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
October 17, 2010
This past August, there was a major change here on Needle ‘n Thread, and if you’re relatively new to the site, I’d like to take a little time to tell you about it. For those who have been following along for a while, you know that in August I introduced for the first time four commercial advertisements, to help cover the increasing costs of Needle ‘n Thread. Continue reading “Introduction to Needle ‘n Thread Site Sponsors”
October 16, 2010
Yesterday, we went through some steps of varying a blackwork embroidery design, starting from a simple wavy line and mixing things up. Today, I’ll show the rest of my fiddling with this particular blackwork square, and give you a printable version of the variations, in case you want to work them out in thread.
October 15, 2010
Following up on yesterday’s blackwork pattern, I thought I’d talk a little bit about developing designs for blackwork and show you a bit of the basic process of coming up with myriad patterns all from the same basic design.
I don’t normally sit around drawing blackwork patterns, but since it was part of the spot sampler series, I messed around a bit with one theme, and developed it into several different looks. So I thought I’d show you how I did that, and encourage you – if you’re interested in blackwork – to sit down with some graph paper and doodle out some designs. You’ll be surprised what you can come up with, employing only slight variations on a theme.
October 14, 2010
Following up on adding blackwork to the spot sampler, I thought I’d post some of the simple patterns I doodled for the lesson on blackwork.
The first one here is a leafy corner, just in time for autumn (on this side of the world). Of course, if you imagine the leaves green, it could also be just in time for spring and summer!
October 13, 2010
Did you ever find yourself working along on one part of your embroidery project, when suddenly you have a hankering to move to another part and try something out?
This happens to me a lot. Maybe I’m too sanguine. I like to jump about and try things out! And if I’m getting bored with one part of a piece, moving to another part can re-kindle my interest and enthusiasm for the piece overall. So perhaps sanguinity can be a good thing….
October 12, 2010
Last week, we looked at how to switch to a new thread when working the chain stitch. And we found out that you can actually get away with be Technically Incorrect when you start a new thread.
Today, we’re going to look at joining up the end of a circle with the beginning of it, when working the chain stitch. Now, keep in mind, this techniques isn’t just for circles. It’s for any time you need to join one section of chain stitch to another section from the “back end.” You’re not continuing forward with a length of chain stitch, but you’re running into some already-stitched chain stitch at the point where the previous stitches started. Ovals, irregular shapes, twists, stars, knotwork – there are lots of instances where you bring your chain stitching back to where it began.
So let’s take a look at how to join up the chain stitches when you arrive back at where they began.
October 11, 2010
If you’re following along in this series on developing your own spot sampler, and you’re sticking pretty much to what I did on mine and my students are doing on theirs, then the next step after adding a little Quaker motif is adding a bit of blackwork.
We’re getting close to the end of the counted thread work on this series on the embroidered spot sampler. In fact, everything after this section on blackwork belongs to both surface and counted embroidery, depending on your fabric. So if you’re hankering for surface stitches, they’re a-comin’!
Student’s Sampler