Threadfest Part 2 - Silks and Rayons

Hurrah! I put a flower in on the Water Violets design today! That's the first time I've worked on it for about a month! I must be feeling good.=) I've also re-started my viola practice and have done about an hour of noise pollution creation throughout the day. Some was quite hard, but I can feel it coming back and getting a little bit easier as I keep on with it. There's hope yet, see?

I won't post photos of my current WIPs until the weekend (Sunday, most probably), but here's part two of the threadfest series.

I keep some of my silks (Pipers, as used by the illustrious Helen M Stevens) and the whole of the Anchor Marlitt rayon collections in my wooden workbox. I took this photo of them, then realised that it as much hid as showed them off - rather like the stranded cottons packaging from last time, but everyone knows what they look like, right?=)

So, I just took this one instead. Sorry about the flash bleaching out part of the pack of green silk cops, but the light wasn't good enough to take a semi-decent shot without flash. Should have taken them out of the packs, I suppose.

The Pipers colours you see here are the Project Palette I bought from Ms Stevens' website a few years ago. I have used them on two projects, DH's 10th anniversary card and the waterlily in Luke's Damselfly, part of our gift to an old friend on his wedding. Other than that, I haven't really touched them much. The rayons have had even less airtime, if I'm honest. They were used for the dragonfly and goldfish (one of my current blog header photos) on the Ornamental Pool I did for MIL's 20th wedding present, and I did start to use them for a City & Guilds peacock feather sample (which I never finished, but plan to at some point).

You might notice that there are no blacks, whites or greys here. That's 'cos I have a special section for those and that'll form part of another post.

I also have the complete collection of Madeira stranded silks, which I keep in one of the boxes in the blue workbox. I've pulled out two skeins at random to give an idea here. Putting these all out so all the shades could be seen was beyond my patience level!! If I had done that, well, I really ought to have used the time and energy for something more important!!!!=) You can see 8 skeins of regular Eterna-silks, getting steadily more scuffed over the years and crying out for a little bag of their own (note to self - see to this!) and two small bags of over-dyed Eterna-silk which were sent to me as part of an exchange parcel. I certainly got some great things through those games, I rather miss them. Most of my partners were American ladies who were charmed with any British items and didn't mind that I couldn't spend a mint on them, but they always seemed to send me a small fortune's worth of stuff. Still, I know many of the things cost about half the UK price....

I haven't used these much more than the above threads. They featured a little on Luke's Damselfly and are used more extensively on this card which features a couple of Helen M Stevens design elements. Anyone familiar with her work will recognise the style at once. However, these threads aren't totally neglected as they're out 'on location' for the Blackberry Stumpwork manicure pouch project. More on that one in the weeks to come.