Sweet Marguerite – Kits Available!

Gosh, I was thinking Friday would never arrive this week! I’m so excited that Sweet Marguerite is now duly launched.

You can find the kits for Sweet Marguerite, our next stitch-along project, right here in the shop, just waiting for you.

At this time, we’re out of beeswax petites and we’re out of needle minders. I always have an early shopping event for members on Patreon before I launched a new product in my shop, and – due to the hand-made, slower-made nature of those products – we didn’t have as many as I would have liked. But we are making more. I will let you know when they’re ready again.

We also sold out of the blue option on the kits during the early shopping event, but we have enough blue linen to prepare more and get them shipped right away. I’ve put some more blue in stock for you. Just note that the project is a sample project – it’s to learn a few techniques – and all the colors are the same high quality linen. So if the blue sells out, don’t hesitate to grab another color kit!

Now the kits are ready to ship, let’s talk about how the stitch-along will unfold!

First, we’ll give everyone about a week to receive their kits in the mail.

Sequence of the Project

If you’re not getting a kit, no worries – you can still follow along with the project on the website to pick up any tips & techniques you might want to learn. If you have a stash of fabric and thread you want to use, that’s fine, too. I’ll write about possible fabric and thread choices as we progress through the stitch-along.

We’ll set the project up together. I’ll show you how I transferred the design for my first sample, so that the transfer is absolutely invisible – important when you’re doing whitework! We’ll also talk about other transfer options. We’ll talk about hooping and framing your fabric. We’ll also talk about measuring for the layout of the hem and design placement, whether or not we should count for withdrawing the threads (and why or why not) and all sorts of fun technical stuff that that I’ll make really simple for everyone.

Then, we’ll work the embroidery!

After we do the embroidery, we’ll tackle the set-up for the hem and the drawn thread work. This means you’ll learn how to prepare a hem on a piece of linen, and we’ll do fun things like iron, baste, and (best of all!) pull out threads! We’ll also look at re-weaving threads and other ways of approaching drawn thread work preparation.

Then, once we have the hem completely prepared and the threads withdrawn, we’ll do the hem stitch. Then we’ll embellish the hem stitch and we’ll talk about other ways to embellish hemstitch.

Keeping Up with the Project

This is a stitch-at-your-own-pace project. I’ll be publishing the lessons according to a schedule, but you don’t have to meet the same timeline that I’m publishing on.

And all of these lessons will appear on Needle ‘n Thread for free – you can follow along on the blog as usual. I’ll create an index where you can find every article in the project listed chronologically. If you’re signed up for the email newsletter (which you can sign up for here – it’s free), you’ll get a notification in your inbox when anything is posted on the blog.

If you are a member on Patreon, you’ll receive the lessons in PDF format for easy downloading, saving, and printing. I also plan to share a video or two for those who are signed up as dedicated and avid stitchers. I think our technical difficulties have finally been overcome

To receive the most thorough coverage for the project, all three access points are helpful (blog / newsletter, Patreon PDFs, video), but even if you’re following only on the blog, you’ll get all the pertinent information as we worth through this project.

The fun starts next week!

Other Info and Upcoming…

A few things:

I am sorry about running out of needle minders and beeswax petites! I didn’t know they would be so popular and go so quickly.

I also realized I have been remiss about the needle minders. I started talking about them, only to discover that many stitchers have never used needle minders and don’t know what they are. I will explain them in depth shortly, so that you know what they are and how to use them. They really are a great tool to have!

If you discover that you really enjoy this project, you might consider investing in the colored linen sample pack that’s available in the shop, especially if you want to stitch an accent linen in each color. With the sample pack, you can create slightly larger accent linens. I’ve listed the colored linen sample pack and the natural linen sample packs right next to the new kit here in the shop, but just keep in mind that the natural linen sample pack does not have exactly the same linen in it that we are using. It has a couple natural linens that will work ok for the project, but they aren’t quite the same linen, thread-count-wise.

Something Fishy is also in stock and ready to ship, for those of you looking for pre-transferred summer towels, perfect for relaxed stitching!

Remember, even while the stitch-along is progressing here on the blog, I’ll keep writing other articles between the stitch-along installments, so we’ll still be touching on other embroidery topics between the Sweet Marguerite sessions!

Have a great weekend!