The thread junkie in me has been bubbling about with excitement, and the only thing for it is to share with you some new thread colors!

I’m always excited when I see new colors of my favorite threads appearing on the market. When a line of hand embroidery threads expands, it’s a good sign! Two of Au Ver a Soie’s threads are currently enjoying a nice expansion of colors – Soie de Paris and Soie Ovale.

Today, I’m going to point you to a resource for free Jacobean embroidery patterns and fillings. I’ve pointed out this free online embroidery book before, but it’s been a few years, and many of you might not know about it.

When doing goldwork embroidery that involves plunging threads, I admit that I’ve always been a Plunge-Sooner-Rather-Than-Later kind of gal. Being this kind of Plunger has both its advantages and its disadvantages. Recently, though, I’ve converted (or revolted), and now I’m a Plunge-Later. This is how things went:

Couching in its most basic form is among the easier embroidery stitches. Essentially, the couching stitch is just a little straight stitch taken over some other thread (or ribbon or wire) to hold it down. Couching with the simple straight couching stitch can be decorative when couching a filled area, because you can alternate the placement of the couching stitches to make designs over whatever thread is being couched.

But you can also approach couching from a different angle: consider it simply as tying down another thread (or ribbon or wire) with any stitch, besides just a straight stitch, and suddenly, many possibilities open up!

For today’s Stitch Play, I’ll show you some different takes on couching. You can apply these (and any others your imagination can drum up) when couching one thread, multiple threads at a time, a beautiful ribbon, or even metal threads.

Last week, I showed you the finished goldwork edge around the inside cinquefoil on the Medallion Project. One recurring question from that article was how to achieve the sharp corners with the couched Japanese gold thread. You know, that was a problematic part for me, too!

The easiest path to take when couching the gold would have been to work in two continuous lengths of the Japanese gold, side-by-side, so that the threads only had to be plunged twice while filling that whole area – once at the beginning of the couching and once when the whole outline around the cinquefoil was filled. As efficient and dreamily pleasant as it would have been to not have to stop to plunge threads, the sharp angles at each corner would’ve been lost with that approach.

The only approach that would keep the integrity of the design and achieve the effect that I wanted to achieve was to plunge the ends of the gold thread at every angle – a process that made sense but took decidedly more time.

Today, we’ll look at how I took the sharp corners on the cinquefoil shape, using Japanese gold thread.

We have a winner! Last week, I announced a give-away of Hazel Blomkamp’s new book, Crewel Twists. It’s a lovely book full of fun, really gorgeous embroidery projects that take a new twist on Jacobean style embroidery, incorporating different types of embroidery threads, beads, and techniques in various Jacobean-like designs. You can see some of the examples of the projects in the book by visiting my review of Crewel Twists, where you’ll also find information on the availability of the book.

When last we visited the Medallion Project, we discussed stretching pearl purl for the outline around the inside of the medallion. Since then (it seems ages ago!), I’ve finally finished the goldwork around the cinquefoil (five-petal shape) on the inside of the medallion and have started adding the gold to the Tudor-style roses.

These days, it seems as if the goldwork is never-ending! But the tediousness of the goldwork is extremely worthwhile, because it really enriches the whole project.