08.16.10
Posted in General at 1:26 pm by deRomilly
Sock Yarn for embroidery!
My yarn for the test stitching for the shower curtain came on Saturday (ordered it from Knitpicks, and it always arrives so fast)! I am a very happy camper. I only messed up color wise on about three skeins, so I can work on looking that up. I decided to work up a cafe curtain in a similar design to use on the window, and to test out the stitching – it will give me the opportunity to test stitches, and see how much thread I’m really going to need without guessing. One of the catches to using sock yarn is that because it isn’t designed for embroidery, colors change seasonally. Sometimes drastically!
The colors that don’t work in this pile are pretty obvious, the bright yellow on the right, and the very light blue at the bottom. There are two other blues that are too close together in shade… if I can find one in between, the light blue might work after all…
So now I’m off to transfer the smaller cafe curtain design to the fabric and start playing! Yay!!! (oh, wait. There’s other work that needs to be done first. Darn real life!)
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05.21.10
Posted in General at 2:26 pm by deRomilly
So you want to learn embroidery, but are overwhelmed by all the information out there. I took some of the questions I ask my students when they are deciding what to learn first and put them into a quiz to rank four of the basic embroidery styles and suggest which one you should start with. Unfortunately I can’t plug the quiz in here, but you can find it here:
What Embroidery Style Should I Learn?
I don’t get any results back from this, but I’d love to know what your results are! Feel free to post in the comments. I got “freestyle” which is funny, since I started with and design cross stitch and crewel designs before I expanded out. But I guess we all change over time!
If you know how to create a quiz I can post IN my blog – please give me a heads up. My google-fu is failing mightily on this subject! And I’d rather not make you all click more than necessary!
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03.26.10
Posted in Free Patterns at 4:47 pm by deRomilly
I am currently fighting with technical issues with the promised video. As I am having a horrid time getting them uploaded to any of the sites with embeddable viewers right now, I thought I’d go ahead and post a link here for the time being. Unfortunately, I can’t do that either, because the video is too large.
Hang tight. I’ll get it sorted as soon as possible. And tomorrow I will try to post the next step for the stumpwork!
Thanks for your patience! Darn technology!
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03.13.10
Posted in Free Patterns at 5:16 pm by deRomilly
Into the fun part of wired elements today! YAY! I’m starting with the small blue petals around the red ones. Mostly because they’re smaller, and they’re satin stitched rather than needle-lace. Again, images are contained in the gallery below the instructions, and you can see more detail by clicking the thumbnail.
Step 5
- First things first. Trace the leaf and small petal shapes onto your muslin. Make sure they’re close enough together that you can fit them all into the hoop, but you want them far enough apart that the wire and prior stitching doesn’t get in the way as you move through them. You will need to amend the shapes a little so that they come to points on both ends.
- Taking one piece of wire and one strand of blue floss, couch the wire down using small tacking stitches. I started the couching thread with three very very small backstitches in the middle of the petal. They will be hidden by later stitches and won’t be an issue. You don’t want to use a knot here because it will leave a lump in your petal, making it look like your plant has parasites! Hide the stitches under the wire, keeping in mind that the back of the petal will show as well as the front. Leave about a 1-1 1/2 inch tail at the bottom of the petal, and when you have completed couching it down, cut the other wire off to the same length.
- Using one strand of floss, either use encroaching satin stitch or long and short stitch to fill the petal, stitching over the wires as well as the muslin. Remember that the back of this will be seen as well as the front, and be careful while stitching to lay your stitches evenly over both the front and back.
- Repeat until you have completed all four petals. Leave them on the hoop.
Next week – leaves and needlelace!!! Eeeep!
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Leaves and petals traced onto muslin.
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Couch the wire down to the muslin over the lines.
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Fill the petal with encroaching satin stitch or long and short stitch.
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