In embroidery, thick stems and branches often get the same treatment: filled with stem stitch, filled with chain stitch, sometimes satin stitched, maybe a little texture added with knots and so forth. And all these techniques work great!

Here’s another option, though, that can supply a little bit of color depth and a little bit of texture, without a whole lot of complex effort. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s quick. It would work great in crewel embroidery, in regular surface embroidery, with different types of threads – you can mix it up and play with it and come up with all different looks to it. But it really is just one simple stitch: whipped chain stitch.

I haven’t abandoned the Hungarian Redwork Runner – it’s just been a while since I’ve had a chance to pick it up and do much with it!

This embroidery project, worked from this embroidery design, is my grab-and-go, 15-minute project for right now.

Now, by a “15-minute project” I don’t really mean it will only take 15 minutes to complete. (If only…!) Instead, I mean it’s a project perfect for 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there.

I’d like to open up a discussion about Pinterest, the visual social network that created a lot of controversy in the arts & crafts (and especially needle crafts) blogosphere when it first started up, and that still has its adamant advocates and staunch opponents.

Since there are quite a few needleworkers out there using Pinterest, I think it’s a worthwhile topic to discuss, and I’d love to hear your opinion about it.

Lately, too, I’ve received some well-meaning, but horrified, e-mails, informing me that they saw a photo from my website on Pinterest. I had to write back and assure my friends that it’s ok. I actually like Pinterest, and I use it a lot, and sometimes (between you and me), I even post my own photos on there!

The whole idea of Stitch Fun is to explore some of the more obscures stitches or to explore more obscure – but fun! – ways of using common stitches.

Today’s Stitch Fun is a more obscure way of using a fairly well-known stitch, the Palestrina stitch.

Palestrina stitch is one of my all-time favorite embroidery stitches. It creates an interesting line with texture to it, thanks to the knots formed by the stitch. It’s also lots of fun to work. It’s got a great “stitch rhythm,” and once you get going with it, it works up quickly into a really attractive line.

If you haven’t added Palestrina stitch to your embroidery repertoire, I encourage you to try it out! For even more fun and more texture, you can even try beaded Palestrina stitch.

Happy Monday, All!

It’s my pleasure to announce the winner for the pair of Trish Burr booklets from last week’s give-away!

Happy Easter, everyone!

I wanted to show you a nice display of my embroidered eggs this morning, but in fact, I didn’t finish them after all. Life is sometimes like that!

Instead, I’ll share with you (again) this beautiful example of Pysanky (Ukrainian dyed Easter eggs), with an embroidered Ukrainian cloth in cross stitch, along with a pattern for my version of the cloth.

At the beginning of March, I shared with you a very heartwarming, kind gift from a reader, Cindy Russell, who compiled my Marian Medallion Project into book form and sent me two printed copies of the book.

Your feedback from that article was much appreciated, and it prompted us (both Cindy and I) to look into printing options for the book. Alas, the expense of print-on-demand for a book this size is rather high, making it an unlikely investment.

So instead, I decided to make the book available as an e-book – that is, as a downloadable PDF that will work on computers and devices that have the ability to open PDFs.

I’m really excited about being able to make it available to you!

There are many special features to the e-book that make it worthwhile to own. How ’bout some highlights?