Kathy Andrews continues today with her final guest post on Needle ‘n Thread. This is the fourth post in a series on her Spring in Italy Sampler, where she’s been exploring embroidery motifs inspired by Italian pottery. So far, Kathy has shown us how she came up with her embroidery designs, and then she’s stitched one embroidery design in wool threads and one embroidery design in cotton floche. Today, she’s working with Pearsalls silk. Enjoy!

The first thing I did before stitching the third design was to scrub my hands with olive oil and sugar. Sounds gooey and sticky, right? Not something you’d want on your embroidery. When working with silk, it’s important that your hands are smooth or the silk will snag and tangle and generally be a mess. I didn’t know that the first time I stitched with silk: I thought it was just difficult thread and decided it wasn’t for me. Then I read Mary’s post on the olive oil and sugar hand smoothing scrub, and now silk has become a joy to stitch with! Thank you, Mary!