Category Archives: embroidery

Stitchy Gift

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While I was crafting around work in Ballarat last month I listened to a few podcasts. One was the Craft Sanity podcast, and I particularly enjoyed the interview with Rebecca Ringquist. So when I saw her book in a shop I suggested Paul get it for me for Christmas.

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I listened to the interview at a point where I was assessing my own interest in embroidery – and craft in general – and a quick look at the book in the shop told me it was something I needed to read, rather than simply for project inspiration and instruction.

You see, while I don’t necessarily want to produce the style of embroidery Rebecca makes in this book, it’s more a book about an approach to embroidery than making the example projects. It says it’s “a ‘bend-the-rules’ primer”, and that’s what I’m after.

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When I look at what I’ve enjoyed and succeeded in making with embroidery so far, a few common elements emerge. When the projects have been small, they’ve been detailed and precise. When they’ve been larger, they’ve been looser and more about texture and colour than representation.

I feel like I’m wasting my time if I’m not working on something useful. That is, either embellishing a garment or bag, or making jewellery. The few times I’ve made artwork, it’s either been intensely personal (the cats) or I’ve intended to make it into something eventually even if I don’t yet know what. While Rebecca suggests letting go of the notion of the piece having a purpose, I’ve recognised that for me that is a creativity-blocker. I’m the same with colouring books. Only when I turned the pages into greeting cards did I enjoy colouring them.

You see, we have so much artwork already that I freeze in horror at the thought of accumulating more.

Time seems to be an cause of me losing interest, as well. The books I write, the portraits I paint, and the sort of weaving I’m exploring now tend to take a long time, on a scale of months to years. I acknowledged years ago that I need some of the craft I do to provide quick satisfaction. Not necessarily instant, but a scale of days and weeks would be nice. And sometimes I have no energy for thought and planning, and it’s good to be able to pick up something and just stitch.

So I’m looking for embroidery projects that are reasonably fast, that can be done in front of the tv or fit in my handbag for waiting rooms and airport lounges, and that has a use at the end. And aren’t old fashioned or twee.

That pretty much eliminates most designs on the market.

I’m happy to design my own projects, but that does require some thought and planning. However, Rebecca’s approach also appeals because it has a freeform spirit to it. Just take a thing and embellish it. Doodle with stitches. Enjoy texture and colour and accident. I love how she says don’t bother fixing a mistake, just stitch over it. And I love her for saying it’s okay to use knots. Honestly, I’ve been hung up on the whole ‘to knot, or not to knot’ question for ages, because I don’t want to put a whole lot of work into embellishing a garment only to have the ends come loose in the wash. Rebecca even suggests putting the knots on the front of the work. I love that!

So I wrote in my visual diary a list of likes and dislikes:

Likes:
The textural look of kantha and boro
The enhancing of fabric in sashiko and kogin
The simplicity of stitch in tambour and blackwork
The modern look of ‘new’ crewel and the colour in ethnic embroidery
Unconventional materials and scale, as in stitching greeting cards or giant cross stitch.
And, conversely, finer and realistic work if it’s tiny, as in jewellery
Fast projects
Portable projects
Projects with no use
Using no hoop

Dislikes:
Fussy, precise work
Traditional and old fashioned (unless subverted)
Twee
Collage-like overly busy work
Slow projects
Cumbersome projects
Artwork
Worrying about knots

Since then I’ve looked in my wardrobe, gone through my old sketchbook, and peered at my to-do list, considering what I could stitch. I’m looking at long delayed sewing projects with fresh enthusiasm, if they provide opportunity for embellishment. And that’s led to some pattern purchasing, downloading, and printing – and planning a sewing day.

Crafty plans for 2016 are well underway.

Cardy Embellishment I

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I finished this project the night before NYE.

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At the beginning of last year I bought two cashmere cardigans to wear while overseas – one purple, one red. I took the purple cardy overseas. It served it’s purpose as a layering garment. But while I love the colour of both cardys, they’re rather boring. I’ve always intended to embellish them.

For the purple one I wanted to do some embroidery, but every time I put needle and thread to it the result was disappointing, or the method was too slow or hard on my hands. Eventually I tried chain stitch with thin grey weaving yarn and liked it.

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For the red one I want to do black roses. I bought gauzy ribbon sewn into roses, black velvet ribbon and other trim, and pinned it to the cardy on the dress model, but didn’t find a design I liked. Now I know chain stitch works well, I think I’ll use it and black wool yarn instead.

The Third Ten

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For a few evenings I had fun choosing and stitching buttons onto cards. That evolved into using bright embroidery thread to sew them on, then to mixing embroidery and buttons, then to all embroidery, then to string art inspired designs.

This one took a while, but I had someone in mind for it.

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If you look closely, you can see he has a gold tooth.

Blackwork Beginnings

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I’ve started the sampler:

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It’s gonna take a while.

As for my growing list of the WIPs, I’ve made progress on most of them. The Hunky Hank Blanket might turn into a jacket. I’ve been playing with arranging squares on my dress model and have come up with a few designs I like the look of. I’m two squares short of the number I need for the design I prefer, but I figure I can do them with a different black yarn and put them under the arms, where they won’t be seen much.

Tomorrow I’m off to a Craft Day with a small bunch of friends. I’m taking some clothing to alter and some refashioning projects. Hopefully I’ll have some finished pieces to post in a few days.

On the Go

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I’m still weaving two-yarn squares while watching tv:

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I have nearly 30. Though I only had one ball of black and three of the multi-coloured, the black ball weighed twice as much as one multi-coloured ball and is slightly thinner, so won’t have as much leftover multi as I’d expected. I’ll join the squares with it, and do a crochet border. While I intended to make a blanket, I like the fabric so much I’m tempted to try making a garment of some sort. There might be enough for a simple kimono style jacket.

One Scary Tea Towels has been woven:

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Two more to go.

I’ve started two new projects. The first is to de-boringify a cashmere cardigan. I bought it for travel as it’s light and warm, and easily layered:

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After trying several embroidery methods, I’ve settled on using a crochet hook to do chain stitch. It’s fiddly, and very slow. I’m hoping that using some tearaway stabiliser and putting it on hoop will make it easier and faster.

The other project is a hat knit from frogged Inca yarn:

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Yes, that’s hand knitting. I’ll stick to a couple of rows a time, every couple of nights, it the hope of avoiding an RSI flare up. The thing is, weaving the yarn didn’t appeal, and it’s a bit thick for the knitting machine. I’ve got to use it somehow, so hand knitting it is.

Lucky Stand

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I’ve not done any embroidery for a while now. Mostly because the projects I want to do require larger stretchers and hoops, and I’ve found the weight of them hard on my wrists. So I’ve been looking at stands. There are a lot to choose from. Stands that hold a hoop at one point. Stands that prop up stretchers at either side. Taller stands that rest on the floor.

So Monday last week I decided to check out what was on eBay. There just happened to be an auction for a adjustable-width floor stand ending that night, for a bargain price of $12.50. I bid, won and picked it up that night. All that was required to attach my stretcher was two drill holes and some longer bolts:

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Two days later, on an op shop tour with friends, I found a stretcher exactly the same width as the stand for $4.50.

So I’m obeying the messages of the craft gods and setting up to do my first blackwork sampler. And I’ve a hankering to try tambour embroidery, so I’ve ordered some hooks.

Ribbon Scarf

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After getting my craft mojo back post trip, I couldn’t decide what to work on. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tackle anything on my to-do list but that I wanted to do all of them equally as much. So faced with too much choice I figured I may as well attack the WIP list instead.

The first thing I did was finish the flamingo pendant, then warp up the rigid heddle loom for some more placemats. But I wanted to reduce the WIP list and I had four placemats to weave then a runner to warp and weave so it would be a while before I could cross that one off. Rather than start weaving I set my sights on finishing faster WIPs.

I made a tough decision and unpicked the embroidery on the grey vest, While I thought it looked sweet, it really wasn’t me. Nothing like abandoning a project to quickly reduce the WIP list!

After that I examined the ribbon scarf. I’d been basting ribbons on slowly, usually during an evening of tv watching. But I found it hard to tell if I was getting the colours evenly spread, or if I had enough ribbon to cover both sides. So I decided to lay the fabric out on a table and lay the remaining ribbon over it. I worked out that I really only had enough ribbon to cover one side.

I started cutting and pinning ribbon, and once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I basted the ribbons down over a couple of sessions. All that was left then was to sew them down, hem the scarf and unpick the basting, and it was done.

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This is a 100% recycling project. The gauze was left over from another project, and the ribbons removed from an old costume.

As for the rest of the WIPs… I reckon I can get the Paua Shell Collar done pretty soon. I’ve also returned to art classes, so I’m finally making progress on Justin’s portrait. What I really need to tackle, however, is the Art Necklace. It’s the oldest WIP and it’s time I got it out of the way.

Flamingo Pendant

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Here’s the finished embroidered pendant I began while overseas:

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As I suspected, it all started to look right once I got the full range of feather colours on. I found a blue cord necklace at Spotlight that was a close match to the fabric.

Last weekend it went to the recipient, a thank you present to my lovely friend Karen who made some promotional notebooks for me to use as gifts overseas. She is rather fond of flamingos.

Travelling Stitches

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Thing I was right about: I stitching during bumpy flights and train journeys doesn’t produce accurate work.
Thing I was wrong about: That a certain stretch of rest time I’d planned to do stitching in would actually be restful.

However, I did eventually finish this:

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And half of the second piece.

Kitted Out

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The first embroidery kit I took overseas contained lots of little embroidery projects. I far overestimated how much time I’d have for stitching and didn’t even finish one. Having learned from that, I took a smaller kit for the next trip. I was only away for 10 days so all I managed was to embroider eyes on a sleep mask.

This time there’s a bit of relaxation time built into the trip, so I might achieve more. But I am only taking two tiny projects, my usual card holding pre-cut lengths of thread in a range of colours, some fabric and some blank pendant bases. If I run out of stitching to do I’ll attack another sleep mask. Or something else in my suitcase.

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The pros of traveling with embroidery over knitting is the materials and tools are so much smaller. The cons are that bad light and being jostled make it difficult to stitch well. Since I was able to knit mostly without looking, so long as light was good enough for occasional checking of progress I was fine, and the rocking of a train or turbulence of a plane had to be pretty bad to bother me. I have a little clip-on light, but there’s no solution to stitching in rough transport and those needles are sharp!