Just another rainy day 🌧 Happy weekend.☔️🌈

Blanket stitch is my favourite so far. I had a sudden memory of being shown how to stitch it on the edge of blankets (obviously) by my grannie as a child.

I discovered that if I google the name of the pattern designer and the stitch, I can go straight to their tutorial video on instagram and be allowed to watch it, whereas if I go via their main page it tells me I'm not allowed to watch videos without an account. It's unnecessarily awkward, but it's working, and it allowed me to figure out wtf loop stitch was supposed to be.

Embroidery sampler from England, 1800

From the Victoria and Albert Museum

Just tied the final knot in my second embroidery sampler. I don’t know if I’m doing long and short stitches right, but I like how it turned out. It’s so texturally satisfying.

Finally finished the solid stitching, and by golly am I glad of that.

This kit has not been enjoyable at all as it ended up having 15 thread colours undersupplied that I had to replace with equivalent DMC threads. Significant sections in Q3 & 4, and all of the clouds in Q4 are composed of equivalent threads. The Q4 clouds also look different under certain lighting conditions to the Q3 clouds as the conversion thread equivalents were substantially different from supplied threads; I had to colour match as best I could & unpick that whole section 3 times as I worked through thread equivalent options.

Needless to say I sent the production company of the Dimensions Gold cross stitch kits a complaint as this is the worst quality kit from this line I have ever done in my 30 years of stitching.

Embroidery Challenge - November ‘22

This little book cover was inspired by a friend who asked me to design a panel for her featuring Australian native plants. The Waratah on the front cover was inspired by one embroidered on my sewing group’s banner. I chose red blooms in honour of my sewing group’s 40th (Ruby) anniversary. Each of the plants featured - Waratah, wattle, kangaroo paw, bottlebrush and grevillea - can be found on my property. There is, of course, a bee!

My first attempt at creating a thumbnail image for my amateur YouTube channel.

I feel like I executed my vision and I had some fun learning new Procreate skills.

The video is less than 5 minutes and contains copious photobombing by my cats. Check it out if watching me time lapse create an embroidery sampler from beginning to end sounds interesting and you’d like to give this artist a little moral support boost.

I will continue stitching colour wheels until I am stopped. Blackwork embroidery on 14-count Aida.

This one uses just seven thread colours (six for the fills, plus white for outlines). Each section has a 3-part gradient on a bit of a curve, which was a bit different to design, but no harder to stitch than my earlier 2-part gradients.

Pattern here.

SAMPLER

Little embroideries of little things.

Harriet Charlesworth 1822 sampler and it’s story

“Stitching is a way to quiet the mind, to relax the body, feed the soul and bring your imagination to life!” 🪡💭☔️

I really liked french knots! Is that weird? I thought they were, like, the evil embroidery stitch. Maybe it's because I only had to do three.

I can't work out what "loop stitch" is supposed to be. When I googled it, nothing seemed like it would go on the little dashes printed on the pattern. Any ideas, craftblr?

The last photos I took of the Space Sampler were seven years ago... a lot has happened since 2016, but my first pattern still holds a special place in my heart :)

[space sampler tag here] [pattern here]

Sampler, 1800, Spain.

Some progress on the blackwork. This is looking so good and I only have a few squares left to do.