Threadfest Part 4 - Ribbons, Accessories and B/Ws

Here's the fourth and final part of the 'Threadfest' series. This time we're looking at embroidery ribbons, black and whites and the accessories part of my workbox.

First we take a look at my ribbon collection. It's a fairly varied assortment as, as I mentioned in my last post, ribbons can get expensive, esp. if you want to build a versatile collection. I've really just picked things up here and there. The YLI silk packs you can see at the top were either sent to me in an exchange game (that's the 3 green packs) or bought when Hobbycraft were selling them off cut price (the reds and pinks). I've used only a little of the over-dyed green. The other greens are a bit vibrant to be much use, to be honest.


The bobbins of ribbon on the left hand side, labelled 'Petals' I bought in Taiwan on our 2008 trip over there. They were a pretty decent price, so I got a fair few, but regret not getting a more fully balanced colour range. They're a semi-sheer ribbon, so like organza, but with a good depth of colour. The other packs and 'cards' you can see came mostly from stitching shows. I haven't got to use many of these yet - hardly any in fact, but they are lovely.....

This is the top right hand section of my cantilever workbox and it contains my blacks and white in many types of thread. The stranded cotton and coton a broder B/Ws are in the relevant packs as shown in the first part of this series, but most of the rest are here: pearl cottons (3 thicknesses of white at any rate), Pipers silks and Marlitt rayons.

Along with those, in the lower part of the photo, you can see a reel of 'invisible' thread (sort of a see-through plastic stuff that comes in 'black' and 'white') and four reels of DMC metallics. The top left silver one actually contains real silver! I'm a total pushover where metallics are concerned and I own more shades and types of gold thread than I'm sure can be good for one!

I hope, over the next week or so, to get the Kreiniks out of the workbox and photograph them too.=) Some are out 'on location' in the materials bag for the goldwork viola (see 'Forthcoming' Page), so I need to be careful not to mix them back in and lose the stuff I need!

Last of all the photos is the top left hand side of the workbox where I keep all my needles, scissors and various other bits and pieces. Normally, they're all squashed into the same size of area as you can see the black and white threads occupuying, but I've spread them out a little for this exercise.

On the left you can see a plethora of needles, most of which are DMC branded. There are varying sizes of tapestry, embroidery, chenille, millinery and beading needles here, as well as a pack of general sewing needles. The ones that are in current and regular use tend to be kept in my needlecase, (see 'Early Pieces' Page), but the back-up collection and things I don't need constantly are kept in here.

On the right hand side you can see some of my scissors, including the specialist petit point/hardanger pair (brown cover, 'silver' handles) and goldwork ones (grey cover, 'gold' handles). In here are also things like dressmakers' pencils, a tub of Thread Heaven (which I don't use much, it was included in an exchange parcel), and several specialist tools such as a hedebo stick, stiletto, stuffing tool and three half cone stickes. There are also a pair of snips, a thimble and two short rulers - one 6" regular one and one pink, folded type one. There appears to be some stumpwork wire in here too, so that needs re-housing!! Actually, I could use a better place for things like that, as I have some cotton moulds that I want somewhere better to keep etc. Maybe a Really Useful Box will do.

I didn't take photos of my beads and charms as quite a number of bead packs are out of the box waiting to be used in the forthcoming stumpwork and counted pieces, so that'll have to come sometime later.

I've finally finished messing around with the layout, colours, pages and photos on my blog. Those of you who haven't visited directly for some time may notice some changes. There are a total of seven new 'Pages' and the header photos have been changed in part. The sidebar gallery has also been downsized as I didn't want the same photos to appear in more than one place more than could be helped. So, anything that's been put on one of the new 'Page' displays no longer appears in the sidebar gallery or is featured in the header photos. I've also made the link colour stand out better from the regular text and de-pinked some of the purple shades which were looking too red for my liking at the mo.