Let’s truck along with some grape embroidery today, shall we?

We’re almost finished embroidering the grapes in this project, which is part of a series of tutorials you can find in the How to Embroider (Blank) Index here.

Members on Patreon will find today’s tutorial posted as a downloadable PDF on my Patreon page here shortly. It may not go up today – more information on that below.

The grape bunch we are embroidering features a sampler of techniques that you could use to embroider grapes. You probably wouldn’t combine all these techniques into one coherent design (if you wanted it to be coherent!), but the point here is to give you many options for embroidering grapes. You pick the options you like!

Today, we’re going to look at grapes 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the bunch. We’ll be exploring two new filling options and a new outlining option.

Have you ever looked at your embroidery in the bright light of day and discovered that the last thirty minutes of stitching that you put in the night before doesn’t look quite as good as you thought it did?

This has happens to me all too frequently. Sometimes, it might be a matter of stitching when I’m tired, or when I’m just not into it and being attentive.

But sometimes, it happens because the night before, I abandoned my stitching light and sat somewhere else, making do with whatever light was on hand. It pays to stick with my good light!

When we travel, though, we don’t often have the option of our favorite stitching lamp. Mine are too big and too heavy to tote about. So I have several small lights that work well for travel. They never work quite as well as my studio lights, true. But they work well enough for the type of stitching I take with me when I go somewhere.

Today, I’m reviewing the Daylight Smart Travel Lamp for you. It definitely has pros and cons, and they’re both worth considering carefully before making the investment in the lamp.

Last week, my interest was piqued by an article from Piecework that led me down the kind of rabbit hole I particularly like – the kind that involves a complicated but exciting era in US and world history, and that also involves the development (or non-development, depending on the events) of needlework and the needlework industry.

The Industrial Era was a crazy time in history, really, full of contradictions. Every era of history is easier to evaluate retrospectively, of course. While it is obvious that many good things sprang from the Industrial Era, or took root during that era, it was yet an era fraught with abjectly dismal circumstances and consequences in many regards.

Today, needleworkers in the US who want to work with silk obtain silk threads as imported goods. We don’t manufacture silk in the US.

During the Industrial Age, however – from the early 1800’s well into the first half of the 20th century – we actually had mills that produced embroidery silk that was popular around the world.

Initially, the silk was produced from worm to fiber, but that didn’t last long. Eventually, with the opening of Japan for trade, it made more sense to import the raw silk from Japan, where centuries of breeding and raising silk worms had already established a flourishing industry producing the best quality silk. The silk was then finished in the US into various textile-related products.

There’s little I love more than the composite embroidery stitch – that is, the stitch that’s built on other stitches.

Today, I thought I’d offer a list of stitches that are built on foundation stitches. Foundation stitches are the first stitch that goes down in a composite stitch, providing a base on which to build some sort of composite effect by incorporating other stitches and techniques into the foundation.

The final result of these types of composites can range anywhere from simple to complex.

The great thing about composite stitches built on foundation stitches is that they are, more often than not, highly textured and slightly dimensional. This makes them excellent techniques to add into any embroidery project where texture plays a big role.

A few weeks ago, we began chatting about embroidery scissors that serve as good alternatives to Dovo embroidery scissors.

Dovo has long been my favorite source for excellent embroidery scissors, but sadly, the business has gone under. Never fear, though! There are other good scissors available out there!

Some, of course, are very pricy, but I often find excellent scissors in middle prices ranges that are sturdy, sharp, mechanically smooth, and promise to be long-lasting.

That’s pretty much what I look for in embroidery scissors.

Good morning and a Happy Monday all around!

Today, we’re going to pick on the Embroidered Grapes series and move along on five more grapes in the bunch. These grapes will be quick to stitch!

When we last visited the grapes, the first three at the base of the bunch were embroidered with fillings. Four of the next five are all simply outlined, to demonstrate two points:

1. you don’t always have to fill a design when you embroider; and

2. if you choose to outline instead of fill, you can use very simple outline stitches, and you can mix things up a bit to add variety.

Sometimes, when we outline embroidery designs, we tend to stick with one stitch and solid colors. But by opting for different line stitches and by mixing colors, you can add visual interest to simple outlined embroidery.

We’re also going to look at the seed stitch for lighter filling.

If you subscribe to the Inspirations Studios weekly newsletter (it’s a lovely newsletter!), you are probably aware that a couple books are coming to the embroidery world quite soon. In fact, they’re already out in Australia and en route to the US.

I’ve had quite a few inquiries about these two books from Inspirations Studios in Australia. I’m bringing them in for stitchers who want to avoid the cost of international shipping and the long (really long!) wait.

I thought I’d let you know sooner rather than later what’s coming to Needle ‘n Thread in the way of much-anticipated needlework books, and when you can expect to see them.