02.01.12
Posted in ELMOWS at 7:00 am by deRomilly
After some thought, I am revamping the Elmow program. Fair warning – all old Elmows will be pulled down on February 15. I will repackage them with a few new designs for sale on the GCD site and on Etsy, but the price will be going up, and you won’t be able to get most of them individually any more.
Going forward in March Elmows will be released as follows:
- 4 weekly patterns and individual designs as always at 99 cents each.
- The last Wednesday of the month I will post the entire monthly set, including one additional bonus design for $2.99.
They will be available for one month additional. So patterns posted in February will be available through March, and so on.
A month after they are pulled, the design packs (NOT the individual designs) will be available on Etsy and GoldenCircleDesigns.com for $5.99. The format will probably be PDF, although I may make these designs available to shops in printed format as well.
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01.10.12
Posted in TAST at 4:20 pm by deRomilly
I’m going to shift my TAST posts to Fridays/Saturdays, I think, so I can get them up faster so people who are perusing them can. I think I can manage that.
Last week’s TAST was Fly stitch. I did a small sample, but I’m afraid this is a stitch that I’m just not very creative with. It’s not one of my favorites, and it really felt like an extension just to get this little bit done. I’m happy with the results, though, and have ideas for dandelions done in fly stitch now… so I did get quite a bit out of it!
And yes, all the lettering was done in fly stitch. THAT I may work out a whole alphabet in! With more care than I gave it, it could be really cool. 
I think what I really liked here was the opportunity to work with Vikki Clayton’s silk threads again. 
The red is her 6 strand floss. The purple is from a skein I picked up at the needlepoint shop – it’s called “High Cotton,” and is a six strand matte floss that is thicker than normal strands. It doesn’t shine, but it didn’t knot up either. I can see quite a few things this thread would be really good for, and I look forward to trying it out on them. It’s a bit spendy, though.
This coming week is buttonhole stitch. Yay! options. LOTS of options for creativity with that one!
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01.03.12
Posted in TAST at 2:47 pm by deRomilly
So today is the first day of TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday on Sharon B’s Blog). Which actually means that the stitch choice was posted last night (she’s in Australia) and I won’t be posting my results until NEXT Tuesday. Kind of hard to post something that isn’t stitched yet!
But Watch this Space! I am determined to take this opportunity to experiment and expand my design abilities…
Join us! (This week is Fly stitch).
Sharon has also updated her Squidoo pages on Hand Embroidery and on Needlework Samplers. Some very interesting links there!
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12.23.11
Posted in Samplers at 7:00 am by deRomilly
The third motif on my ongoing crewel sampler is 
a design from the Anchor little book of Crewel, called “Blue Bee.” In my case, it could be called “Turquoise Bee,” as I was using all appleton wools and found that I didn’t have ANY of the color types used in the origninal design.
The design in the book was stitched with Anchor cotton floss. While it gives it a nice, smooth, shiny look, I tend to not call it crewel. The defining word for me with crewel work is wool, which is apparently whence the word crewel derives! So while the design done in floss is pretty, I don’t call it crewel – it’s what I’d call “freestyle embroidery.” It’s a nit, I know. But I live in a world where nothing has the same name between two people — both embroidery and bellydance use different terms for the same stitch or move. It drives my ordered brain nuts!
Anyway. The color scheme I ended up with was dependent on the colors I had in my box in Appleton. In this case, golds and pinks rather than golds and oranges. Luckily the pinks have a very yellow cast to them, and actually blend pretty well with the gold, which surprised me. Learn something new with every sample! The turquoise is a little bright for the rest of the colors, but it’s not TOO horrible.
The sampler was focused on the basque stitch – which makes an interesting twisted chain-like spike. The outside of the flower to the right is done in this stitch, as is the center of two of the leaves. Quite pretty. I’d never actually done this stitch before, and I found it a bit tricky, especially to make the loops all the same size and avoid tightening the stitches too much. Combined with the fuzzy Appleton wool, well, I had a few issues!
Even close up the gold and pink don’t look too bad – maybe even pretty good together!
I think it came out pretty well!
Next motif – floss silks and “Society Silk” motif – yes, I know it’s my crewel sampler. But it’s mine, and I’ll play as I like!
Have a wonderful Christmas, if you celebrate it!
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12.19.11
Posted in Monday Treasures at 7:00 am by deRomilly
I found this wonderful Seascape via Pinterest (which is a great site. I pin a lot of my favorite embroidery photo finds there, so if you want a fix on a day other than Monday, this is the place to look!).
Anyway. Sophie Gelfi is an amazing textile artist, mosaic creator and scrapbooker. I don’t know exactly where she is from, but it’s one of the French-speaking countries! (I couldn’t find an “about” page on her site, but she writes in French.)
I started at the seascape page, but found myself clicking images almost obsessively because everything was so pretty! Go. Look. Enjoy.
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