New Stuff, Earlier Stuff, Stitching Stuff!

My Newest Santa Experiment

Happy Monday to all of you! It's a sunny November day and the temps are expected to be in the mid 50's. That's quite warm for this time of year in the northern part of the U.S.  The weather makes this post seem out of season but Christmas is just 6 weeks away so it's time, or maybe even a little past time, to start thinking about holiday stitching.

First up is a brand new experiment for me. I tried my hand at wool applique and embroidery. I drew this Santa maybe ten years ago and he just sat waiting patiently in my sketchbook. My friend and neighbor, CB does this type of work and I relied on her for guidance and even some fabric. I blew the design up and stitched away. It was fun to work on this thick wool because there is little drag on the thread. It stitched like butter. I intend to turn it into a pattern but if you look closely (not even very closely) you can see I have some things to work out. While I'm puttering away with this, here are some holiday PDF patterns that you can get started on now! Click on each photo to take you to the pattern page in my Threads of Inspiration shop.

Christmas Sweater Ornaments

Scandinavian Inspired Star

Redwork Santa

Dickens Christmas Spiral

Happy Stitching!

More Color Inspiration

 

Maple Leaves

As promised, I have a few more color inspirations from my wander the other day. We are having another glorious sunny fall day and I have the most gorgeous maple tree in my backyard where these leaves are from. When looking at objects for color inspiration it is always so interesting to note, especially in natural objects like leaves, rocks and sticks, just how many hues and values can be found. These leaves range from a deep yellow all the way to a dark brown, with many colors in between. Of course, sticking with a few keeps stitching a bit easier.

DMC 720, 728, 801, 920, 922

Thistles

There are a few plants in our garden that have great seed heads and we leave them all winter for the birds. Since we get so much snow, they also are an interesting contrast in color and texture against all of that white.

DMC 869, 898,938, 3032

Autumn Color Palette

When seen as a whole, all of the colors from the this post and the last create quite a lovely autumn color palette. 

Row 1:  351, 922, 921, 920, 945, 720

Row 2:  3822, 728, 726

Row 3:  472, 471, 320, 3052

Row 4: 316, 917

Row 5: 3781, 869, 801, 938, 898, 3032

What are the ways you come up with color palettes?

Backyard Autumn Palettes

Backyard Color Inspiration

 

Autumn Greetings!

This time of year is so beautiful as the trees change their wardrobe and show off their brilliant colors. The changes inspired me to think about fall embroidery. I am frequently asked how I choose colors for my stitching. Often it’s intuition, but I think finding new ways to experiment with color choice is helpful, so I took a walk in my yard to see what inspiration I could find. The trees have only just begun to turn here so I wasn't expecting a lot but I was surprised to find pink in the Autumn Joy Sedum and drying hydrangeas along with reds, oranges, yellows and browns of leaves, berries and seeds.

You can never go wrong with color choices when you let nature take the lead. I looked closely at what I had gathered and used my trusty DMC color card to pull out colors that matched. A note, my color card has actual thread in it, as opposed to printed color patches, so you can see the true color. If you design your own embroidery it is a tool I highly recommend! Even if you don’t, it would still be useful. You can find it here.

Here are a few of my color palettes and their inspirations.

From a distance the fruit on this crabapple branch looks bright red but on examination, it is various shades of orange.

DMC 351, 921, 3052, 3781

Again, from a distance, Yarrow looks so grayed out and dusty, but looking at it closely shows sparkles of vivid yellow.

DMC 320, 472, 726, 3822

Autumn Joy Sedum is the last inspiration. I was surprised that this fuchsia could still be found in the garden. 

DMC 316, 471, 917, 945

I am saving a couple more for the next post, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you are looking for some fall inspired embroidery projects I have two in my shop you might have fun making.

Autumn Trees Pattern

Tis Near Halloween Pattern

Redwork Santa Pattern

Redwork Santa

 Hello again! I hope you are all doing as well as can be expected and have stayed healthy during this unprecedented year. I have discovered that I am more of an introvert than I realized and have found many house projects to keep busy. There were some new projects as well as some I'd put off for a good long time. 

As far as studio work goes, I completed two new patterns since I last wrote. A Halloween spiral, which can be seen below and here.  The newest pattern is a Redwork Santa at right. It was a lot of fun to make because I used one color of thread for most of it (red, of course) with just a touch of green. My other patterns are fun and full of color but when keeping track of it all to write a pattern it sometimes gets to be a bit much. To see these patterns and all of the patterns I've designed click here to go to my etsy shop!

Halloween Spiral

Two years ago we bought a house in great need of renovation. It had dashes of the 50's (pink kitchen countertops), a lot of 70's including gold and orange carpet and lots of dark paneling and just a touch of 80's wallpaper border.  The carpets and some of the paneling have been replaced. Among the things accomplished in these quarantine months are some newly painted rooms, we changed all of the interior doors and are in the process of adding new molding. I surprised myself and whitewashed the fireplace last week. I thought that was going to be a project I dreamed of but would never get around to doing because, frankly, I was a bit scared to try it. I think it turned out really well though and it only took a couple hours.

Fireplace after painting but still has green tape around it.
We're also trying out some new paint color

I have also been going through boxes and boxes of old family photos and scrapbooks. The images of those who have passed are filled with emotion and more than a few tears were shed, but there was also laughter and joy. 

I hope you have been able to find time to breathe, accomplish some home projects and perhaps a little stitching during this odd time we all find ourselves.

Spring or Easter Cards

Eggs Waiting to Become Cards

How are you all doing? I have been, for the most part, enjoying my home time. I've been organizing, playing with Dave the kitten, and, of course, stitching. One day last week I was feeling bonkers and I decided to change things up a bit and put aside my embroidery. I got out some water color paints, pencils and markers and made some egg shaped Easter/Spring cards. There was an odd size piece of watercolor paper in my stash and I painted stripes of color in soft pastels. Pattern and detail were added with watercolor pencils and thin Micron markers.

Decorated Paper

Next I made an an egg shape template on an old manilla folder and cut the shape out with an Exacto knife.  As you can see from the photo I removed the egg and used the remaining outline of the shape. That way I could see the placement of the designs on the egg. I traced the pattern onto the watercolor paper and cut out the eggs.

Tracing the Template

I thought about writing greetings on the back of the egg but decided to create a card that would open. As you can see, I folded colored paper in half and glued the egg very near the fold.

Egg Positioned Near Fold

I cut around the egg but left about an inch an a half of the fold intact. so it could be opened.

Card Opened

Egg Cut Out With Border

Next is writing some notes and getting them in the mail! Then I will get back to those birds and some other stitching projects I've got going.

If you're feeling bored with your projects try something different for awhile. It keeps your creating time more interesting!
I'm wishing you all the best of health, peace and contentment as we navigate this new way of being. 

Here's a little Dave to make you smile.

Dave and Embroidery Floss Storage

Dave!

As I write this I hope you are all healthy, practicing social distancing and going out only when necessary. A couple weeks ago we got a six month old kitten and that has made staying in a lot more entertaining. We named him Dave!

 Aside from playing with Dave, I've  been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning up and out. One of the first projects I tackled was my embroidery floss storage. I keep my floss on those little bobbins with the numbers written on them. I had them in a plastic storage bin with drawers and I rigged up a system to keep them in nice neat rows. Unfortunately, about a month ago I dropped it and since it was pretty old the plastic had gotten brittle and the outside structure that held it all together smashed into bits. I was able to keep it together, sort of, until I found something to replace it.

I wanted something other than plastic and my husband offered to build a wooden set of drawers for me. I appreciated the offer but I knew it would be awhile before he would get to it. The day before the dire warnings about Covid-19 hit I was in Home Goods and found these three drawer boxes in the Office section. The drawer height seemed right and so I bought two of them knowing I could return them if they didn't work.

When I tested them out the bobbins were just a bit too tall but I decided that I would trim about 1/8" off of the bottom of each one because I loved the look of the chests and they were so functional. That seems a little crazy since I have so much floss but really, it was about two hours of snipping while watching TV to complete it.

The inside of the drawers weren't divided so I got some balsa wood and cut dividers to go the depth of the drawer and then some smaller pieces that I placed against the front and back walls of the drawer to hold the longer pieces in place. I filled one of the chests and the other one will be divided differently for other embroidery supplies like needles, thimbles, scissors, etc.

Balsa Wood Divider

Dividers for the Rows

There are so many different ways to store embroidery floss and each one works best for the person who uses it. My grandma stored hers in a big jumble in a Wonder Bread bag! How do you store yours?

Three Drawers Organized and Filled

French Knots!!!

French Knots are one of my favorite embroidery stitches. I love the texture and the many ways they can be used and it is a rare piece that I don't find a way to add them in.

I usually use embroidery floss and French Knots can be made with anywhere from one to all six strands of floss. The number of strands used will help determine how large the knots are. Another factor is how many times the thread is wrapped around the needle. One of the most helpful things I have done is make a grid of French Knots using from 1 to 6 strands of floss and one to four wraps. This little grid is helpful when deciding what size knot I want to fill in an area or create a round counter point. You might consider making one for yourself to keep as a handy reference. I can't tell you how often I use it - but a lot! Here is what it looks like.

Here are some of my favorite ways to use French Knots.

To fill in areas like the sheep and treetops.

To fill in for texture in a background or border.

To enhance other stitches and create the center of flowers.

Another example of adding them to a set of stitches.

If you have not tried French Knots, they can be a little tricky but here is an excellent video as well as some stitching tips from the fabulous Mary Corbet of needlenthread.com.  

I thought I'd end with bright pink French Knots exploding out the ends of this flower. Happy knotting! 

Wearable Stitches

So many things have been happening lately that I feel like I've been in a whirlwind of stitching to finish up art work, create samples and design handouts for classes and attempt to cook dinner once in awhile. I've been better at the first two, that's for sure!

If you've been following along you know I was involved in Artists in the Kitchen, a collaboration between women artists and women chefs/restauranteurs/influencers. You can read my blog post about it here. The Minneapolis Star Tribune had a great article about the exhibit that you can read here.

Since embroidery is all over the runway and in the stores it seemed like a perfect time for developing a class on embroidered clothing, so Wearable Stitches was born. It was fun to test out different methods of transferring images onto clothes, figuring out the best way to design around buttons, seams and body curves and stitches that are most appropriate. This experimentation resulted in some very fun samples and a class that everyone seemed to enjoy.

My personal favorites are the peek-a-boo animal that looks out the front of a child's shirt and some shoes with simple stitches. My husband likes to draw cute little animals so I set him the task of designing this for me. It turned out so well I'd like him to do a series that I can put in my etsy shop.  Fingers crossed!

The shoes sometimes had to be stitched using a thimble and pliers to pull the needle through tough spots but I think it was well worth a few needle sticks to make them. My favorite part is the little sprig of flowers on the side. These shoes are ready for some summer fun!

If you are interested in any of my classes for your organization or group send me a message using the contact into on the side bar!

Artists In The Kitchen

Maryland Crab Feast

There has been a lot of fun stitching happening around here! I was invited to participate in a collaboration between women chefs/restauranteurs/influencers and women artists and it has been great fun. I was paired up with Golnaz Yamoutpour, the woman behind EatDrinkDishMpls , an Instagram account that focuses on great taste treats in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. One of the things she told me when we met was her focus on food came about not only because her family had been in the restaurant business but because she thought of food as travel, which she couldn't afford to do at the time. This sparked my imagination because I love to try new cuisines. Flavors can take you both to places you have never been and back to memories of times and places you've experienced. I made 9 images some from the foods and experiences Golnaz told me about, some were my food memories and some were iconic food images.

Sub Sandwich

I decided to work in a grid, which is the way images on Instagram are laid out. I knew if I worked large I'd never get done so each image is approximately 1 3/4" square. You can see all nine of my embroideries on my Instagram account here. If you are in Minneapolis between March 21 and May 19, 2018 stop by Textile Center of Minnesota and see the work of all 50 artists.

Waffles with Berries and Whipped Cream

Hello Again!

Like many artists I have found myself in the past year or so posting more on my Threads of Inspiration Facebook page than on this blog. I am not very happy with that platform for many reasons I won't go into and so, I'm getting back to blogging. I will continue to put links to my blog posts on Facebook so if that is your place to find me, I'll still be there. 

Now for the updates. Wow! I've had so much going on and so many exciting things coming up! Here are just a few. I continue to teach at Textile Center of MN and expand the classes including Wearable Stitches on March 24. We'll add some stitched embellishment to clothing, accessories and even shoes!! I've got a pair of light weight canvas slip-ons just waiting for some design and color. A great new addition to the Textile Center's line up is a series of classes that will be taught over the course of 8 weeks geared to learners over 55.  I will be teaching Interlace: Embroidery which I'm really looking forward to. Click on the title to see the full description. It begins on April 25.

I'll also be teaching at two great locations, Crossings at Carnegie, an art center in Zumbrota, MN and Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, WI. While the Crossings at Carnegie classes aren't listed on the website yet, I'll be teaching Rumi Wisdom on Saturday, April 7 and Quilting Outside the Lines on Saturday May 16. I'll put the links up as soon as they're  available. Here is the link for the class at Shake Rag Alley called Beginning Embroidery: Summer Spiral with Rumi Wisdom on July 28. This will be an all day class where I'll be covering some extras - more stitches (YAY) and special focus on various ways to stitch text. 

I plan on making some updates to my blog including a list all of the classes I'll be teaching on the sidebar so you can always find out where to take a class. If you'd like to have me teach at your guild you'll find a contact section on the sidebar.

I hope to meet some of you in person this coming year!

Four Ways to Embroider Text

Rumi Wisdom

When I taught my first beginning embroidery class a few years ago, one of the first questions I was asked was how to embroider text. It is such a good skill to have so I made sure the design I made for my next class included text. As you can see, it was a spiral with text underneath. I enjoyed the format of the design so much that I have continued designing spirals with interesting quotes. It also has led me to try out different methods of embroidering text. I'll discuss the three I've used, each one giving a little bit different effect and another that is quite common but not on my spiral designs.

Back Stitch Letters

When I designed Rumi Wisdom I knew I wanted to use back stitch because this was going to be used to teach beginning embroidery stitches. It is an easy enough stitch that covers lines very well and works up pretty quickly. A drawback is the letters end up looking a little blocky. If you want smooth curves, this might not be the best stitch to use. 

Emerson Winter

The second spiral design, Emerson Winter, has letters that are a little more stylized with small curves at the ends of some of the letters. I knew that using a back stitch wouldn't give me the look I wanted, so this time I used couching. If you've not done any couching you might find it awkward at first because you have to manage two threads in two needles but after a little practice it is easy. Basically one thread is placed over the line you want it to cover (called the laid stitch) and with the second needle and thread (referred to as the working thread) it is tacked down with tiny stitches. In the case of Emerson Winter I used embroidery floss, but this method allows you to use laid thread that is difficult to stitch with (metallic, thick, fuzzy or loopy threads) because it isn't going in and out of the fabric with every stitch. Couching allows you to get all the loops in the letters you could ever want. 

Couched Letters

Grateful Heart

The next design I created, Grateful Heart, used a different treatment. These letters also have a lot of loops and serifs but I wanted them to stand out more and so I first stitched them all using stem stitch. If you've stitched many curves with stem stitch you know the thread sometimes has a tendency to fall over on itself and the curves aren't very well defined. To keep the definition of the letters I then stitched a satin stitch over the stem stitch. So, essentially, the stem stitch acts as a padding. Although this is fairly time consuming, it creates a really lovely raised letter and I would do it again in a minute.

Working Satin Stitch Over Stem Stitch

All of the lettering in these projects is pretty linear but another method of covering letters that have larger areas to be filled is satin stitch. This is often seen on vintage linens that have monograms. to see some fine examples of satin stitch monograms go here. Mary Corbet's Needle n Thread has a fine list of amazing examples.

In addition, here are links to Mary's videos that give excellent instructions for creating the stitches that were discussed. 

Back Stitch

Couching

Stem Stitch

Satin Stitch

Happy Stitching!

Grateful Heart Embroidery Pattern

I had mentioned in my previous post that I was going to write about various stitches to use for text. I decided you should probably have a look at my newest design before I get to that. I've been showing bits and pieces of my newest embroidery pattern and of the process creating it here and on my  Facebook page which you can find @ThreadsofInspiration.

This is the third in a series of designs that uses a spiral and a quote. Each piece is inspired by a season and of course, the quote.  The newest one, Grateful Heart features the words of Celia Thaxter and little summer vignettes - a hammock swinging between two trees, a sailboat on the lake, a small campsite and sunflowers. With each piece in this series I have tried a different way to stitch the text and this pieces uses a combination stem stitch and satin stitch. I think it gives the letters, little swirls and serifs great definition.





You can find it in my  etsy shop.