COMPLETE change of mind!

Friends of our are celebrating their golden wedding on Friday and, well, you just can't get that go by without a card, right? I thought I'd use Mary Corbet's charming tudor style rose and work it up in yellows and outline in gold. Here's the pattern traced and the threads selected:

And I was going to mount it in a nice, square, gold card blank. Was going to look stunning!

However, as soon as I'd got a few little bits of the darker yellow in, although the colour looked great, I simply wasn't working it well and wasn't really in the mood for that type of work..... So, out it came from the hoop, it got put away for later use (I still love the idea and my colourway for it, so I hope to come back to it some time later on), and I got out my pastel pencils and ribbon collection. This is the result:

A BIG change in direction, huh??!

Simple ribbon work flowers

Here's a small ribbon embroidery design that I did about 2 weeks ago (and have only just worked up the courage to edit and upload all the photos!). I took plenty of in-progress shots so that it could be a little bit of a tutorial. The design is one that is no longer in production, 'Garden Gate' by the UK company Crafty Ribbons. I bought it in an end of line sale about 4 years ago, but they do have some nice ribbon embroidery kits still on offer. Nice designs and good instructions.

First we have the gate design itself worked in plain old backstitch and the spiders web inserted using straight stitches of varying lengths.

Here you can see how to 'thread up' the ribbon. Using a normal embroidery needle and a co-ordinating colour thread, go in and out of the ribbon alternating edges. The thread should already be coming through the fabric at this point really.

Gather up the ribbon into a little flower....

...and secure with another stitch just next to the flower, making sure the stitch is hidden underneath and that any scrappy ends of ribbon are taken to the underside as well.

Moving on to the leaves and this time you thread the ribbon through a chenille needle (about size 20 should be OK, depending on the width of the ribbon). When you make the gathered flowers, you just need to cut enough ribbon for each bloom. With the leaves, you can cut enough for several as the ribbon will go in and out a few times before getting tatty.

A simple straight stitch creates a nice looking leaf.

The add some more straight stitches, this time in stranded cotton or coton a broder to create the impression of grass and some French knot flower centres and this part is complete.

Moving onto some larger blooms to be created in ribbon stitch. Again, thread the chenille needle with enough ribbon for a few petals and come up through the fabric. Go back down, not beyond the ribbon, but through it to create the folded back look....

...that you can see here.

Add in a few more to create full flowers, some straight stitch leaves and also French knots using white ribbon as a flower centre and that completes this side.

Here's the full thing shown slightly at an angle so you can enjoy the three dimensional aspect to good effect. This piece was then mounted into a card.

Hope that's been of interest to some of you. I'm no ribbon work expert, but a number of folk do come here after searching for 'ribbon embroidery', so I thought a picture post would go down well.=)

I haven't been doing much stitching of late thanks to yet more bugs and nasties (I've come to conclusion I'm a germ goddess and the dratted things love me and want to nestle close....), and I'd like to get some mending and altering done soon, if possible, so as to clear the decks (literally!!) for more interesting things later on.

© Elizabeth Braun 2011

Yippa-doooo!

YAY! The water violets and fish are finally done and finished up into a nice scatter cushion:

I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see the end of this one, but I suppose it might help if I were get on with stuff faster....

The piping (which was the main reason I put doing this one off) is made from the ribbon that came on a box of chocolates, folded in half and 'trapped' between the front and back layers of fabric!!

© Elizabeth Braun 2011

Six Years of Blogging!

So, according to the counter thingy at the bottom of my blog, this is my 'blog-o-versary', the day that marks 6 years since I started to blog. For the first couple of years, I used to changed the layout/template and/or colours of the blog, but I don't feel the need to just now. I just do it when I get sick of the current scheme and ready for a fresh look these days!! My very first post got deleted when I trimmed out all the irrelevant and/or personal stuff from my blog about 18 months ago, so that can no longer be seen.

I also have nothing to show needlework-wise, unless you count the sewing prep on the ironing board, which will be the completed water violets cushion sometime over the next couple of days.

So, how to mark this event? It is, of course, unnecessary to do anything of the sort, but I may as well say something and it may as well be a piece of news which could affect my stitching blog content in the months to come.

We visited what probably passes as my LNS last week and the chap there, whose been in the business quite some time, knows the territory and whose shop has won multiple awards, told me that he likes to get new designers started. He showed me the latest newbie's kits and offered to give constructive feedback on anything I might like to design - given that the embroidery kit selection is somewhat limited, esp. when it comes to surface embroidery and stumpwork - and help out by selling it for me. So, I've got a list of ideas down already and DH is keen to help out with the business side and has even fairly promised to put kits together (following in the footsteps of Mr Jane Nicholas!!).

I need to get one or two WIPs out of the way first, but then I hope to get down to some serious designing and sample stitching. They won't be large projects, but I hope they will attract buyers in time. I hope to get something on the market for the Christmas present buying season, but I'm not committing to anything just yet.

Wait and see!

Chinese Wedding Card

Just a quick post today to show a card I made over the weekend for a Chinese couple I was asked to stand witness for at their legal wedding ceremony yesterday, (if you can follow that!!) Red is the Chinese colour for celebrations and they often trim that red up with gold, so I mixed that colour scheme with our traditional white for weddings and did a quick hardanger piece.


DH typed up and printed out a nice something in Chinese which he stuck on the inside as a flysheet sort of arrangement too so, for an impromptu piece, we were quite proud of it.=)

Here is the final card mounting of the heart I did recently as well. This was for a silver wedding anniversary, but I found that I didn't actually have a silver '25' sticker, so just left the front plain. I think the stitchery is fancy enough anyway.


Next thing I hope to do it to get the water violets and fish piece made up into the final cushion/pillow cover. No estimates on when yet except that it must be done by 7 July.

5 Smalls, 3 Styles

Here are all my other recent finishes, most of which were worked on whilst I was working in Leeds recently.

The first is a cross stitched bookmark made for an elderly friend of ours, Charlie. He was delighted with it when we gave it to him last night.=)


Next we have the two printed canvas needlepoint kits that my mum found a few months before we went to Taiwan (about two years ago now!) and that I recently finished off and 'repaired'. On looking at the top one again the other day, I realised that there are more repairs to make, i.e. when I decided, in my 11 year old wisdom, that it wouldn't matter if one or two stitches went \ when all the others were / as it filled in the shape better....




Here's a wedding card done well in advance of the big day on 20 August this year. Now like me to get things done in good time (Prince Albert would have approved: 'It's always better to complete a task well ahead of schedule.'), so I now have this to keep clean and safe (in its envelope) for the next 2 months and to think of a gift to make.


The last photo shows the circular card mount I chose to put the silver and purple heart in. I took pix of both this and in a square mount and, as soon as I could see them side by side in my photo package, there was no contest on which looked best. (I'll post a better photo when I've taken one.)


Next task is to get on with the blackberries and make up the two cushion/pillow covers etc, but I'm rather busy preparing for software and secretarial exams (plus going to classes and so on) just now, so I mayn't get on as quickly as I'd like... So what's new, huh?!

Anniversary gifts

Here are two other things that I've stitched recently. It's our 12th wedding anniversary tomorrow and, as we haven't any money to spare for regular gifts, I finally got around to making up the keyring I'd been planning for Sir for a couple of years. I bought the 'frame' two or three years ago!

This is the traced initials outline:


Then we have the filling in with directional satin stitch, which, as directional stitching is anything but my forté, I pulled out a few times during the whole process. I was getting annoyed with it....


Then I outlined it in Kreinik cord with stem stitch. Stem stitch is great when you're able to work from the outside in (as you should), but that's not easy when you have an inside curve to cope with! Especially if you need to change direction.


And here's the finished item:


I think it worked quite well, it's just a shame that the keyring itself got a bit scratched. If I ever buy another, I'll make sure it's as scratch free as I can. As Sir himself says, 'You live, you learn.'

Here's the anniversary card I made for him. It's from one of those Jeanette Crews 'One Nighter' chart leaflets, the 'Tropical Birds' one. Cute, or what?


I hadn't made a small cross stitch item for ages and, I must say I really enjoyed it! There's more to show you soon too, as soon as one of the items is finished up. Look out on Monday, all being well.

A design's not final 'til the stitching's finished!

This was the design I initially created for friends' Silver Wedding (25th) anniversary card, to be worked in silver goldwork threads and Anchor Marlitt:


The changes started when I went to my LNS only to find that, although they stocked plenty of gold goldwork threads, their supply of silver was very low indeed. I wasn't able to get pearl purl and so had to adapt straight away to twist instead. I managed to get the silver kid leather, but when I tried to cut it out into the inner heart shape, the result was so creased and, frankly, cheap and nasty looking that I couldn't bear to use it. So, that bit got dumped too and I decided to move the trellis from over the purples, to filling the inner (now middle) heart. The tiny heart in the centre was to be filled with silver bright check purl.


However.... I noticed that the silver of the bright check was not as cool as the rest of the silver threads. In fact, it was relatively yellow. That bothered me, so I ditched that idea and decided to fill in the space with French knots in DMC metallic floss.


Above you can see the first stage of the purple shading completed and the second layer underway. The top right hand side ended up so un-even that, when I'd done the lot, I realised that, not only would I have to outline the inside of that section with Kreinik Fine Braid, but that I needed a line of it between the two purples as you can see below:


By this time I'd also decided that I wasn't going to fussing around adding in accents in pink Marlitt either!!

So, much changed from the original design, here is the finished item. It's a little puckered, sadly, but that came from my not getting the silk fabric totally flat on the backing cotton when I was sewing them together - a problem I've had before.=(


And here's a side view. Of course, it isn't possible from this angle for my camera to focus everything perfectly (so I had to cut the bottom section off!!), so the right hand side is a tad blurred, but I hope you like the effect all the same. All that remains now is to decide whether to mount it in a round or square aperture card.


So, although I haven't blogged my work for a fair few weeks, I have been stitching! This isn't all I've been doing either, there's more. I'll post about that in the days to come.

A bit more goldwork

Another rather disappointing photo, (I can't tell you how much better it looks in real life!), but here are the latest two (counting both f holes as one element) additions to the goldwork viola picture. -> I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly these sections went. Next up is the whole fingerboard and neck/scroll area in no.1 pearl purl. The smaller detail will be done in a pearl purl of smaller guage (but I don't know what it actually is), then the nuts will be done in Coats Ophir (like a very fine Jap) - like the f holes have been - and then filled in with bright check. Then I have to think of how to manage a convincing bridge and strings....

Considering that I have a number of time sensitive things to do over this summer, I have actually no idea why I'm concentrating on finishing the two that have no deadlines and are just for our home! I've two cards and, assuming I can find the keyring 'blank', a small monogram to go in it to do for various points in June, the violets/fish cushion and the blackberries pouch to have done by July and another gift for mid August. Hmmm! If anyone's seen my common sense roaming free anywhere, do send it back express!;)

I think I use too many brackets - just looking at my first paragraph! Recently I was reading a book review by someone I know and found it really hard to follow as they had far too many asides and big words in their sentences. Simple, plain, concise. That's the mark of a good teacher/writer. Got it, Lizzie? Good!

Kid it is!

The vote went for a kid leather chinrest on the goldwork viola and, as I agreed with that - even though kid is a beast to stitch through - here it is in a side view to show how raised it ended up (only one layer of padding):


Rotten photo, I'm afraid! My photography seems to be going through a bad patch just now.=) Anyway, there's a border of Kreinik Fine Braid in 102C around the kid. I also finally managed to get that little bit of copper border that had frayed re-done without it going nasty again.

I had hoped to get more done before posting again, but it's been a busy week. A week full of surprises too. The greatest surprise, beating the runner up by a small margin, was going into Sir's study on Friday lunchtime to find him on-line watching live coverage of the Royal Wedding on German TV!!=)

I've managed to get a bit more of the water under the narrowboat done and here it is, pretty much afloat. There's still more to do on that part, then a bridge and small tree etc to fill in on the left hand side. The main stitching must be about 70% done now. LONG gone are the days when I would get something like this finished within two or three weeks.=)


Thanks for the ideas on how to stretch and straighten the giraffe. I'll try that - when I get the necessary things. Might have to use a kitchen shopping board and wash out a cleaning fluid bottle thoroughly to use as a spray as I've nothing that will pass for a plant spray or cork tile at the mo. Will report back on that one once I've had a go at it.