Welcome readers from the Kreinik Threads Blog!

Thank you for following the link on the Kreinik Threads blog to come and visit me here.  I hope you enjoyed the brief review of the wedding dress panel project that the lovely people over at Kreinik kindly took an interest in, and that you'll find more to stimulate your imagination here today. ☺

As you new visitors are fans of metallic threads and what they can do, here are a few of the projects I've completed over the past decade or so which feature lots of sparkle - often courtesy of good ol' Kreinik.

This first one, a couched dragonfly design was done in the same threads as the wedding dress panel - Kreinik Japan #1, #5 and #7 - only in gold this time.  The blue and black ones are Anchor Marlitt, which is a very shiny, rayon thread and features in this next project too in two pretty purple shades.  The inner silver outlines and gridlines are various Kreinik braids and are couched with their Cord in silver.  The outer, thick thread is a silver goldwork twist thread, and the French knots in the middle are two of DMC's Light Effects range.

Here's something a little more unusual and unexpected - metallics in hardanger!  The centre eyelet and the square filling stitch are in a fine, gold metallic, very probably Kreinik Cord in 002C.  The red hearts were worked in one of Anchor's pearl metallic mixes - basically a red #5 pearl cotton with a red metallic filament mixed in.

This was for a Chinese couple's wedding day as red is their colour of joy and celebration. ♥

The dragonfly and waterlily piece uses a variety of metallic thread brands and types including Kreinik Japan #5 in gold, and #7 (or maybe both #7...) in silver, Coats Reflecta in pink and silver, a Kreinik thread in turquoise, and bright check purl chipping in the centre.  I can't remember what the dragonfly was made out of as it was something I worked back in 2009.

These fish fins and tail are worked in the beautifully fine gauged Kreinik Cord and there's a thicker braid outlining the body - probably Very Fine Braid in 001C or Cable in 001 or similar.  This one is from 2008 too and also includes shiny Anchor Marlitt and some of their cotton threads.

Lastly is a piece I worked just over a year ago and it's some outline lettering in Kreinik Fine Braid 102C, couched with Cord in 102.

I think I've remembered all those details correctly, but you get an idea of how they can be used in all sorts of embroidery styles.

I've been doing some form of embroidery for the last 15 years, progressing from cross stitch through hardanger and various freestyle techniques to raised work.  I love metallic threads and use them wherever I reasonably can.

You'll be able to find lots more projects with and without sparklies of some sort by clicking on some of the subjects under the heading photo and feel free to subscribe to my blog via the e-mail service or any other way that works for you. I'm dealing with some health problems and a variety of other types of chaos (including the fact that I rather need a new laptop and camera) these days, so updates are a little less frequent than I'd like them to be.  However, stick around, I'll be back!

In the meantime, if you'd like to read the full series of seven posts about the wedding dress project, click here. NB. They'll show in reverse order.

If you didn't arrive here from the Kreinik interview article and don't know what I mean, why not make their blog your next stop today? ☺

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017