Heathwitch’s Stitchcraft

My Best Friend’s Bra…

Some of you will remember that I blogged back in March about a piece I’d finished, that I couldn’t talk about — the infamous electric-blue-thread-on-black-evenweave piece. Well, said piece came back from the framers at the start of March — which meant I was then able to present it to my best friend and heart-sister, Jo. :-)

Jo has been one of my rocks for many years, and while she was organising my hen party (held on April 4th) I was busy stitching her a whimsical but heartfelt little chart, courtesy of Sue Hillis Designs. Andrew suggested stitching it on black evenweave to give it some more “oomph” and, having never stitched on the stuff before, I thought it would be an interesting learning experience.

And y’know what? Black evenweave — in this case 28ct Jobelan black — isn’t that bad. Once you get used to the way the light catches it, and the interplay of the shadows on the fabric, it’s remarkably easy to work. The downside comes when you pause in your stitching to pick up a piece on a paler fabric, and then return to the black later — that’s when your eyes protest.

Oh, and your eyes also protest when you think, “Hmmm, some electric blue thread would work wonders on this..!” and proceed to use said electric blue thread — DMC’s Light Effects E3843, to be precise. That’s what the slogan is stitched in. I also changed the colour of the heart on this — opting for some DMC Colour Variations again, shade 4180, rather than three different shades of pink. I think it worked out quite nicely:

The backstitch on this piece took the most work — it alone doubled the stitching time! In the end, it was completed after 11 hours’ stitching, but it was so worth it. Then it went to the framers’ for around three weeks to be laced, matted and framed. Here it is fully finished and framed:

As for Jo, well — she loved it! I had great delight in presenting it to her during my hen party — right after returning from the Italian restaurant but before the complementary and beauty therapists pampered all us girls. :-)

Note to Self…

… Black evenweave plus Light Effects thread means sore eyes. Very sore eyes.

What was I thinking?!

Bloom

The other finish of the weekend (started on Saturday night and finished on Sunday morning) was another Lizzie*Kate design (are you sensing a theme here, yet?) — one the freebies, “Bloom”.

This time, for a change from stitching on evenweave, I worked this piece on 16ct aida, in a lovely celadon colour. While I did use some of the thread colours as suggested by the chart, I did some other substitution — like adding DMC Colour Variations 4110 for the border, and experimenting with DMC’s Light Effects thread (colour E316) for the text.

Excusing the wonkiness of the scan — I couldn’t get it straight for some reason — here’s how it came out, after 6 hours of stitching:

While I liked working with the Light Effects, and think it came out pretty well, I do have one thing to say about it. Thread Heaven. Seriously. I would not have coped with the metallic thread without it — I had a lot less tangles and problems when I remembered to use used Thread Heaven. :-)

…And for those who’ve wondered what the back of my work looks like, here you go. As you can tell, I like to keep things as tidy as possible:

I’ve since started another Lizzie*Kate chart, and hopefully should have a scan of it as a WIP soon. Other than that, a package of some black 28ct evenweave arrived, so that’s another project to start… ;-)

Wear a Smile

I finished Lizzie*Kate’s “Wear a Smile” on Saturday — it turned out to be a smooth 8-hour piece, and that’s on 28ct evenweave (so it’ll probably be finished in shorter time if stitched on aida). Here’s how it looks now:

I replaced all the colours on this piece, too — not by much, just opting for a different shade of red and green (for instance, in terms of the red, choosing DMC 3685 instead of 3777), and also choosing a blue-based Colour Vatiations thread (DMC 4240) instead of a plain blue.

Some folks over on my personal journal have said — after seeing the WIPs of this recently — that they couldn’t make out the variations of hue in this thread from the scans, so hopefully a close-up of the “m” in “Smile” will help…

… But that wasn’t the only piece I finished this weekend, oh no… ;-)

SBQ: Thread Clippings

I’m an avid reader of Stitching Blogger’s Questions, but I think this is the first time I’ve answered one. This week, the question is:

What do you do to your thread clippings? Do you just scrap them or do you use them in something else?

Well, for me it depends on the length of the clipping. If it’s shorter than is usable — i.e. I can get less than three stitches out of it — then I bin it. If it’s longer than that, I wind it around the original thread so that I know what colour it is (i.e. a short piece of DMC 666 ["Christmas Red", to you non-stitchers out there] will get wrapped around the remainder of the thread skein) and store it until I come to use it. I tend to do this with every colour possible, except DMC 310 (black), which I always keep no matter the length — black is always, always useful. :-)