers or teachers making up kits. However, on revisiting the site I saw they had moved to a new address in London, very close to one of my regular walking routes when I am in town for the Knitting & Stitching Show; but it wasn’t very clear whether the address was actually a shop which you could visit. So I rang them to find out.

Neil Halford at Benton & Johnson’s very kindly explained to me that it was really only a showroom for their ceremonial work, and that any purchases had to be made via the website or over the phone. I took the opportunity of asking him about the balloon kit. “Ah”, he said. “We haven’t actually had that stitched yet.” And before I knew it he asked me whether I would like to stitch it for them. Very tempting, but I felt I ought to tell him that I am a bit of a beginner when it comes to goldwork. Which reminds me, I don’t think I ever showed you the finished RSN day class project – very remiss of me, so here it is, on its own and framed in a happened-to-have-this-and-it’s-just-right frame.

Anyway, we talked some more and he said how difficult it was to find model stitchers, so I took a deep breath and said that if he was willing to take the risk, I’d be more than happy to have a go and take pictures and write comments etc. A week later, the postwoman brought a goldwork air balloon. Well, a potential goldwork air balloon. It uses padded kid, lots of couching, some chipwork, and as far as I can see no techniques that I’ve never done before, which is a reassuring thought.

When I opened the envelope and took out the kit, one thing immediately struck me. Can you guess what it was?

That’s right: it’s already got a picture of the stitched design. I rang Neil and he said it was a very bad photo, they couldn’t use it to fit in with the format of the other kits, and they didn’t really have any information as to how good the instructions were so they needed a stitcher to tell them. Well, I’m happy to oblige . I also asked whether it would be all right for me to blog about the project and how I got on with it, and he said that was fine, so expect various updates over the next few months. Rather wonderfully, there is no deadline, so no pressure – just enjoyment.

It’s always very enjoyable to dive right in and take all the bits and bobs out of the kit and see what’s there, but I noticed there was a content list on the back so I read that first. It definitely looked promising! The materials were all snugly enclosed in the instruction booklet which looks quite comprehensive, with colour photographs to illustrate the various steps.

It really makes me want to promote this to Current Project, but unfortunately I can’t quite start on this yet, as there are several other things that have priority (see last Wednesday’s post). When I do, however, the first thing will be to mount it on the Millennium frame. This means finding my own backing fabric, as B & J’s very understandably don’t provide a piece large enough for the purpose; the included backing fabric is actually larger than stated in the content list and is easily big enough to mount the whole thing in a hoop, so no criticism there (it does annoy me so when the fabric supplied with a kit is only about half an inch bigger than the stitched project – you can’t work like that). The blue silk fabric is also of a good size, but with rather a strong crease in it; I’ll have to see how that irons out. Then there are two squares of dark gold felt and some extremely shiny gold kid leather which will definitely attract the eye in the finished piece. The last thing in the kit is a bulky acid-free envelope – another thing to unwrap, it’s almost as good as a birthday! Inside are beeswax, beads, coloured metallic threads and various gold threads and purls. Now of course I don’t know yet how much thread this balloon will take, but at first sight there seems to be an extremely generous amount of everything, and it all looks beautiful and shiny and very tempting. Let’s see how long I manage to resist…

Fabric, kid, felt, and a glassine envelope

The Millennium frame and a DIY lightbox

Posted on 25th March, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

There hasn’t been a lot of stitching going on in the Figworthy household recently – instead, I’ve been drawing diagrams and writing instructions for some designs that will appear in Stitch magazine, as well as putting together what feels like innumerable shisha flower kits for the upcoming workshops, and trying to improve the design and choose the materials for the shisha day class. And all the while I am itching to try out some new stitches and start on Kelly Fletcher’s Cats on a Wall. Alas, not until I’ve sent instructions, diagrams and stitched models off to Stitch, which has to be done by Good Friday.

I did manage to frame up the fabric for Orpheus, and even do some stitching on it. I really like the set-up I’ve got with the bar covers I made some time ago for a clip-on scroll frame (they turned out to be just the right size for the Millennium frame) and my DIY needle minder stuck to the cover rather than to my stitching fabric. Usually when I am using a larger hoop or frame I clamp it to the Lowery stand and leave it there, but although the Millennium’s chunky stretcher fits quite snugly into the clamp, I get the impression that the weight of the frame puts a little more pressure on the clamping point than with other frames – which is odd because working with it the frame doesn’t feel particularly heavy. Even so, I will put it in the clamp only when I am actually going to work on it, and take it out when I’m done for the day (or week. or month.)

It’s not had a lot of use yet, but it has had a significant use: the pulled eyelets. Would that lovely fabric tension stand up to being pulled about quite severely? Yes, it did. The fabric was taut when I started, and it was taut when I finished. I love my Millennium frame! What a shame it’s rather too expensive to have a spare… because you see, there is another project that I would very much like to work on it. Oh well, I’ll just have to swap projects – after all, one of the nice things about this frame is how quick it is to mount the fabric!

A week or so back I was in The Netherlands, and in a shop selling art materials I asked whether they had any small lightboxes. (Rather embarrassingly, I couldn’t remember the Dutch word for lightbox. *sigh* That’s what comes from having been an ex-pat for nearly 10 years now.) The very helpful girl I spoke to said they didn’t have any, but why didn’t I just make one with a box, a light and a transparent top? Brilliant. I am already using several bits of glass from photo frames to trace the designs for the shisha kits, but so far I’m holding them up to a light source which means I have to do my tracing vertically – not ideal. Once back home I quickly found a Chinese takeaway container, my husband supplied me with a nifty LED torch which shines from its side as well as its front, and with my bits of glass I had all the elements for a DIY lightbox.

Unfortunately it didn’t work. The light was too bright and the individual LEDs were visible, even with a tissue on the top as a diffuser. But as I was experimenting with the various bits I realised that putting the torch in my lap, shining up and with a tissue over it, and then holding the glass with the design and fabric a little way away from it, does work! So that’s what I will be doing.

Storage, stash and a watering can

Posted on 12th February, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

My storage box has arrived! And so of course it needed to be filled. It now holds the three reels of sewing thread (I keep a small amount of each on a bobbin in the little project box), a spare piece of beeswax, any gold threads that I’m not using for the watering can, small acid-free envelopes for future stash plus a fine marker to write on it, a white chalk pencil with extra leads (well, chalks) and petite seed beads in gold, silver, copper and light gold.

The chalk pencil is a new bit of kit – I’m hoping to use it for drawing designs on darker fabrics. Being a mechanical pencil it’ll stay nice and sharp without maintenance, so it should be able to draw quite accurate lines (depending on my steadiness of hand), but I’ll have to give it a few tries to see how well the chalk will remain visible – it might need touching up after a while. The petite beads are part existing stash, part new acquisition: I already had a shade called Ice which will go well with silver spangles, and a shade called Champagne which isn’t quite gold (it has a slight pinky tinge), but works well if you want a little subtle sparkle. To these I added Victorian Gold, for a more straightforward gold shade, and Autumn Flame, which I hope will work well with copper threads (unfortunately I have not been able to find copper spangles anywhere, but the beads will still look good on their own in a project with copper materials).

Having had a most pleasant and enjoyable play with my new box and goldwork materials, I finally got round to a bit of actual goldwork embroidery: I’ve added four scrolls to my watering can. Going down from the top one they are Twist, Rococco, Twist again (stop singing there!) and a single line of #8 Japanese gold, all couched. I varied the couching on the two twists, using the usual perpendicular stitches on the shorter one, and slanted stitches on the longer one, following the twist of the thread as much as possible. I think the latter looks better when it is done well, but it’s terribly difficult to get the angle right!

Some scrolls have been added to the goldwork watering can

At one point these four scrolls were accompanied by a small extra scroll done in petite beads, but I took them out as they didn’t look right. Next step will be to decide where to put the little extras such as spangles, smooth purl flowers like the blue one that’s already there, and so on. I’m looking forward to that!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Materials & Equipment