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!

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

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! 

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.

Inspired by Winter

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

                                                      -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm pleased to tell you that I have recently completed a new embroidery inspired by winter, the spiral form I used in the Rumi Wisdom embroidery and the quote above from Ralph Waldo Emerson. It seems to me that winter is all about patience - the patience to sit by our fires and create slowly, to let a stew simmer for hours and hours developing amazing flavors and finally, the patience to wait for the snow to melt and the earth to wake up and grace us with greenery. 

Now that the embroidery is complete and my notes are in mostly good order I've started working on the pattern. I'm hoping to have it in my etsy shop in time for some long winter stitching.