Farewell, Marilyn

The stitching world had a great loss earlier this week. On Tuesday, August 14, cross stitch designer Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum passed away.

Marilyn was the hand behind the design company Told in A Garden, with designs under that name, as well as Lavender & Lace and Butternut Road. She was by far the most successful cross stitch designer of the late 1980’s through the early 2000’s. Between the three design lines, she produced a total of 128 designs, not including the free Christmas angel designs she offered for 20 years.

A little over 10 years ago, Marilyn moved to the Rochester, NY area, which is where I live. I had the wonderful experience of not just meeting this lovely and talented soul, but also to work with her and visit her beautiful home on several occasions. I was lucky enough to be the model stitcher for three of her designs (Winter Sampler and the two Button Box Babies). I also stitched trial bits of Angel of the Morning and Secret Santa, as Marilyn decided between possible color combinations. It was an inspiring time that allowed me to get a glimpse of her amazingly creative mind at work.

Over the years, I’ve stitched other designs of Marilyn’s. The first was Angel of Hope, which went to a teenaged cousin battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma (who is doing very well nearly 20 years later). Nantucket Rose (above) and Celtic Banner (below) both hang in my dining room. And I still have Angel of the Sea half-completed.

Marilyn and I fell out of touch in recent years, but I’ll always remember her generosity of spirit, her determination to make her creations the best they could be, and her stunning perennial garden. Farewell, my friend. May your family and loved ones find comfort in happy memories.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

And he’s all I have to show for the past few days of stitching!

Two more mitten fronts to stitch, and then assembly. Without the time needed to write a blog post each day, though, I’m hoping to get these done over the weekend! Maybe I’ll set a recent record for my own start-to-finish time!

Some Whitework in the Works

Stitching bloggers all over seem to be owning up to the number of works in progress they have. I guess I’m looking at joining the bandwagon. I’m not quite ready to put up a full list, but I would like to share a couple of whitework projects I started over the past year but haven’t yet blogged about.

The first is an EGA group correspondence course by Jane-Ellen Balzuweit called Dresden Garden.

Yes, that’s a plain old American quarter there for scale.  The full size of the project is only about 4 inches wide by 3 inches tall. This piece is a study of Dresden lace which is a combination of surface embroidery, pulled thread, and shadow work (as seen in the white swirls). It’s stitched on Legacy shadow work linen, which is approximately 48 count.  I’m guessing that’s what led to this remaining unfinished. The rest of the stitching is counted and primarily pulled. That requires a bit too much concentration for me right now!

The second piece of whitework is also an EGA group correspondence course in another German embroidery technique, Schwalm embroidery in this case. It is Barbara Kershaw’s Liesel, and as you can see, I’ve barely begun. I’m a bit discouraged about the wobbliness of my initial lines of coral knots, but I really would like to get this moving a bit, since I’ve always wanted to learn the basics of Schwalm embroidery.

This project is a bit bigger than the other, maybe about 8 inches by 12 inches. It’s on a slightly uneven-weave linen (32ct by 36ct, maybe?) that I had in my stash, so it was pretty easy on the budget!

As you can see, I haven’t completely abandoned my interest in a wide variety of needlework techniques. It’s still always fun to learn something new. What new (to you) techniques have you been exploring lately?

Hooray! NaBloPoMo is Winding Down

I’m very glad I decided to go ahead and commit to National Blog Posting Month (a.k.a. NaBloPoMo). It has renewed my enthusiasm for sharing my stitching successes and failures, along with tips I’ve learned along the way. I really enjoy interacting with all of you, dear readers.

However, over the past four weeks, I’ve also learned that in order to write about stitching, I have to actually stitch something! And it doesn’t work to try to do much of both writing and stitching on any given day, not with the full-time job and motherhood to an almost-three-year-old. (Yes, really. She’s almost three!)

So while I’ve had fun doing this, please be warned that come December, posts will not be as frequent. But I will keep posting. The good news is that I won’t be posting just for the sake of posting something on a given day. I can focus more on providing you with quality information. Fortunately, this month I’ve also learned that a post doesn’t have to be long to share a good tip. Pictures really are worth a thousand words!

And who knows? One of these days I might actually finish cleaning up all of the imported posts on my NEW site and be able to share that with all of you!

Three Down…

…and three to go! I still have to add embellishment to the cuffs and do the final assembly of each mitten, but the individual design for each of these is complete.

That’s all for tonight. Enjoy!

How To Start a Thread for a Line of Stem Stitch

Sometimes it’s challenging to figure out exactly how to start a thread. The two most common methods I’ve seen are to use an away waste knot (to allow the stitching to be tied off later) and simply using a waste knot in the path of the stitching.

When you’re stitching a line of stem or outline stitch, you could use the away knot and then tie off the stitches later. But the “knot in the path of stitching” option needs a bit of modification to make it work successfully.

The answer? Running stitch.

As shown here, I put my waste knot in the thread and then do a few small running stitches out to where the line of stitching starts.

Then you can simply stitch over these little running stitches with the stem or outline stitch, and cut off the knot when you get to it. If you can pierce a running stitch or two along the way, all the better.

One of the main advantages of this technique is that it doesn’t matter if the line you’re stitching is straight or curvy. The running stitches force the thread tail to follow the curve of the line.

Does anybody else have a tip for starting threads in this situation?

A Quick Christmas Project

Okay, I know there will be a lot of eye-rolling on this statement, but I’ve started a new project. Yes, I know. I have God-knows how many in-progress pieces, and plans for more in the new year, and I’ve started another.

But I have a good reason! (Can’t we always rationalize a new project?) I came to the conclusion, rather belatedly, that there’s no possible way that The Magi might get done for Christmas. So instead of digging out another Christmas UFO (and I can think of one right now), I started something new.

The good news is that it, or rather, they, will be quick. And they’re a complete change of pace from the canvaswork I’ve been doing lately.

May I present The Mittens? This kit comes with woolfelt, floss, and a few accent buttons to stitch some darling mitten ornaments.

The kit is from Rachel’s of Greenfield. The transfer of the designs onto the woolfelt is really easy. Because the designs are printed using heat-transferrable ink, they’re just ironed on to the felt. Stitches include stem/outline (sorry – I can never keep those two straight) stitch, satin stitch, lazy daisy, french knots, and blanket stitch.

Oh, and I have two more of Rachel’s kits on order. So far, this one is a lot of fun!

A Note of Thanks

Just popping in this evening to say that I hope all of you had a lovely day. And in the spirit of the day, I’d also like to express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude that you all stop by and read my long-winded explanations of obscure details of stitching techniques. It never ceases to surprise me that so many of you seem to appreciate my ramblings and put up with my lack of posting consistency.

So THANK YOU. Your support is greatly appreciated.

By the way, please let me know if I can answer any specific questions, or if you would like to see anything or any types of posts in particular. Right now I’m just blathering about whatever crosses my brain on any given day, but if you need information on something, please ask. If I know anything about it, I’ll write it up. And if I don’t, I can always dive into my stack of books and see what I can find!

Wishing All of You a Happy Thanksgiving!

Regardless of whether or not you’re celebrating this Thursday, I wish you a day filled with blessings. Have a wonderful day.

Another Little Something I Started...

With so few posts this year, it’s easy to find something to write about these days. When all else fails, talk about a project not previously shared!

This past spring, Jane Zimmerman offered her former seminar class project, A Garden of Babylon, as an online course with Shining Needle Society. I liked the design, but I was also intrigued by a line in Jane’s description, which states that the class “explores both historical techniques of silk and metal thread embroidery through the ages.”

Of course, I couldn’t just stitch the project using either colorway proposed by Jane. I wanted to soften it up a little, so I decided to go to silver threads rather than gold.

Here is the beginning of my A Garden of Babylon. It is stitched on gray 18-count canvas using a variety of silk threads and Kreinik braids.

What do you think? I obviously still have a bit to go on this. Maybe I’ll be able to finish it up next year.

Ruskin Garden Square Progress

Just a quick progress picture tonight, folks! Enjoy!

Breaking Up Repetitive Stitching

“Unity” is one of the basic principles of design. One way to achieve unity in a needlework design, particularly in a geometric design, is through the use of repetition.

Unfortunately for stitchers, repetition sometimes gets a bit, well, repetitive. Tedious. Boring. In my last post about Ruskin Garden Square, I mentioned that I have several of the smaller padded buttonhole squares to stitch. By the time I got halfway through the third such box, I decided I needed to break up the box stitching with other areas of the piece.

Fortunately, not all of the boxes will be used for cutwork. Two boxes in each corner provide a little space for a miniature “garden”. I decided to put these decorative stitches in along the way. Here’s the first corner after my mini gardens are in.

After getting those in, I was ready to get the boxes started on the next corner.

So, what do you do when the design you’re working on calls for several of the same design element? Do you push through and get them all done, or do you have a tendency to break up the stitching with other elements?

How Do You Manage Your Pattern While Stitching?

Many professional designers, especially those designing counted canvas work, offer a project’s instructions as just a set of loose pages. As far as I can tell, this is for a number of reasons:

• Good counted canvas instructions, particularly for complex designs, take a lot of pages. (Ruskin Garden Square, for example, has 70 pages of instructions, with at least one diagram on each page.)
• Stitchers will often have to refer to multiple pages simultaneously, and binding the instructions makes this cumbersome.
• Not everyone would agree on the best binding, anyway.

Since Ruskin Garden Square was originally a class project, Gay Ann separated the instructions into those pages that could be pre-class work from those that would be the focus of the class. When she sold the instructions to me, they came in a plain folder with the pre-class pages on the left, and in-class pages on the right.

I actually found that division of pages helpful to start, to get all of the various borders in, so I left the pages in the folder, and just pulled out one or two at a time as I needed them. But now I'm reaching the end of the borders, and I need to re-integrate those pages back into the main instruction set.

Juggling 15 or so loose pages of instructions (the pre-class work) is much easier than trying to shuffle 70 pages, though, so I’ve switched to my preferred method of managing instructions with loose pages. I prefer to use a three-ring binder with heavy-duty non-glare page protectors. I put two single-sided pages (back to back) into each page protector.

This is actually a fairly inexpensive setup. Over time, I’ve purchased a couple of boxes of 200 page protectors at my local warehouse club store (BJ’s in my case), along with a six-pack of 1/2” three ring binders. I prefer the kind with the clear pocket on the front so I can put the project’s picture there (though that’s not the type I first laid my hands on for these instructions, so the picture’s in the front inside pocket, as seen above). I’ll reuse the binder and page protectors for a future project after this one is finished. Theoretically, that should keep my WIP count fairly low, but I have a tendency to just buy more binders and page protectors. :-)

Here are the benefits I find to this setup:

• I can pull out a few pages at a time for reference (still in the page protectors).
• Since the protectors are non-glare, there’s no issue with my bright stitching light interfering with readability.
• The page protectors keep the instructions in great shape, and prevent me from losing individual pages.
• If I have to add notes to a page for some reason, I can just pull the paper out, make my notes in pencil, and reinsert it. The protector keeps the pencil from rubbing off, and I can always erase the note later if I want to give away or sell the instructions when I’m done.
• With the project picture on the front of the binder, it’s harder to grab the wrong instructions when I’m taking the project somewhere.

What about you? How do you organize instructions with large numbers of loose pages? I’m really happy with my setup as it is, but I’d love to hear if somebody has some way that might work better!

A Quick Peek at Another Upcoming Project

Okay, folks, NaBloPoMo is starting to take its toll. I actually had a pretty good topic for tonight’s post, but if I actually wrote that post tonight, it would be far less than stellar due to the author (a.k.a. me) falling asleep every other line.

I’ll leave you tonight with a brief look at an ANG correspondence course I’ll be starting on the first of the new year. This is Hiogi, a project designed by Kay Stanis to teach silk and metal thread techniques on Congress cloth.

Another beauty to look forward to!

Preparing for a Ruskin Lace (or Reticello) Cutout

If you’ve ever done any Hardanger embroidery, you’re familiar with the idea that cutwork areas need to be “hemmed” with little blocks of satin stitches called kloster blocks. The preparation of a cutwork area for Ruskin lace or reticello is a bit similar, except that it is padded first and that buttonhole stitch is used as the hem.

The first step is to lay down a few long satin stitches along each side of the area that will be cut out. As in this block, there is often a row of four-sided stitches just outside of the square.

On top of those stitches, add a round of buttonhole (or, if you’re being a stickler, closed blanket stitch), with the loop side of the stitches on the inside of the cutwork area.

Then you can fill in the corners with a few straight stitches just to pretty it up a bit.

That’s all there is to getting an area ready for cutting in Ruskin lace and reticello. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another 11 little boxes to stitch!

Four-Sided Stitches Complete!

At last. Here’s the reason why my last few posts have been a bit skimpy (as this one will be!). I’ve been plugging away at four-sided stitches on Ruskin Garden Square from Gay Ann Rogers for the better part of a week. Who knew that such a simple stitch could take up so much time? But it’s done now.

Next up on this project is to do a bunch of borders for areas that will eventually be cut out.

On a recent post about my completed Reticello 1 project, Wendy commented that she is “not completely sure what [reticello] is.” I’ll try to clear that up a bit, Wendy, as I go through the process here. From the little bit I’ve read on reticello and Ruskin lace, there are only a few differences. I’ll go over what I’ve learned about those differences as I stitch the various areas in this project.

Stay tuned!

A Couple Quick Progress Pics

In the interest of actually stitching a bit, tonight’s post will be short and sweet. I leave you with a couple of quick peeks at Magi #3 and his companions…

Enjoy!

A Stitch in Time: Reticello 1

Since I’m currently plodding away on lots of four-sided stitch on Ruskin Garden Square and don’t have much to share on that front, I hope you might be interested in one of my finished projects with a very similar type of needle lace.

Reticello 1 was designed by Diane Clements and was featured as the first of three reticello/reticella pieces in the (unfortunately now defunct) magazine The Needleworker in June/July 1999.

In this project, the edges of the center square were reinforced, then stitched all the way around with buttonhole stitch. The center square was then cut completely away. After basting the fabric to a laminated pattern, I added the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, stitched over them, and then stitched the remaining shapes off of these lines. If I recall correctly, the project really wasn’t too difficult to stitch, but it took quite a while! The trickiest part was getting all of those triangles to have approximately the same tension so they came out the same size.

I did have great plans to stitch the remaining pieces in the series, as well as another project featured in the Winter 2001 Fine Lines from the same designer. It just hasn’t happened yet!

Have you tried any reticella work? How did it turn out? We’d love to see pictures!

Fun with Composite Stitches

So what is a composite stitch, you ask? It’s a stitch that is made up of combinations of other stitches, often layered on top of each other.

The sleeve on Magi #3 is stitched with a fairly simple composite stitch. It starts out with a simple lattice of a medium weight metallic in gold.

This metallic is tied down with upright cross at each intersection, using a lighter-weight silver metallic.

And in all of the open areas, an upright cross is stitched too, this time in a few plies of silk floss.

The result is a rich-looking “fabric” that looks complex but is actually very straight forward. You can barely see the silver metallic, but it helps the entire presentation by holding down the diagonal lines of gold and adding just a touch more shimmer.

This is by no means the only composite stitch in The Magi. Perhaps the most challenging of these is found in the robes of Magi #2. The stitch seen here has no fewer than 6 steps to complete.

What fascinates me about these stitches is thinking about how the designer created them. This isn’t a matter of simply picking up a favorite stitch book and filling in an area. Creating composite stitches requires either a) a lot of time so that you can try out various combinations or b) a VERY good intuition on what stitch diagrams look like. Or both.

So the next time you’re trying to figure out what stitch to put in an area, consider if that area could us a bit more texture that just a standard stitch out of a standard book of stitches. Then try playing with adding various stitches on top of a light stitch. And see what you can come up with.

A Wonderful Time Was Had By All

We had a wonderful day at the mini-retreat. The day started with greeting longtime friends and acquaintances, some of whom had traveled over an hour to be with us. Then it was time for breakfast from the hotel’s great buffet and omelet and waffle station.

Then on to the stitching! Here we have a room full of happy stitchers finishing up breakfast and starting to stitch.

Shortly before lunch, we had our first finish for the day. Here is my mother-in-law’s project from a recent regional EGA mini-seminar. This is Daphne Reborn by Michael Boren in the olive green color scheme. Isn’t it stunning? Congratulations, Mom!

One of the highlights of the day was the raffle. Tickets were 6 for $5. I started putting my tickets into  an entry  bag here and there when I came across the sweater. One of the ladies who helps to organize this event had hand-knit a gorgeous sweater in a lovely shade of blue in a size 4T.  I ended up putting my last 3 tickets in this drawing, and then I went back an purchased another 6 tickets to put in the sweater’s bag. So maybe I stacked the deck by purchasing so many tickets, but it paid off!

Isn’t it lovely? I do need to hang onto it, though. It will be at least a year before my daughter fits into this beautiful creation. Oh well. It will still bring out the blues in her eyes! (Thank you, Judy!)

My only complaint about the day was that it almost wasn’t bright enough if you weren’t right next to the windows. I’ll be sure to bring my portable light for the next event (currently being planned for March). I’m already looking forward to it!

Thank you, Janice, for organizing this lovely day!