With the interest and response to Elisabetta Sforza’s latest book, The ABC of Padded Stitch – which, incidentally, will be back in stock by this Wednesday – I’ve had a boatload of questions about coton a broder, the cotton embroidery thread that Elisabetta recommends for much of the satin stitching in her book.

I’ve written about coton a broder quite a bit on Needle ‘n Thread. It is one of my favorite embroidery threads for monogramming, along with cotton floche.

I use it and floche in Stitch Sampler Alphabet, which is my most popular PDF project book. The decorative initials in Stitch Sampler Alphabet really show off the qualities of both coton a broder and floche for surface embroidery (although you can use regular embroidery floss for those projects, as well).

Today, I just want to present some quick information about coton a broder, compared to stranded cotton – or what we call “embroidery floss” here in the US. Since there’s a little confusion between the two, I thought I could quickly highlight some distinctions for you.

One of our favorite pre-holiday activities is developing Eye-Spy puzzles for the blog. It’s so much fun – even if it is a bit of a time hog.

Still, it’s fun, and I know some of you out there enjoy the puzzles. Once in a while, we’ve had to take a hiatus from them, because they are so time-consuming, but now we try to plan in advance so that we can work the set-up, photography session, and take-down in.

I thought I’d explain a bit about what we do and how we do it, since some of you have commented on them and wondered about their preparation and so forth.

So this isn’t really embroidery-related, but we do try to incorporate plenty of embroidery-related stuff into the puzzle-scape of the eye-spy layout.

Happy Easter, my friends!

Here in Kansas, it’s a glorious day! Chilly, rainy, stormy. But a glorious day, nonetheless!

Here’s a little Easter eye-spy and puzzle for you, in a different format this time. We went vertical!

Perhaps color is an age thing.

Or maybe appreciation of color is an age thing? or could it be desire of color?

I don’t know.

I find that, more and more, I like color. LOTS of color. I like more color. I like color combinations, and more color combinations. I like color contrasts.

And I don’t rightly care all that much if the colors I like are “in” or not. Fashion color trends don’t seem to dictate my choices of – or desire for – color.

Is it an age thing? Or have I just become more open-minded?

I will chalk it up to the latter, and I will chalk it up to the latter for all those people out there who are accused of garish color choices “because they’re old.” I do not think it is age. I think it is the understanding and acceptance of the fact that Life Should Be Colorful. Color begets joy, darn it.

I got to thinking about this in depth for two reasons: 1. color plays a Huge Part in embroidery life;

And 2. Well…

There’s the Matter of The Blue Shelf.

Thanks so much for all the happy birthday wishes! And for participating in my Happy Birthday give-away!

Today, I’ll announce the randomly drawn winners of the give-away items and tell you what’s coming up – especially with next week’s schedule.

Today, I’m celebrating another milestone by becoming one day older – because let’s face it: I’m really only a day older than I was yesterday.

In fact, following this line of logic, I’ve decided to start calculating my age differently. By my new calculations, I must be somewhere around 20,000.

“It’s your birthday?! Why, how old are you?”

“I’m 20,000, give or take…”

It just feels so right.

For my birthday, I thought we’d have our own little party here on Needle ‘n Thread, by having a give-away.

Additionally, we’re going to have a sale! Yay! More on that below the give-away!

When things get complicated here in the studio and in life in general, I find it helpful to turn to a project that is just for fun, that I’ve been yearning to do but haven’t taken the time, and that gives me time to think.

I do a lot of thinking when I’m stitching – especially if I’m stitching on something that has no real obligation attached to it (yet). As long as it’s relatively uncomplicated (although sometimes, a challenge can kick me into gear on other things), I tend to get in some good contemplation that can lead to workable solutions for the Inevitable Problems of Life and of Work.

(It’s hard to call my job work, but it is work – it’s work I love, but it’s still work!)

This is a project whose parts have been hanging about in the studio for a long time. I’ve been wanting to play with it, I’ve been waiting to play with it, I’ve been willing to play with it… but Everything Else kept intervening.