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
Contact Mary
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
Contact Mary
November 4, 2013
Little Gertie McFuzz, the tambour work bird to whom I introduced you last week, didn’t take very long to finish. It just took me a long time to get around to writing about her again.
Poor neglected Gertie!
November 2, 2013
I spent a little time organizing my workroom (again) last week. This can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Sometimes, organizing is just an excuse for delay. Other times, it’s an absolute necessity!
In this particular case, it was the latter – and all because of a book. But I’ll save that story for next week!
While organizing, I came across a collection of stitched samples that were still set up on stretcher bar frames. One – this wee goldwork and silk rose – had been there for two years. It was definitely time to disbar it!
November 1, 2013
Kits for hand embroidery are one of the best ways to learn a technique or a combination of techniques. With a kit, you have everything you need available, you don’t have to make any decisions about threads and fabrics – decisions that might stump the beginner and slow down the process of getting into embroidery. Everything’s there, ready for you to start stitching.
But for embroiderers interested in the various techniques of surface embroidery, it’s often difficult to find good embroidery kits that are instructive, challenging, and satisfying.
Rarely can hand embroidery kits be found even in local needlework shops, where counted cross stitch supplies and needlepoint offerings generally reign.
So if you want to work embroidery projects that focus on various surface embroidery techniques, you have two choices, really: design your own, or seek out one of the many designers who sell their kits directly through their own businesses. I’ve mentioned a heap of these designers on Needle ‘n Thread over the years: Phillipa Turnbull, Tanja Berlin, Trish Burr, Alison Cole, Jane Nicholas, Yvette Stanton, Jenny McWhinney – and there are many, many more embroidery designers out there who teach and who sell their own kits through their own businesses.
Today, I’d like to introduce you to Jen Goodwin’s embroidery kits. Jen’s a UK designer and instructor, and she offers many unique and beautiful embroidery kits available on her website.
October 31, 2013
Happy Halloween!
Here in the States, Halloween is awfully popular. But I will go out on a limb and admit that it’s never been one of my favorite holidays.
I’ve never really gotten into Halloween. I’m not really sure why that is. It’s just not My Thing.
My childhood memories of Halloween are not that vivid, either, even though we did the typical costume-dress-up-trick-or-treating thing, and we went to Halloween parties and the like.
When I was a kid, I always got the clown costume. When I crept into the teenage years, scary movie parties on Halloween were The Thing – but not for me. I always found an excuse to be in a different room. I’m still a scary movie wimp.
As an adult, my exciting Halloween “celebration” is comprised of a card game or two while waiting for the doorbell to ring. On a busy Halloween, we might get a whopping dozen or so beggars – and half of those are usually my nieces and nephews. Welcome to quiet, small town life!
October 30, 2013
I’ve said it before. I’ll probably say it again some day.
I Love Pearl Purl.
Pearl purl is one of my Favorite Ever Goldwork Threads. It’s a hefty thread, especially in the larger sizes (like 3 and 4), and it makes a gorgeous outline.
Pearl purl is a very solid metal thread, as it’s simply a coil of solid metal wire that, when un-stretched, looks like a line of little golden beads, like this:
October 29, 2013
There once was a girl-bird named Gertrude McFuzz
And she had the smallest plain tail ever was.
One droopy-drop feather. That’s all that she had.
And, oh! That one feather made Gertrude so sad!
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I was practicing tambour embroidery, trying to get up to speed with a tambour needle (or hook).
Tambour embroidery – essentially the chain stitch worked with a tiny hook on the surface of the fabric – is one of those techniques that I’d dabbled in. Though I had managed to make the hook work the way it’s supposed to, I never went beyond that, to the point of picking up speed and developing any kind of ease and accuracy.
October 28, 2013
Couching goldwork threads can feel a bit therapeutic. It’s a slow process – not a technique that you rush – but it’s very repetitive. And it’s not difficult!
The only time it gets a bit hairy is when you suddenly realize things aren’t fitting together quite as well as you hoped. I had a little panic moment when couching the gold threads around the inner frame of the Mission Rose.
