Stitching Update

On Monday night at Homewood Embroiderer's Guild, Jane and I will be demonstrating methods for getting your design onto your fabric to stitch. We have a whole slew of ideas to share and this is one I've been working on.  I have this royal blue (not quite as purple as it looks here) fulled wool fabric that I decided I wanted to stitch my own crewel design on.

I've had the design drawn and colored in for a couple of years and the wool for at least a year. My sticking point was how to get the complex design onto the thick, dark, kind of fuzzy fabric.

This is what I came up with. I traced the design onto thin woven iron-on interfacing. Ironed it to the back of the wool. Now I'm stitching through it to transfer the design lines to the front of the fabric.

Here's the front showing the lines I've stitched in so far. It goes pretty quickly. I'm stitching from the back using a stem stitch that shows up as a back stitch on the front, using white or ivory machine sewing thread (whichever I happen to grab, no rhyme or reason to the color).  I think it will work out well and also provide a bit of stability to the wool for the thick crewel stitching I have planned.

On First Thursday's I've been working on my small Japanese Embroidery design.  This week I ripped out all of the bamboo leaves on the lower right and restitched them. I'm much happier. While I like the leaves in the left-hand bamboo, I realized I didn't stitch them in the right direction and was copying the error in the second set of leaves. I think the first set looks okay so I left them, but the ones I removed looked bad.  It was my fault, my instructor's directions were detailed and very clear, I just wasn't paying attention. This distraction is why I've been working on the small piece and not my larger fan. I just don't trust myself right now to settle down and focus. 

I am improving. The first day I worked on the piece I stitched two bamboo leaves in the three hours of the workshop. The second time four. This time I ripped and stitched all five and also gave a mini lesson in design transfer methods to a friend.

Last is my first attempt at a knit Dalek egg cosy (Dr. Who).  I found the pattern on Ravelry (Lyles Knit). It's a tad small. I've begun a second one in crochet (also Ravelry, Ellie Skene).

Eggsterminate!