March 17, 2012
Going Green with Hand Embroidery
Since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, let’s meander through some green embroidery stuff together, shall we? Clicking the photos will take you to the articles related to them.
March 16, 2012
Stitch Play: Beaded Palestrina Stitch
If you’re looking for a way to add a bit of texture and sparkle to your needlework, how about a bit of bead embroidery? There are many hand embroidery stitches that can be used in conjunction with beads, to create textured lines or fillings. One of my favorites is the Palestrina stitch.
The Palestrina stitch is already a textured stitch, as it forms a string of nice, fat knots along the line of stitching. It’s a magnificent stitch for creating a textured line, and once you get the rhythm of the stitch, it’s an easy and fun stitch to work! It’s the same stitch used in twilling, a stitching technique popular among quilters in the Midwest, which is essentially embroidering blocks using Palestrina stitch.
In today’s Stitch Play, we’re going to add some beads to Palestrina Stitch.
March 15, 2012
Goldwork Embroidery: Filled Dots
Approaching the gold dots on the outer edge of the Medallion design, I decided that they should tie in with the center goldwork area on the Tudor-style roses that surround the Medallion. The center of the dots, then, should be filled with a goldwork embroidery technique called chipping or chip work. This involves cutting up tiny bits of check purl and sewing the bits down by taking the needle and thread through them and sewing them down like beads, in a random fashion, until the area is filled up.
March 14, 2012
Erica Wilson Needlework Show Videos
Erica Wilson, who passed away this past December, is an icon of the needlework world. In the early 70’s, she starred in a TV show on PBS dedicated to needlework. The show was called Erica, and as it was a teeny bit before my time, I can’t say I ever watched it. I’d love to see the show available as a DVD set – wouldn’t that be fantastic?
March 13, 2012
Goldwork Dots on the Medallion
After working out the colors and procedures for the stem stitch filling on the outer edge of the Medallion (it’s not all finished yet!), my next step was to concentrate on the goldwork dots and makes some decisions about them. Around the outside of the Medallion, you see, there are 50 round dots, each about 5/16th’s of an inch in diameter. So they aren’t large dots, but they are dots nonetheless, and each has to be individually worked.
What was I thinking?!
Once I finished one section of the blue outer edge of the circle, I took a break to think about those dots.
March 12, 2012
Stitch Play: Combining Chain Stitch & Buttonhole Stitch
Let’s start the week with a bit of Stitch Play!
If you’re doodling about with hand embroidery stitches, and you’re looking for a way to create a wide line with a bit of added interest to it, you might like this simple combination of chain stitch and buttonhole stitch.
March 10, 2012
Twisting Flat Silk – Video Tutorial
Flat silk is filament silk that has no (or very little) twist to it. It has an incredible sheen and, when it’s a good flat silk, it’s one of the most luxurious of hand embroidery threads. Flat silk is used in different types of hand embroidery – for example, I used flat silk as a background for my Medallion Project.
If you’re not sure what flat silk is, and if you’d like to read a little more about flat silk and what it is, you’re welcome to read these two articles comparing flat silks, which I wrote a long time ago:
Comparing Flat Silks for Hand Embroidery, part I
Comparing Flat Silks for Hand Embroidery, part II
Flat silk is probably probably best known for its use in Japanese embroidery. Flat silk used in Japanese embroidery is fairly recognizable – it comes on cardboard tubes in a beautiful range of colors!
