I didn’t realize that I hadn’t posted once I finished the Halloween embroidery. Yes, this project is now finally on to the next step—piecing! I really need to get on to that. Halloween is right around the corner.
If I recall, most of the fabric is in 2 1/2” strips—it’s all in the project bin but I haven’t taken it out and looked at anything other than the embroidery for awhile. I should probably target that project for next weekend. It would be nice to have the Halloween project actually done in time for Halloween…five years later….
I’ve been more in the mood for embroidery lately than for quilting. I think that’s because I haven’t been sleeping well lately so I’ve been pretty fried after work every day. As long as I’m doing embroidery, I don’t feel quite as guilty binge-watching guilty-pleasure-TV. “Look, I know I’m on the third episode in a row of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, but look at how much stitching I’ve done!”
The night I finished the Halloween embroidery, I immediately started searching for new embroidery designs in some of my favorite places. You may recall my new little niece? She’s four months old now and I’ve still not gotten to cuddle her. Blame my auntie-withdrawals but I ended up buying several designs I want to work up for her nursery as Christmas gifts. They’re all from BumpkinHill Designs. They’re stinkin’ adorbs. Before I started in on those, though, I wanted to do more of a practice piece that would be just for me.
The design is another BumpkinHill one. We all know how I feel about pudgy birds. And tea. Plus I’d get to use all sorts of pretty colors (no more limited color palette for years on end!) and a slightly wider variety of stitches. I’m using some embroidery fabric and some lightweight stabilizer I had in my stash. I’ve lost the AC plug for my lightbox (no idea) so I had to use the old window-and-painter’s-tape trick for the transfer. My lines probably aren’t as true to the pattern as they should be.
It’s a fun design to work. However, I’m not keen on how my fabric and stabilizer are behaving. It’s a little too lightweight to hold up to the stitching. The design calls for three strands, which I’ve used in a lot of places, but I switched to two strands for a few elements because the fabric just wasn’t behaving. And the French knots? Puh-lease. They’re either pulling through the back or I overcompensate by making them too big. I’ve ripped out multiple FKs and finally decided to wait until I have everything else done, then tackle them again (perhaps after a glass of wine). I’ve done FKs before with success—but these are killing me. I’m definitely checking out other fabric and stabilizer options for when I do my niece’s project for realsies.
As an example of how focused I am on embroidery these days, I’ve made a few new book purchases.
I love the A-Z books—they have excellent diagrams. I already owned another of their embroidery books—on motifs. Tatiana Popova is a talented designer of crewel embroidery designs in a style I adore; I’m working my way up to doing something of hers, or one of the ones I’ve been drooling over on Mary Corbett’s blog.
And just because I’m a gadget girl, here’s a review for you. As I dove back into my embroidery for the first time in years, I also began to hanker after a neater-looking floss holder. I use Artbins and have a shelf that contains all my supplies, but the DMC floss (and floss like it) container just had skeins tossed in it, organized by color, but I had to dig through everything to see what I had. I prefer my floss to be on bobbins when I’m using it—much less likely to end up in a tangled mess. So I ordered a bag of bobbins from Amazon and ended up choosing one that came with a doo-hickey for winding bobbins.
Once I managed to get it hooked on to the side of my Artbin divider securely, it actually worked like a charm. I take the paper off the floss skein and put the resulting “loop” over my right arm so I can quickly unwind it with a few flourishes of my arm (very graceful and dancer-esque, I assure you); then I use my left hand to hold the tension while my right hand then starts winding the little doo-hickey. It would go very quickly except I don’t have a fine-point permanent marker so I have to use my label-maker to label the DMC color number on the bobbin, which takes extra time as I have to cut the tape down to size. (You can see a labeled bobbin in the lower right.)
I really wasn’t in the mood for any of the sewing projects I have in my head that I need to work on, so I ended up standing and winding bobbins for about a half hour. There was something strangely satisfying about it.
Maybe this week I’ll sleep better and be more in the mood for quilting. Not sure what’s blocking me, but it’s definitely not felt like my jam the last couple of weeks.