07.01.11

The Fruits of Being Sick

Posted in Finished Projects at 7:00 am by deRomilly

The first results - vintage pastorals

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a horrendous ear infection – it’s kept me away from anything remotely resembling counted work – which meant, no model stitching on current projects.

It didn’t’ stop me from stitching, though, and I got the following embroidery projects completed, along with about 4 thread crochet doilies – yes, I know, those require counting, but it’s a lot easier to rip back crochet work than cross stitch!

As usual, click on the pictures to see them larger (and in their entirety!).

: The first results – vintage pastorals

: An unblocked towel that is now in use… and never ironed any more! :)

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06.10.11

Old, almost first, embroidery…

Posted in Finished Projects at 7:00 am by deRomilly

Twin sized embroidered & tied comforter

I say “almost first” because I remember three embroidery pieces prior to this, other than my two first forays into counted cross stitch… This IS my first big huge project that actually got finished (with the exception of my first fisherman knit sweater…).

This project was finished in about 1988, and I’ve used it almost constantly since then.

The motifs were iron-on transfers from a huge book of them that I still have, from the only section that appealed to me! I fit them on a twin-sized cotton flat sheet that I bought on sale and then started embroidering.

Stitches are very basic – mostly stem, with some satin, french knots and a little bit of couching in the central motif (I’d do that differently now!).

It’s backed with another sheet – cotton flannel this time; filled with a three inch polyfill batt and then tied, because I wanted a thick fluffy comforter look rather than doing a bunch of hand quilting. I had no idea how to make a quilt, so it’s bagged and turned, as if it were just a pillow — no binding. My sewing machine wouldn’t take the strain of even the side edges, so for the most part, they are hand stitched seams.

So it’s now 2011. That makes it 23 years old. It has had hot wax spilled on it, gone to several SCA events as part of my bedroll, and generally seen very hard use. Thrown into the washing machine AND the dryer (in apartments and laundromats, so on HOT) with no respect for the work I put into it… And yet I’m still using it.

At the time, DMC floss was about 25 cents a skein, and I could often get it for 10 for a dollar. I think the entire quilt cost me about $20.00 all told – and I was annoyed because the batting was “expensive.” Pretty good bargain for 23 years and more usage!

The stitching is beginning to wear thin (gone in some places), but the colors are still bright. I’ll put closeups of some of the motifs below. It will never be an heirloom – I’m going to wear it out long before my non-existent children get their hands on it! But it’s six months of work that I’ve never regretted. And it still makes me smile when it’s thrown on the bed or over a sick husband on the couch. Such is the power of embroidery.

A really bad area for lost stitches

The wings close up. Even worse magnified!

The red bird motifs are a pretty bad area for lost stitches. The leaves were couched into a very open chain stitch and have all but gone. The stem stitch wings are missing parts of themselves, too.

French knots with many wraps often take the worst of the damage from the washing machine because they stick out. Many of the birds now have eye stalks instead of beady little eyes!

The blue birds didn't take as much damage.

Closeup of Flower Motif

The blue birds didn’t take quite as much damage as the red ones, but the stem stitch still wore. Part of this is due to the fact that I was young and in a hurry, and my stem stitches were not as small nor as even as they could have been at the time.

You can see the disappearing french knot effect on the Flower motif to the right.

And the worst damage was in this red flower motif.

The worst damage.

You can see the needle holes for the missing stitches when you enlarge the photo. It’s lost most of the red & pink flower and some of the leaves and stems, too. Strangely, on this one the french knots are doing fine! But you can also tell that over the years the “permanent” transfer ink has finally washed out with the stitching!

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04.01.11

Bittersweet Old Finished Objects…

Posted in Finished Projects at 9:13 am by deRomilly

Stitching I found at Dad's apartment

We finished cleaning out my father’s apartment last night. At Christmas he sadly told me that he had finally thrown out the pencil holder I made him out of contact paper and an orange juice can back in kindergarten. It had finally fallen completely apart. Or maybe his cat ate it. I can’t remember the details.

But while sorting through the various pieces of ham radio gear, metal lathing tools, and other such, we found three pieces of embroidery that I had done for him over the years.

The biggest is the cross stitched sailing ship I gave him for his birthday one year. It’s the one and only pattern I ever did from a color chart, and it’s the ONLY color chart I will ever use. No design, no matter how beautiful, is worth the pain I went through trying to identify various shades of brown in that pattern!

Embroidered box in perle cotton and plastic canvas

In addition, there is the matchbox style box that I made from plastic canvas and perle cotton. He used it to store q-tips in, and obviously pulled on the edge to open it rather than pushing it through the box… The inner box is starting to fall open from use.

And there’s the small sampler I knocked out from scraps in my stash when I wanted to give him a father’s day present and was unemployed.

Sailing band sampler in Caron threads on old polyester lugana

Not needlework related, there’s the pencil portrait of my mother that I did for him while we lived in California.

Small pieces, mostly. Well loved. He preferred things from me that he could use.. and didn’t really want or need a lot of “things” around him.

I miss him. And it’s hard having these things, as well as his Christmas sweater around right now, although I’m sure I’ll change my mind about that as the heartache starts to heal.

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03.11.11

Beauty in the House…

Posted in Finished Projects at 11:13 am by deRomilly

Angled View of Poppy Embroidery

Yesterday on whim, after telling the staff at my Father’s favorite restaurant about his passing, I stopped at the local antique store, with the hope of finding a copy of Priscilla Magazine or Home Needlework or somesuch (I’m an antique publications fanatic).

Instead, I found this treasure. As usual, you can click the pictures for more detail. I highly recommend it. The stitching is exquisite.) It’s about 22 by 22 inches, still with the original price tag of 50 cents from Kindall. So I need to go do some research and track it down.

The design reflects much of the art needlework done in the 1890s through about 1910 in the U.S. This one is poppies. It’s stitched on linen in a thick filament silk – not twisted at all, it looks like they put enough strands in the needle to be about the equivalent of 4-5 strands of cotton floss. But because it’s so much softer, it blends much better than that much cotton would. I’m sure that this was packaged in this size as thread… I’ve seen the advertisements for it.

As you can see, it’s not faded at all, and the stitching is exquisite. There is a small triangular voided area in the poppies shown above, where the petals meet, that I thought was an error, but then I realized that all of the poppies in that position have identical voided areas. It was designed to be made into a pillow – the linen to back the pillow is attached to the embroidered linen, ready to be made.

Coveting the threads I can no longer get, and feeling very pleased with myself for finding this.