Some Updates

TAST2012

These are continuing and I’m doing my scribbles with them. The last three are:

Bonnet Stitch

Bonnet Stitch

This is an old stitch that is not too well known. I had never heard of it but I managed to do it. I thought I would have a difficult time with it but it actually went quite well.

Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch

 Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch

This was a little more difficult for me to get going on. I had to view a video of someone (Mary Corbet of needlenthread.com) working this stitch with my laptop upside down to get the left hand aspect of it. Worked it awhile before figuring out the best way to hold my hoop and work the stitch. Now I like it. Oh the joys of being left handed!

Basque Stitch

 Basque Stitch

I watched a video (Mary Corbet of needlenthread.com) for this stitch too. It actually went quite well. I left my scribble mark so you could see the way the stitch went around the sharper points. I only had one line not two lines to stitch between.

FLOSS BOBBINS

 In my last organizing post I talked about the plastic bobbins made to wind embroidery floss on. I said I preferred the DMC ones and I still do but I have to report this incident. I needed more floss boxes to store my floss bobbins in. So, I went in search of the larger boxes. I didn’t find any but at one of the craft stores I found the regular boxes at a good price and with 50 free bobbins included. They were being sold under the DMC brand so I thought great and bought a couple of boxes. Was I disappointed – the “free” bobbins were not the same as the nice DMC ones I had previously bought. 


These were in fact far worse than the other brand I had purchased. You can see in the photo (you may need to enlarge it) that they had all kinds of problems even the slots for anchoring the threads were bad. Tsk, tsk, DMC, maybe it would have been better if you had sent them back to the manufacturer as inferior quality rather than offer them to your customers as “free”. Now I’m nervous that they are dumping their high quality products for cheaply made ones. I hope not!!

EMBROIDERY HOOPS WITH SCREWS

New Oval Hoop

Oval Hoop with Plastic Cover

I recently found two new oval hoops. I prefer the oval shape when stitching as my hand can hold it better. These secured the fabric better than my wood ones and all I had to do to protect my threads from the screw is cut a longer piece of the plastic tubing. The only think about this style of hoop is the ridge on the inside ring. I would not leave my fabric in the hoop for very long. (You are should remove the fabric at the end of your stitching session anyway.) But it you stitch for a long period of time I would recommend releasing the fabric every now and again (30 minutes?). Sometimes though I set mine down to do something quick and don’t always get back to it like I had planned. I’ll let you know how it works – I will be damp stretching my work for sure.

Inside hoop

NEW PROJECT

Yes you read right, as if I didn’t have enough going on all ready! But I took another online class, what can I say the price was right! This one was from Big Picture Classes called “Happy Go Lucky Stitchalong “ taught by Amy Powers. We’ve been working on a grid of 25 1 and ½ inch squares using mainly six strands of floss. I’ve never worked that small and I’ve never used that many strands at once. So this was a new experience for me. I’ve only done 5 of my squares. I’ll post more about this project later.

Happy Stitching!

Rose