Cottage garden delights

Yesterday I spent my demonstrating sessions at the show working on a Hardanger embroidery. I had bought some Cottage Garden Threads the day before, and was eager to try them out. I was a bit disappointed that the perle threads don’t come in perle 5, so I bought stranded cotton instead. Who says you can’t use stranded floss for Hardanger? I certainly don’t!

The colour I was using was Raisin, a gorgeous mix of reds, oranges and purples. Not a colour scheme I would normally try, but it just looked so yummy that I couldn’t resist! I took a selection of like coloured skeins with me from home to use in conjunction with the Raisin Cottage Garden Thread.

It turned out that I really needed a better purple than the ones I had in my stash. So on my way home last night I stopped off at a local craft shop to get one that was more suitable. It wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.

When we had our discussion of red thread last week, Elmsley Rose pointed out to me that the purples in the DMC range are a bit lacking. Last night, I realised that what she said was very true! There really wasn’t much to choose from in a rich, dirty, warm purpley aubergine colour. In the end I chose two skeins and hoped that one would assert itself over the other when put next to the rest of the stitching. (It did.)

I’m going to be a real tease and not show you the embroidery, because its probably going into a magazine, and therefore they need it to have not been “seen” before.

So instead, I’ll show you my selection of colours, some of which I used, and others I did not.

'Raisin' Cottage Garden Thread on the left, with DMC skeins to go with it on the right.

To report on the Cottage Garden Thread, I found it lovely to work with. The colour gradations change VERY often. I’m not sure if I was imagining it, or if it was actually true, but they seem to change colours more often than other variegated threads. In some instances, this would be a good thing, and in others, it might not. However, it worked fine for me and my satin stitch kloster blocks on my Hardanger. I particularly loved the colour of the “Raisin” I was using. I’ll definitely be using their threads again.

For a great run down on yesterday at the show (with photos!), you can also read Janie’s blog.