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Mary Corbet

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I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more

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Photo Update of Canvas Work… and Space!

 

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This little canvas work sampler has been fun, but it’s absolutely time to end it! The problem with “design-as-you-go” samplers is that sometimes, you just keep going… and going… and going. And that can be detrimental to a couple things: the overall design, and the ability to get anything else accomplished!

But I’ve come pretty much to the stopping point – I’m going to fill in one more tiny section, touch up the flaws, embroidery a tiny border around it, and call it finished.

Canvas Work Embroidery Sampler

It’s a little… much! And all packed in to about 4″ x 5.5″ But the advantage to working on something like this is that you don’t have time to get bored before you switch to another color and stitch.

Canvas Work Embroidery Sampler

I think this little section is my favorite part. I like the diamond pattern on the right side of the paisley, and the gold filling on the left side.

Canvas Work Embroidery Sampler

In fact, here’s the gold filling up close. I probably used too many strands of floss – the stitches look pretty packed and pudgy. I used 3 strands of Soie d’Alger, in two colors of gold. The stitch is actually upright cross stitch, although with the dark gold, the top stitch of the cross is horizontal, and with the light gold, it’s vertical. (I did that on purpose, just to see what effect it would have on the whole filling.)

Canvas Work Embroidery Sampler

I also like this little guy sticking up – an afterthought. Too many afterthoughts can spoil the look, but this one, I like!

Canvas Work Embroidery Sampler

And I like the little shaded curl. The backgrounds are half cross stitch, in alternating colors of light gold / dark gold, and light purple / dark purple. They also go in different directions. The golds are silk Soie d’Alger; the purples are stranded cotton (DMC); the greens on the curl are Eterna flat silk.

So that’s that project, almost finished. I should be able to fill in that empty space tonight and put an edge on it.

And the hobby room is coming along well – should be finished by the middle of next week (I hope!). It was a single car garage on the back of the house. But I live in a small house, which has little interior storage space, so the garage is being converted into storage space for household stuff as well as for hobby stuff, and an area for working projects. There will be a large table out in the middle of the room and, eventually, a sewing machine and so forth.

So this is what it looks like:

Hobby Room in Progress

Over on the right wall, those are floor-to-ceiling cabinets – there will be adjustable shelving in there.

Hobby Room in Progress

That’s the same wall of cabinets, looking in the other direction.

Hobby Room in Progress

And that’s the wall opposite the cabinets – which will also be lined with the same floor-to-ceiling cabinets. So the only wall space will actually be below the big window, really – a sewing table would fit there. The freezer is also out there, so it’s not a LOT of space, but it is space, nonetheless!

I’m still troubling over a good organizational method – bins, or cubby-hole type small shelves – for fabrics, threads, and whatnot. Any suggestions are most welcome!

 
 

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(5) Comments

  1. I use plastic shoe boxes for each type of thread that I have labelled and stacked on shelves. But I’m tired of dealing with them and my 4 dmc cabinets. I’d really like a cabinet or 2 with wide, shallow drawers-like what you see for map storage. You can spread out the threads that way and not have to handle them as much.

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  2. Hi, Cindy – I’m pretty familiar with those types of cabinets, as we have some at work. Thing is: whew! If you find older ones, they are usually super-duper heavy (the drawers individually, and the whoel cabinet!), and they have a large “footprint” – so they take up quite a bit of floor space. But I love the idea of being able to pull out shallow drawers where the threads can be laid out. I wonder if they have smaller “shelf varieties” of such cabinets? Might be worth checking into!

    Right now, I’m using plastic tool drawer boxes – they work pretty well, but the drawers are very small, so I have to open lots of little drawers to find what I want. It gets annoying!

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  3. There is a lot going on in this sampler but isn’t that what samplers are all about, Mary?
    Those curved sections appeal to me considerably and the colours are so much fun.
    What a great space you will have!

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  4. Mary, I really like all the purple and green in your sampler. I don’t think you can ever go wrong with those two colours!

    Congratulations on the soon-to-be space. That must be exciting for you.

    I hope to buy some map chests at some future time (for paper in my case). I didn’t think the prices at Home Decorators were too bad compared with art suppliers. Here’s a link:

    http://www.homedecorators.com/search.php?search=map+storage&x;=0&y;=0

    (If the link doesn’t work, go to http://www.homedecorators.com and search on ‘map storage’.)

    I hope you are feeling better!

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