Playing around with shisha embroidery stitches can be somewhat addicting! This is what happens: when I’m in the middle of one method, a potential variation occurs to me, and I have to try it.

That’s how this particular variation came about. I don’t think you’ll find this one in a book – it was one of those “make it up as you go and hope it works out” approaches. That being said, there really are very few “original” stitches out there. Most stitches are made up of components of known stitches, and this one is no exception!

As promised, I’m putting together some tambour embroidery instructional resources for those of you who are interested in learning this technique.

Today, we’ll look at three books that are good for instruction in tambour work. These are the three of four books that I’ve found most useful – I’m saving the fourth one for a full review, which I’ll have for you a little later.

In the meantime, though, these three are good. Only one of the three is completely dedicated to tambour work, while the other two have useful chapters on the subject.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on my Hungarian Redwork Runner, which was set up as a “grab and go” embroidery project exactly a year ago.

Well, fooling around with the tambour needle recently and practicing tambour embroidery led me to thinking about my poor neglected Hungarian runner. Since I haven’t had an opportunity to “grab and go” with it for quite some time, I haven’t made much progress on it.

But… I mused… couldn’t the tambour hook propel the Hungarian runner to a more rapid completion?

Every time I went out to work on the goldwork on the inner frame of the Mission Rose project, I found myself humming the same song… and humming it and humming it and humming it.

It’s stuck in my head right now, and I can’t get it out!

Occasionally, while stitching, I’d even start singing out loud (good thing no one’s out there but me!). I don’t know all the words, so it’s just the same little bit, over and over again.

Gold fever! Nothin’ can help you but the yellow stuff!
What can stop that itchin’ ain’t around the kitchen!
Gold, gold, hooked am I. Susannah, go ahead and cry!

It’s from Paint Your Wagon – a bit before my time, but my older sister had the record (yes, record, as in LP, on vinyl or something), and I remember hearing the songs as I grew up.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I went back to discover what that whole thing was all about. The mere fact that Clint Eastwood was singing in a musical… oh dear.

Many brands of sewing threads and several brands of embroidery threads are spooled up these days on plastic snap spools.

On each end of a snap spool, the “head” of the spool lifts up a little bit so that you can anchor your loose thread underneath the lip of that liftable head, and snap the spool closed again – a convenient way to anchor the loose end of the thread.

If you use sewing threads packaged on these kinds of spools – or embroidery threads (certain Au Ver a Soie silks come on them, as well and Londonderry Linen thread, Trebizond, and others) – when you’re finished with the spool, don’t pitch it!

I re-use empty spools often, and here’s one way I recently put one to use.

I’m not as far along as I’d like to be on the Mission Rose, but there’s some progress, and some progress is always better than no progress, right?

Today I’ll show you a wee amount of progress on the Inner Frame, and tell you why I’m doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it, and then discuss my misgivings about the thread choice.

There was really no reason not to finish the little tambour embroidery project I started night before last.

All told, there are only a few hours of stitching in the piece. I’m still on the learning curve, but even then, chain stitch can be accomplished much faster with a tambour needle, compared to a regular needle. Certainly, a skilled tambour embroiderer could finish this project in at least half the time – probably a lot less!