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
September 30, 2013
Here’s one more leaf-stitching technique to add to repertoire of hand embroidery stitches for creating various types of leaves.
So far in this mini collection that parts of the Stitch Fun series, we’ve looked at fly stitch leaves, cretan stitch leaves, tiny buttonhole stitch leaves, and today, we’re looking at the rose leaf stitch.
September 28, 2013
Good Morning! And a Happy Saturday to You!
When I was growing up, Saturdays were the Best Day of the Week. They always tingled with a Holiday Mood, even though the inevitable chore list was published that day. My dad used to sing a song to us – a rather tuneless song, if I recall – that went something along these lines:
Well, just be grateful you can’t hear me singing along while I type! I never actually knew if that was a real song, or if he just made it up.
I still have that Saturday-Holiday-Mood feeling now and then – and especially this morning because I get to announce two winners of these Silk Gimp Thread Assortment packs!
September 27, 2013
It’s been a while since I’ve written about my Mission Rose goldwork project, for two reasons, which I’ll share below.
But since I’ve received a lot of inquiries about it in the last several weeks, I thought I’d give you a quick update.
The project was put away for a bit while I was working on other things. For goldwork projects that are incomplete, I always cover them up with a cloth and put them somewhere out of the light.
And of course, once a project is put away, it’s less likely I’ll get anything done on it until I have real time to devote to it again. So that’s one reason the work stalled on the project.
September 26, 2013
Since leaves are often featured in hand embroidery projects, I’ve been dedicating a few articles lately to different ways to work hand embroidered leaves, beyond the simple daisy stitch.
It’s always fun to add a little variety to hand embroidery projects by using different stitches for common elements. So far, we’ve looked at leaves embroidered using a combination of twisted chain and fly stitch, and leaves embroidered with cretan stitch.
September 25, 2013
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned an exhibition that’s running at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, called Interwoven Globe: The World Textile Trade 1500-1800.
Whenever a major museum publicizes a major exhibit having to do with textiles, one of the first things I do is ferret out the exhibition catalogue.
An exhibition catalogue is the list (and usually provenance and detailed description) of the items on show in the exhibition. When a museum as large as the Met puts on an exhibition, their catalogues are usually a bit more than that. They usually include essays of scholarly research, supported by images of art and artifacts, extensive annotation, and the like, resulting in magnificent coffee-table quality books that appeal visually and intellectually to enthusiasts of the subject.
If it’s something I know will appeal to me, I invest in the exhibition catalogue right away, because usually, the catalogues are not reprinted and once they’re gone, they’re gone. (The exhibition catalogue for ‘Twixt Art & Nature comes to mind…)
The exhibition catalog for Interwoven Globe another exceptional volume, a fantastic book for anyone interested in the history of all varieties of textiles. Today, I’ll take you through it, so you can decide if you want to invest in it, too.
September 24, 2013
I must be on a tool kick lately.
There are tools, and there are Tools, when it comes to the tools I like to use in my needlework pursuits.
The tools – those are the ho-hum, every day tools. They’re there, but I don’t think much about them. They don’t excite me. A roll of scotch tape fits into this category. I use it all the time, but it’s nothing I’d jump over the moon over (though, come to think of it, life without it would be drastically different!)
The Tools-with-a-capital-T – those are the ones that I am over the moon about. The ones that, through some serendipitous chance, we met, and every time I use them, I find myself gazing at them amorously, asking where they have been all my life.
September 23, 2013
Why do Monday’s always get a bad rap? I love Mondays! They’re the start of a whole brand-spankin’ new week – hopefully, a week in which I can correct all the mistakes I made last week, and get all the things done I didn’t get done last week. I always view them as a mini-start-over.
So, to celebrate another glorious Monday, let’s have a give-away, shall we?
Following up on Friday’s review of the green color assortment collection of Silk Gimp, today, I’m giving away a green assortment pack to two lucky winners, courtesy of Access Commodities.
