Last time we visited the Secret Garden embroidery project, we looked at the vines on the lower half of the hummingbird design, which were underway in shaded stem stitch filling.

I’ve finished embroidering the vines on the lower half of the project, including the center scrolls.

Today, let’s look at that part of the design. I’ll tell you how I stitched it (you might want to do it differently), and share some insights on some tricky spots.

Lately, Ye Olde Inbox has been jammed full with questions about embroidery frames, stands, hoops, and the like.

When questions start arriving in bulk (a good sign that somewhere, there’s a spurt of growth going on in the embroidery world!), I try to address the topic here on the website for a couple reasons:

1. It makes it easier to refer folks to one article; and
2. If 20 people are asking, there’s a good chance that many more are wondering, but not asking.

Ahhhhhh. Embroidery Thread. Who among us doesn’t love the stuff?

Well, this morning, I drew the winner of last week’s thread give-away, courtesy of Colour Complements.

Who was it? Well, I’ll give you a hint. She chose this color sample pack as her favorite, in answer to the question on the original give-away:

Yesterday, we talked about some hints to increase stitching efficiency.

We discussed how starting threads from the front of the fabric and traveling threads along a stitched path on the back of the fabric can help save a little time during embroidery sessions.

Today, we’re going to look at one more habit that helps increase stitching efficiency. It’s called “parking” your embroidery threads.

Starting and Traveling. Are we talking about cars here, or embroidery?

My knowledge of cars being somewhat limited (does it start? do I like the color? this is where the gas goes…), I promise we’re talking about hand embroidery.

And not only are we talking about hand embroidery, but we’re talking about ways to make hand embroidery more efficient.

We all know that handwork is not the most time efficient way of decorating fabric. In the past hundred plus years, we’ve developed machines that can adorn fabric a whole lot faster than the hand-wielded needle. Yet there are some things we can do to make our hand embroidery more time efficient.

Today, we’ll talk about two ways that will clip a little bit of time and trouble off your stitching sessions: starting threads and traveling threads.

Remember last week when we looked at an unconventional use for the telescopic magnet – using it, extended, as a thread rack?

I mentioned that I wanted to come up with a dowel system to use as a kind of thread rack while working.

Many readers suggested swinging towel bars, which would probably work great if you wanted to permanently mount them somewhere or onto some kind of rig that would be semi-portable or moveable. It’s certainly a possibility. I could see replacing the mounting system with a very strong magnet, for example, and putting a set of swinging towel bars on the side of my thread storage cabinets that support my work table.

A couple readers picked up exactly what I had in mind, though, and made the suggestion in their comments for what I was using.

And it is this:

The other day, I filled you in on how I’m working the vines on the Secret Garden project, using stem stitch as a filling and shading it gradually by working with two shades of green in the needle at a time.

Today, I’ll show you some more vines and share some stitching tips that will help you with stem stitch filling.