Storage

Posted on 6th February, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

I have a storage problem. No, actually, I have two storage problems. Two specific ones, I mean, quite apart from the usual general “my stitching stuff is distributed all around the house” problem. And they are the result of Branching Out and Trying New Things. Because if you Try New Things you almost invariably find that you Need New Stash. For example, although you can certainly use cross stitch and Hardanger threads for shisha embroidery, it also needs various blingy bits like mirrors and sequins (some of which arrived in the post yesterday – including some unexpected purple hearts which turned out to be a February Special Offer), not to mention a different sort of fabric to work on. And as for goldwork, well…

So far I’ve been trying to make do with bobbin boxes of various sizes, which are great for threads on bobbins but not always ideal for other types of threads, embellishments etc. Here are two of the smaller ones, which I tended to use as project boxes, to hold the threads for whatever project I happened to be working on. Since moving from cross stitch to Hardanger these get used rather less because they aren’t particularly suitable for perles, which I keep on rings (#5) or in balls (#8 and #12). So I promoted one of them to goldwork project box, and the other to shisha/surface embroidery project box.

Immediately you will notice a couple of problems. The shisha box is full to bursting point already, and that’s without most of the new arrivals and some existing stash that would fall into this category. The goldwork box has enough space, but the little acid-free envelopes that hold the metals are too tall for the box – I have to fold them over, but they spring back so I have to close the lid on them very quickly; or I’d have to crease them but I don’t really want to because I like the metals to have a bit of room and not be coiled up too tightly. The same problem applies to the larger box that I picked to store any goldwork materials not part of the present project: plenty of room (for now…) but not enough height.

A re-think was needed. There isn’t a lot I can do about the small project box; I just haven’t got anything higher. But then threads will live in it for a relatively short period of time, and probably not too many of them at once, so if I put them in at a sort of sloping angle they should be all right for the duration of a project. The larger compartment holds the mellor comfortably, the tweezers just about, and the scissors propped up; and I can fit all three sewing threads (for gold, silver and copper) into one of the smaller compartments. Then one for beeswax and one for needles (but they can share a room in an emergency), and that leaves three for the threads. Don’t mention bulky padding felt and metallic kid. Just don’t.

As for the larger box, I decided that it simply wouldn’t do for the long term. So out came all the little glassine envelopes, to be temporarily stored on top of the chest of drawers in the storage room (not, unfortunately, a room exclusively for craft storage; in fact, most of the space is taken up by bits of pre-war automobile), and in went all the sequins, mirrors and embellishments, which now have a bit more breathing space and even a little room to expand.

Now storage comes in many shapes and sizes, and one of the shapes it comes in is that of a small index card box, several of which had been sitting unused in a drawer in the office since we bought one big box that could hold all our index cards. They weren’t made for needlework supplies, but they are high enough, and will hold two rows of envelopes side by side. Not much scope for organising things, and the envelopes slide about a bit and fall over when there are only a few in a box, but at least the threads would be stored unfolded and shielded from dust.

And that’s where things stood until I visited Sew & So’s website for some petite beads and perles earlier today. Until I saw this: the Deep Utility Box. It is deep. It is organisable. It is Just What I Was Looking For. I ordered it. Watch this space for pictures of it, filled with (well, part-filled with) my goldwork supplies!

A frame, a bee, and another flower

Posted on 5th February, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Yes, I have finally taken the plunge – I have ordered a Millennium frame from Needle Needs. Have you heard of these frames? They are beautiful, hand-crafted examples of the tool maker’s art. But more importantly, they are said to keep the fabric taut from side to side, unlike any other scroll frame I know of. Now it’s easy to be cynical about claims made for any product, especially if they are made by the manufacturers, but several people have very convincingly reviewed these frames (most notably Mary Corbett and Nicola Parkman), and so I am convinced. Especially now that I want to get into a goldwork a bit (or perhaps a lot…) more, a frame that keeps the fabric good an tight will be a real treat!

Because they are hand-made to order the frames can take a while to arrive (several months, in some cases), but when I phoned to ask whether it would be possible for us to pick mine up as we would be practically passing their workshop on our way to the in-laws at the end of February, the kind and helpful gentleman told me it was almost certain to be ready then, and yes, as long as we reminded them by phone the day before, it would be fine to come and pick it up. Hurrah! If it all works out as planned, that means I save the postage and I get to show the frame to my mother-in-law, who has been a keen needlewoman all her life.

Knowing that I will be the proud owner of this beautiful frame within a relatively short time, I have put Orpheus II on hold for the moment; it will be my inaugural project.

Which means that my stitching time for this month (which is fairly busy, so there won’t be that much of it anyway) will probably be taken up with finishing goldwork projects, experimenting with shisha flowers, and some more charity stitching. And the first in line was, of course, The Bee. I managed to do a fair bit of chipwork at my weekly stitching group last Monday, and encouraged by this I finished it on Tuesday. Then it was time for some experimenting, as well as some very fiddly unpicking – the tarnished gold on the bee’s body was carefully removed and put to one side on my velvet board, then I started cutting the silver bright check purl I got particularly for this purpose. Fortunately the gold that was already there turned out to be the same thickness – a sigh of relief there.

There wasn’t enough of the gold to do the whole bee in alternate stripes, so I decided to give him a silver head and backside. I cut one bit of silver too long and the two tiny bits I cut off to make it fit struck me as being just the right size to go on the end of his antennae. He doesn’t have any in the original design, but that’s neither here nor there. He does now. I found some very thin gold-and-red thread I had left over from a Japanese embroidery workshop which I used for the antennae themselves. And here he is!

It turned out to be very difficult to get an accurate picture – the fabric shows up in the various photographs as tinged with red, yellow and green, but it is just an ordinary natural-coloured fabric, sort of off-white/creamy. Another thing that was difficult to capture was the shine of the gold threads and wires. In the end I held the un-hooped fabric in direct sunlight and, with the camera pointed at it, moved it about until both leaf and bee sparkled. So here is an attempt at showing him in his full sparkly glory.

With the bee finished more or less to my satisfaction I found myself with some stitching time left before going to bed, so I had a go at another shisha flower card. As I’ve decided to use the small flower motif for a workshop my plan is to stitch it in several versions to see which one will work best, producing a number of useful cards in the process. This one uses the fly stitch variation which looks rather like a daisy; I used my 12-dot pattern in order to end up with 24 petals, as my shisha mirror stand-in (a disc of shell dyed a cheerful yellow) was smaller than the one in my experimental daisy, which could easily accommodate 32 petals. The scrolled stem is worked in chain stitch using DMC floche, the leaf is done in fly stitch using two strands of Carrie’s Creations stranded silk, and outlined in stem stitch using one strand. I like the effect of the fly stitch leaf, and together with chain stitch it will offer the learners some nice traditional stitches for this type of work.

Now it’s a pretty motif all on its own, but you can never have too much bling in a shisha piece and I felt perhaps there wasn’t quite enough of it here, especially as I won’t be using blending filament in the workshop. Perhaps some sequins? I didn’t have any metallic sequins to hand (though I have ordered some in gold, silver and copper) so I dotted around some gilt spangles. I started out with them in little triangular groups of three but ended up with a sort of “halo” around the flower, which seems to work quite well. The spangles are not actually attached, just put on the fabric for the photograph, as they are proper gilt ones which came with the goldwork watering can kit and I am not sewing nearly a pound’s worth of spangles to a small card! When the sequins arrive, I’ll sew some of those on, either gold only or perhaps (as there are nine of them) three of each colour. We’ll see!

Note to self: must remember to add the sequin dots to the shisha flower patterns.

A pre-sampler sampler

Posted on 31st January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

OK, I’m a wimp. My shisha piece is meant to be a proper sampler, which strictly speaking should include false starts and unsuccessful experiments. But I would also like it to look nice . So out comes the shisha daisy, and because it is so densely stitched it will leave an awful lot of little holes in the fabric. Fine if I were certain which stitch I was going to use in its stead, but I’m not – I’m havering between re-doing the daisy version in perle #5, and using the Cretan version. Better try them both out first before putting whichever one I decide to go for on the sampler. And so was born the pre-sampler sampler! From the sewing basket I got some green fabric left over from a cushion project, and some non-descript cream fabric left over from who knows what, and mounted them in a hoop together. Add two shades of Anchor Multicolor perle #5 and two 24mm sequins (one silver, one blue) and you’ve got a mini project.

In her shisha instructions, Mary Corbet uses perle #5 both for the foundation and for the surface stitches, but I decided to use a matching perle #8. It would have made sense to try out both thicknesses for the foundation, seeing that I was about to try out two shisha variations, but I thought of that too late; I’ll probably try the #5 foundation on the proper sampler. So here are the two sequins secured with a perle #8 grid. You can make the grid more secure by weaving the threads over and under, or looping them round each other, but here I just worked them in straight stitches without any complications.

By the way, my apologies for the atrocious colours in most of today’s photographs; I wanted to take progress pictures but was hampered by the fact that it was evening and the work is lit only by a standard lamp. This meant the camera insisted on flashing (as in the picture above) unless I specifically told it not to (as in the following pictures). Disabling the flash, however, not only made it necessary to keep the camera steady for a long time, the low light also seems to play havoc with colour accuracy. Even so, I hope the pictures will give you some idea of the how the stitches work.

For those of you who looked up the stitches that I’m trying out here on Mary Corbet’s blog, you will notice that I’m doing one or two things a little differently. (Isn’t it wonderful how needlework can be adapted to any stitcher’s requirements, skills and preferences?) Firstly, she uses ¾” card circles in her demonstrations, which equates to about 18mm, whereas my sequins are almost 1″ in diameter. This has an effect on the number of stitches worked around the sequins. Secondly, on the fly stitch variation (the one that looks like a daisy) she draws a full circle around the sequin for stitch placement; I’ve chosen to use dots, so that the line doesn’t show up among the petals, and also to help me place the stitches at regular intervals.

The dots were placed as regularly as I could make them by eye – that is to say, I didn’t get out the compasses and ruler, but used a sort of “points of the compass” division method: first mark dots to the North, East, South and West of the sequin, then equally divide the quarters and place dots NE, SE, SW and NW, then divide again and place dots NNE, ENE, ESE, SSE etc. For deciding how far from the sequin to place them I used a pinkie’s width to begin with, then judged it by eye (not completely accurately in some cases). This gave me 16 dots, which I thought might be enough for the Cretan version (which is very widely spaced and open in Mary Corbet’s version), while for the daisy I could use 16 more virtual dots by going between the marked ones. Both stitches start in the same way, by coming up on the outside of the sequin and looping the thread around the foundation stitches. Here is the start of the daisy/fly stitch version, with the petals anchored on and between the dots.

The next picture shows where a new stitch starts, and also illustrates quite nicely how to start a new thread if you run out before you’ve completed the circle. When you come to the end of your thread, complete a petal by anchoring it. The needle is now at the back of the fabric with nothing to do but start a new stitch, so fasten off and start the new stitch with the new thread (where I’ve just brought the needle up in the picture).

Changing threads isn’t nearly so easy in the Cretan shisha variation, because there you keep having to catch the loop of the working thread, so when the needle is at the back of the work the stitch hasn’t actually been finished yet. More of that a bit later; first let me point out another difference with Mary Corbet’s version. When I first learnt shisha stitch, from a book of stitches, I learnt to work it clockwise. Both Mary Corbet and RSN tutor Sarah Homfray work theirs anti-clockwise. Both methods work just fine, they are simply mirror images of each other, but I thought I might as well go with them and go anti-clockwise, especially since the variations they show and/or teach go anti-clockwise too. Except, for reasons I can’t quite work out, for Mary’s Cretan variation, which goes clockwise. Being now firmly in anti-clockwise mode I decided to mirror it, which is what I’m doing here, and why it looks different from the tutorial on her blog.

As you can see I use the virtual in-between dots for this variation as well; I really like the open look of Mary’s version but didn’t have the courage of my convictions – if I’m brave enough I’ll try the less dense way of stitching it on the real sampler. Even my denser version of the Cretan shisha stitch uses less thread than the fly-stitch variation, so the lighter version would probably only take one length of perle. Here, however, I did need to change threads, and because of the point made above this needed some preparatory thinking. In the end I decided it would have to be done in two stages. First, take the needle down and leave a loop at the front, as usual.

Next, fasten on the new thread by means of a waste knot and a few tiny stitches near the sequin, then bring it up in the right place to catch the loop (making sure that you don’t get entangled with the end of the old thread at the back of the work). Pull through and work the next loop around the foundation threads. Before taking the needle down the next dot on your guide circle, fasten off the old thread, then continue to work with the new thread. Simples!

So here are the two shisha variations side by side, both with 32 petals. I was surprised how easy both stitches were once I got into the rhythm of them, and both are very decorative, though I have a distinct preference for the Cretan one. That variation also uses less thread – a look at the back of the work explains why.

And finally, two close-ups. These show quite clearly that the foundation threads are visible between the surface stitches in places, but I’m not too bothered about that, bearing in mind that the original Indian pieces Sarah showed us last week didn’t always have complete coverage either. All in all I’m pleased with my pre-sampler sampler – a successful experiment; and now it’s back to the real sampler to try the ligher version of the Cretan stitch.

Shisha day class (and a bit more goldwork)

Posted on 28th January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Last Saturday was my second RSN day class – shisha this time, the Indian style of embroidery that incorporates little mirrors. The tutor was the same as for the goldwork day class, Sarah Homfray. Like last time, it was a lovely day; it’s very relaxing to spend time with other stitchers, improving existing skills and learning new ones. Also very interesting to see some of Sarah’s own work in this style, and some original Indian pieces. I was quite surprised to see that the coverage on these original embroideries wasn’t always as full as I had expected – perhaps I shouldn’t be too worried about the occasional gap!

The kit for the class contained silk fabric with cotton backing, a selection of stranded and perle cottons, five shisha mirrors (a circle, a small triangle, two squares and a heart) and an oval domed “jewel”. Sarah showed us two types of shisha stitch to attach the mirrors, the one that I used in the Shisha box top and another one which is simpler and quicker to work, and two very decorative surface stitches that were variations on feather stitch and fly stitch. There was no design as such, we just each worked on our own personal sampler – a sampler in the original sense of the word, in that it is a tangible reminder of stitches learnt which you can later use as an example. For this reason I worked some of the shisha stitches with foundation threads in a different colour from the surface thread, to make the structure of the stitch more visible; ordinarily you would use the same colour for both, so that any gaps in the surface stitches would be less visible. Below you can see what I managed to do during the class, plus the materials I haven’t used yet.

I took the embroidery with me to my weekly stitching group to work on it some more; my general aim was to try and pull the various elements together into something looking more like an intentional whole and less like a random collection of stitches. I wanted to add some embellishments (both purchased at the class and from my own stash) and also try one of Mary Corbet’s shisha variations, though without the whipping. It looks very attractive, rather like a daisy. I used it to attach a flat round sequin, with some variegated blue and white stranded cotton from the class kit.

Did it all work as intended? Well, sort of. I remembered to unpick the last stitch of the (pale lilac) fly stitch flower head and re-do it so that it went underneath the first stitch. Not really necessary perhaps, but it offended against my sense of symmetry to have the last stitch go over the stitches on either side of it, rather than over one of them and underneath the other, like all the other stitches. The instructions for this stitch start with a half stitch and end with one as well, but I found that if I remember to tuck under on completing the circle, there is no need for the half stitches.

I’m happy with the added sequins, beads, button and French knots, and I like the line of the dark green flower stem of feather stitch (called “little coat hangers” by Sarah’s assistant tutor). As for the shisha variation, I’m not satisfied with the way it looks. I don’t just mean that it is incredibly irregular – I decided to do very little measuring out on this sampler and just stitch free-hand – but the stranded cotton doesn’t cover the foundation threads at all well unless you pack the stitches in really closely (which makes it difficult to have nice defined petals), and the three strands look rather untidy. I was working from memory as I don’t have a tablet or anything like that, but when I looked up the instructions on the website later, I realised Mary Corbet used perle #5; this meant far fewer stitches were needed, and the lines looked much cleaner. And as I noticed there isn’t enough of the blue and white stranded cotton left to complete the stitch anyway, I will probably unpick the straggly daisy and restitch it in perle #5. Or I may try another variation altogether, one that she calls shisha with Cretan stitch (very closely related to feather stitch). It’s quite open compared to the other shisha stitches, but that gives it quite a nice lacy look.

Sarah very kindly brought some goldwork purchases as well; at the goldwork day class I didn’t want to impulse buy, so I researched what I wanted later, and asked Sarah if she could bring the things to this second workshop. For now they are mainly tools: a velvet board for cutting bits of purl on and keeping them in check (pun definitely intended ); a pair of serrated goldwork scissors to grip the purl while cutting; a pair of curved tweezers to pinch pearl purl and passing threads into nice sharp corners; a mellor to guide sewing threads over the thread or wire being couched, and to gently push couched threads into shape; and a curved needle for finishing off plunged threads.

I’m hoping to build up my goldwork thread and wire collection over time, but for now I just bought a mixed bag of chunky bright check purl (gold, silver and copper), and some finer silver bright check purl (more about that later). And from the many decorative bits and pieces Sarah brought to adorn shisha work with, I couldn’t resist some padded felt shapes and a bag of reddish gold sequins. I admit it, an impulse purchase; but as it was all of £1.25 I don’t feel too bad about it. I resisted some particularly splendid beetle wings as she hadn’t brought the pre-drilled ones, but I may very well get some in the future; Mary Corbet does spectacular things with them in both shisha and goldwork, and while I don’t aspire to the dizzy heights of her expertise and skill I think the wings would make a very attractive addition to less ambitious work too.

Hoping to ask Sarah for a little advice I had brought the goldwork bee. And straight away she corrected my assumption about its body. The reddish bright check purl is not copper, but gold tarnished from long term neglect *oops*. I said I’d thought of unpicking the body and she suggested salvaging the purl, if possible, and combining it with the silver bright check I bought to create stripes. So that’s my aim for when I next pick up this poor neglected insect.

Thinking of goldwork and shisha I was struck by the difference between the two classes. The shisha class was very free – no two projects created that day were the same, even though we were all learning the same stitches and using the same materials. This slightly uncharted and unplanned approach seems to go quite well with the folksy nature of the embroidery, and somewhat to my surprise (I am generally a counted embroidery girl, after all) I really enjoyed this aspect of it. The goldwork class was much more structured, and we all ended up with more or less the same result (apart from choosing different colours for the flowers, or putting some of the secondary swirls in a slightly different place) because we all started with a design drawn on our fabric, and were told which techniques to use where. Of course this is not an absolute difference; you can draw a formal design for shisha work, and many of the stitches will undoubtedly look better if you draw guidelines to keep them regular and tidy. And goldwork, even when starting from a particular design, allows for lots of variation. This was brought home to me when I had a closer look at my latest goldwork scribble, a toadstool with a caterpillar; I wrote down what I am likely to use in the way of materials and techniques, but it could be done in many different ways and would then look quite different.

Oh, in case you were wondering: copper pearl purl for the outline of the hood, spirals of couched silver passing (or Japanese thread) for the spots, padded kid for the “collar”, outlined in twist which will also outline the rest of the stem, chipwork under the collar to indicate shade, cutwork of rough purl (or a combination of two purls) for the underside of the hood, couched check thread for the grass with tiny spangles in gold and silver as flowers, and slightly larger spangles attached with stem stitch in gold and silver bright check purl for the catterpillar. With thin gold thread and petite beads for its feelers. Probably. But I may change my mind.

A DIY needle minder and a jewelled cross

Posted on 19th January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

Last Saturday I put together an impromptu needle minder inspired by the pretty and varied collection produced by Cirrus Creations, who is a fellow member of the Cross Stitch Forum. I already had two (one for my needles and one for my stork scissors), but they hardly deserve the fancy name of needle minder, being simply two small disc magnets. Very useful, perfectly adequate, but not, let’s face it, terribly attractive. Moreover they are not like properly made needle minders as they have no second magnet to back them, so you can’t secure them to your fabric; mine are stuck to my Lowery stand, which is made of metal.

Then I remembered a pair of ceramic buttons I bought at the 2013 Knitting & Stitching Show. I must admit they were a bit of an impulse buy, as I had no particular purpose in mind for them. A rummage through my box of bits and they quickly emerged, one round, one square. My husband uses small, very strong self-adhesive magnets to put into drain plugs (apparently it collects any stray bits of metal floating around in the sump or the petrol tank or wherever the drain plug is) and was happy for me to pinch one, plus a non-magnetic guard. The magnet was soon attached, and I now have a proper needle minder which happens to go very well with the fabric for Orpheus II.

A ceramic button bought at the 2013 Knitting & Stitching Show

A small self-adhesive magnet, and a metal guard

Yesterday at our morning service we welcomed three people into church membership, and all three happened to be members of our bi-weekly Bible study group. This called for celebratory cards! And my husband very rightly suggested that hand-made ones would be appropriate. A little cross, probably; not the little Hardanger one, though; white with only a little metallic, it seems more suitable for baptisms and weddings or even sympathy cards. For this occasion I wanted something bright and festive. How about one completely stitched in Petite Treasure Braid? All my PTB threads are in the little default box by my stitching chair (you never know when you might suddenly want a bit of sparkle) and from it I picked out gold, red, blue, green and purple. In the end the purple didn’t get used, but it may well be if I stitch this again for another occasion.

Having stitched the three crosses pretty much by eye from a quick pencil sketch and the memory of the Hardanger cross, I decided to chart it for future use, and to put it on the website as a freebie. It’s funny – I’m so used to drawing Hardanger charts (where the lines are the fabric threads and the squares are the holes) that I unthinkingly drew this one in the same way, before realising that backstitch charts are usually like cross stitch ones (where the squares in the chart are the fabric thread intersections over which a cross stitch would be made, and the intersections of the lines on the chart are the holes in the fabric). In the end I drew both, so every stitcher can pick the one that suits her best. (From this FoF post, that is; to keep things simple only one chart, the cross stitch style one, is available on the Freebie page. That one also lists the PTB numbers I used.) Have fun experimenting with colours and threads – you could have a silver-and-amethyst cross, or a copper-and-emerald one, or anything you like!

Jewelled Cross chart, cross stitch style

A gold (or copper) snag, and another Orpheus

Posted on 14th January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

My bee has hit a snag. And I was getting on so well, too. Below left is the little goldwork bee as unearthed from my RSN workshop folder after nearly six years of neglect, below right what I’ve done to it so far: completed the edge of the leaf (couched double Japanese thread – and I need to neaten up the bit I had already done, as it wasn’t stitched quite correctly and is beginning to buckle) and its stem (couched pearl purl); started on the chipwork that will fill the leaf; and worked the bee’s wings (couched pearl purl again – the image on the kit showed them as two separate wings but I wanted to try a sharp corner so I stitched them as one; a pair of accurate tweezers might have helped there).

Actually I had meant to complete the bee’s body (cutwork of bright check purl in a rather pleasant copper shade) before working its wings, and I got as far as stretching (please don’t mention this to any true goldworker as it’s bound to get me excommunicated before I’ve even got properly started) the purl already there to make them cover the gaps down the sides caused by my inability to judge what length of purl was needed to fully cover the padded felt. Then, as I reached for the remaining bright check purl in the kit to cut it into hopefully better-fitting pieces, I found that there was none. I can only assume that when I picked up all the bits and pieces after the workshop, I must have missed the copper bright check. And none of the other odds and ends I have will match it – for one thing they are all either gold or coloured, not copper, and for another they aren’t the same size. One option is to unpick what is already there (on the grounds that it isn’t very good anyway) and re-do it in the threads I have; another is to get some more copper bright check, although I don’t know whether there could be a colour difference if you get it from a different source or manufacturer. At the moment I’m leaning towards getting some bright check in silver and gold, or some bright check and rough purl both in silver, and making a stripy bee. Watch this space!

I’m juggling several projects at the moment – not literally, you understand; that would require more skill than I possess – which makes for a very pleasing variety in my stitching hours. There is the goldwork watering can, although I may put that on hold for a little until I collect my lovely tools (and a few other bits & pieces…) from Sarah Homfray at the Shisha class; because of a family weekend away, for which I wanted some not-too-challenging stitching, I have picked up the buttonholing of Floral Lace again (11 and a quarter down, 6 and three quarters to go); and of course there is Orpheus. Orpheus I, Orange Orpheus, is finished *yay!* and fortunately after damping, ironing and some judicious pulling it is now almost perfectly square instead of noticeably rectangular. It will eventually get laced over brown felt.

Orpheus I

But I am not left completely Orpheus-less, as it is now the turn of rectangular Orpheus II. Literally the turn, as I will work it sideways on my larger frame. That way, the longer sides of the fabric are secured, and hopefully there will be enough tension to work the pulled stitches on the scroll frame (I am beginning to feel very tempted by the Millenium frame, especially after reading Mary Corbet’s review of it). Unlike in the first Orpheus some of the stitches will be worked in perle #12. This is not because I’ve only just thought of it, or because I think three weights of thread look better in green than in orange, but merely because the shade of orange used in Orpheus I is not produced in #12 by DMC. I’m sure they have a reason for this. If I like the effect of adding in the lighter-weight thread I’ll simply put a note in the chart pack to suggest that if #12 is available in the shade picked by the stitcher, it may be used to good effect for such and such a stitch.

French knots and some wonky gold insects

Posted on 3rd January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

The Small Sweet Heart is finished – but I did have some trouble with all those French knots. First I managed to fasten on in the wrong place. Unpick, re-fasten. Then after 5 knots realised I was using 2 strands instead of the 3 I had intended. Unpick 5 French knots, re-thread needle with 3 strands. Work 10 French knots, realise they are far too bulky and I can’t see what I’m doing because the knots cover the holes I need to use next. Unpick 10 French knots, re-thread needle with two strands. Off we go! From then on there weren’t too many problems, apart from some of the knots failing to sit where they should and having to be un-knotted, and the fact that because the threads of opalescent fabric include a metallic strand, the holes are much less defined and you find yourself splitting the fabric threads instead of going down the intended holes. In the end I worked the French knot sections with my glasses off – I am very near-sighted and working without my glasses I can get really close to the fabric so I can focus on the details. The downside to doing this is that you notice every irregularity which is very discouraging, but on the other hand looking at it from a normal viewing distance is suddenly a very pleasant surprise because it doesn’t look nearly so bad as you thought!

In order to keep up my goldwork, I am interspersing work on Orpheus with completing my little RSN bee from way back in 2009. I cast a critical eye over it, and the later dragonfly, and have come to two conclusions: A) that both leave a lot to be desired, and B) that goldwork can look remarkably pretty even when it does leave a lot to be desired .

Here are a few close-ups to show what I mean. The first two are of the dragonfly (which I think I did in 2012), and quite apart from the fact that I haven’t covered all of the design lines, some of the cutwork is too long and buckles (arrow in the first picture), and some is too short and doesn’t quite cover the felt padding (arrow in the second picture). The next two are of the bee; nothing buckles, but several bits were cut too short (arrows in third and fourth pictures). The bits pointed out in the dragonfly, by the way, are smooth purl, the ones in the bee are bright check. There is some bright check in the dragonfly as well (a thicker size than in the bee) which miraculously appears to have been cut to the correct length throughout.

The watering can project I started at the day class last month has some cutwork, but not over felt padding, so there wasn’t the need to cut it to exactly the right length. Much easier and less fraught, but the padded work does catch the light rather beautifully. So back to the bee, and I may well see if I’ve got enough bright check to start again. It may work if I use bright check from my stash for the chipwork that is to cover the leaf. Here is what it has looked like since the workshop in 2009; so now I need to finish couching a double Japanese gold thread around the leaf (blue arrow), complete (or completely re-do) the bright check cutwork on the bee’s body (red arrow), and finish couching the pearl purl stem (green arrow), then use the pearl purl for the bee’s wings, and bright check chips for the leaf. I’ll keep you updated!

A parrot, an unintended project and a border

Posted on 2nd January, 2015 by Flights of Fancy

First things first: Happy New Year! May only good things come your way in 2015.

It’s not often that I stitch other people’s designs nowadays; it’s the downside of having so many of my own things to stitch. There is a Victoria Sampler kit languishing in a drawer that I still want to do one day, and definitely some more goldwork too, but generally I work on models of my own designs because if I don’t, I can’t put them up on the website for other people to stitch!

Occasionally there is a solid reason for picking an existing design rather than charting one myself. Recently my mother reminded me that I had promised to stitch a bookmark for my eldest aunt, and in my stash of cross stitch patterns collected from magazines over the years I found a colourful parrot that was just perfect for her, so I used that.

Sometimes there is no particular reason at all, except that a design really takes my fancy. This was the case with a pretty little heart which a lady on the Cross Stitch Forum stitched using a hand-dyed thread, and which had come out beautifully; it’s a freebie and you can find both a picture and the chart on Olga Maxden’s blog. What I like about it is that it uses a variety of stitches – lattice stitch, French knot, double cross stitch, different-shaped ray stitches and so on – and only two threads, one perle and one stranded. Using a solid perle and a variegated stranded thread produces a very attractive effect.

Remember the Gloriana silk I was given at the Knitting & Stitching show by the kind lady at the Calico Cat stand? As it turned out it wouldn’t really do as a substitute for the Dinky Dyes perle used in Sunken Treasures, but it is a lovely thread with its subtle variegation of green, smoky blue and lavender, and with a pale blue perle just the combination for this little heart. I’ve gone for a 28ct opalescent white Lugana with perle #12 and two strands of Gloriana silk (three for the French knots, needed to recreate the nice and plump look of the original). Here’s what I’ve done so far, just the French knots to go (“just” – ha!):

In spite of sneaky little projects worming their way into my To Do pile I did manage some work on Orpheus, on the first of the three borders. The inner and outer borders are long-armed braid, and the central one is a double feather braid; I was hoping for a nice contrast between the two stitches, and I think it’s working rather well: the long-armed braid is quite solid and 3D, and should form a nice frame for the airier feather braid. Here is a close-up which shows a little of the texture and height of the stitch, though unfortunately it’s difficult to get the picture to look like it does in real life.

Gold!

Posted on 13th December, 2014 by Flights of Fancy

Tucked away in a drawer somewhere is my RSN (Royal School of Needlework) folder; in it are the kits I got at the one-hour workshops I’ve done at various Knitting & Stitching shows. There are five in total, and I was pleased to see that I had actually finished most of them (a one-hour workshop is never enough to finish the project there, so there’s always homework) – the goldwork dragonfly I’ve shown here before, plus crewelwork, blackwork and silk shading.

I vaguely remember having done a stumpwork class as well but I can’t find it, and I’m not sure that was a RSN one. The only unfinished project in the folder was the little goldwork bee I mentioned last time, and I will definitely finish it some time soon; it’s got an area of chipwork (more about that later) I’m looking forward to trying. But oh dear – the cutwork (more about that later, too!) that’s there already is really rather embarrassing, and I may undo it and start over again.

All this talk of chipwork and cutwork leads neatly to what is really meant to be the subject of this FoF, the RSN goldwork day class I attended last Saturday. I’ve got lots of pictures of all the beautiful sparkly materials, and of some of the techniques we’ve been learning, although the merest glance at some of the work Sarah Homfray, the tutor, had brought along for us to see was enough to bring on severe self-doubt about showing any of my own. Fortunately Sarah turned out to be a great teacher who managed to correct while encouraging – brilliant.

Let’s start with the pack we used for the class. It was well-presented, everything bagged up in little acid-free paper bags, good picture of what we were meant to produce, and stitch instructions to remind us when finishing the work at home. Just opening all the little bags and feeling the materials (goldwork must be one of the most tactile forms of embroidery) was enormously enjoyable; and we hadn’t done a single stitch yet!

The “basic” supplies (apart from the fabric which I didn’t photograph unused) were various needles, some of them very fine, some sewing thread in a yellow-gold colour, and a piece of beeswax. Proper beeswax is apparently better for goldwork than the synthetic version whose name I can’t remember for the moment.

Having taken everything out of the pack, we were given advice on how to put the fabric in the hoop (pushing the inner ring into the outer ring from the back; this made it really taut but unfortunately wouldn’t work with the flexi-hoops I tend to use), and shown the first of the techniques we would be using. The instructions were very clear and delivered in manageable chunks, with information about the materials as well as the stitches. Here’s a little goldwork nugget: you plunge thread, but not wire.

Plunging, in case you’re wondering, has nothing to do with necklines but everything with taking your threads through to the back of your fabric for finishing off. And one of the threads we would have to do that with is Japanese thread (which Sarah told us on no account to call “Jap”, as some people do). It’s a core of silk or cotton with a long strip of gold wrapped around it. Well, not 100% gold, obviously. About 2%, apparently, down to ½% for more affordable threads. But it looks very effective and gold-like nonetheless!

The next thread isn’t a thread but a coiled wire, and it’s my favourite goldwork material so far, if only because of what it’s called. It rejoices in the gloriously silly name of pearl purl. Like most of these materials it comes in several thicknesses; the gold in the picture is what came in the RSN pack and is, I think, a #2, the silver is from my stash and according to the label a #3. The bit at the end that looks different is where I’ve pulled it apart. You’re meant to do that, by the way, though not quite as far as this.

Then there were sparkly bits; beads and coloured sequins, and spangles. The spangles are interesting: they are still made in the traditional way by flattening little loops of metal. Because of this, each one is slightly different, and they have a gap which you have to bear in mind when stitching them down.

Two more types of wire: bright check and smooth purl. The bright check is triangular in cross section and very sparkly, the smooth purl is, well, smooth. The coloured bits are a very fine bright check.

And finally two threads which I haven’t actually tried yet. We were shown how to use them at the end of the class, so there wasn’t any time to get stitching with them. But as they are applied in the same way as the Japanese thread they shouldn’t present any great problems. The wavy thread is called Rococo (spelled with varying numbers of “c”s depending on which website you visit), the other one is called Twist for the obvious reason that it is three gold-covered threads twisted together. It apparently frays like anything.

Well, those were the materials, and here is what I managed to do during the class:

The three main techniques used in it are chip work, cut work, and laid work. For chip work you cut bright check into little pieces, as square as you can manage, and then attach them much as you would beads. The direction of the pieces should be random for maximum sparkle. I’m not sure whether you can do chip work with any of the other wires – I must ask some time. Cut work is like chip work but with longer pieces. In proper goldwork it is attached over felt or string padding (which I did do in the dragonfly and bee) and the big challenge is to cut your wire to exactly the right length needed to cover the padding; too long and it buckles, too short and the padding is visible. Both these errors are in evidence in my earlier pieces. Bright check, by the way, like smooth purl, is in effect a tube, so they are attached by taking a fine needle through the pieces, very carefully so you don’t damage the tube by pulling the coil apart or poking your needle through it. The smooth purl especially can pretty much unravel on your needle. Approach with caution.

You can use cutwork in a different way as well, with deliberately long bits that stand up in a loop for example, in this case to create flower petals. The sequins and spangles can be attached with plain stitches (which I haven’t done here), with a bead, or with a chip of bright check.

The watering can is laid work, which as far as I can make out is anything couched onto the fabric or over a base of felt or string padding. The main body of the can is double Japanese thread, and it is couched down with a single thread in a brick pattern. In the corners you couch the two strands separately to make a nice crisp turn. This part was worked from the outside in, and somehow I managed to end up with a triangular shape in the centre, so I plunged the two strands separately and filled in the little gap with chipwork. Ideally I’d have kept it rectangular all the way through and filled it completely with Japanese thread. Oh well. The spout and handle are worked in couched pearl purl. You start by pulling it, a little at a time because if you overstretch it you can’t push it back. When it no longer coils when you let go of it, it’s ready to use. You couch at an angle between the coils so the thread slips down and is invisible, although in “free” goldwork you can overstretch deliberately and couch very visibly with coloured threads for effect. Will definitely try that some time!

This was just a day course, and so we only scratched the surface of all that is possible in goldwork. For a look at a proper, full-blown RSN project, have a look at this great set of blog posts which follow one stitcher’s project from the very start to the final assessment (the posts are in reverse date order).

Pictures

Posted on 10th December, 2014 by Flights of Fancy

Not a proper FoF today (although I am working on one about the goldwork class I attended recently) but just a few photographs. Firstly, two showing the Tamar threads in a more relevant way – I realised that showing them in isolation yesterday wasn’t really very helpful. So here is the blue/green/purple shade (both light and dark) with the DMC colours used in Sunken Treasures, and the yellow/peach shade with DD Jaffa and one of the DMC Variations. As you can see the DMC is actually an almost perfect match, but unlike Anchor, DMC unfortunately produce their variegated perles in #5 only.

Tamar replacement for DD Daydream with DMC threads

Reading yesterday’s FoF, my husband wondered why I had bothered to post the last picture (of Orpheus out of its hoop) as the most interesting bit was blurred. I explained that the picture was meant to illustrate the severe creasing flexi-hoops can cause, but on second thoughts I do agree that it’s a bit mean not to show anything of the work in progress. So to make up for it, here is a snippet of Orpheus.

A snippet of Orpheus

And finally a sneak preview of the goldwork FoF – this is part of the project I worked on last Saturday. Can you guess what it is?

Going through my pictures of the Royal School of Needlework mini workshops I attended at various Knitting & Stitching Shows, I noticed that one of them is a little goldwork bee which I don’t think I ever finished. Must see if I can find it!

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Materials & Equipment