While this is not the lampshade embroidery, it’s another one I damp stretched yesterday.
I’ve realised over the past few weeks that I am absolutely terrible at estimating how much time something is going to take me to do. Otherwise I would have finished my book months and months ago, and you’d already have it in your hands. Oh well, it’s good to have moments of self-realisation. 🙂
Today my plans went awry, but not because I underestimated the amount of time it was going to take me. They just… went… awry.
This morning as I lay awake in bed before getting up, I planned how I was going to construct my Hardanger lampshade. I’ve been putting it off for months, because I hadn’t been able to figure out how I was going to do it. However, in bed this morning, I came to a good plan, which made sense and I thought should work fine. I was excited to finally have figured it out, and in a way that would be easy to do and explain how to do.
Yesterday afternoon I damp stretched the embroidery for the lampshade, and it dried overnight. This morning I unpinned it and thought I’d give it a quick iron, just to flatten out any fluffiness of the linen surface.
And the iron blurted on it. Small brownish blurts of liquid. The only way they were going to go was to wash the whole thing out and damp stretch it again.
Being a day with lovely warm weather, I figured that as I was washing it at about 8am, it should be dry by about 10:30. So I washed it, spun it, lightly ironed it to get major creases out (leaving it still damp though), damp stretched it, and put it out in the sun to dry.
By about 10:30 it was dry again, so I unpinned it again, and did not iron it this time!
I laid it out on the table, then laid the lampshade frame on it, and rolled it along to see how much extra embroidery there would be to go into my hem. Ah… none… The embroidery was too short. Obviously I decided at some point (probably earlier in the year when I was weaning myself off sugar, and was plunged into brain fog for some weeks) that it was long enough, but did not properly check it.
Idiot.
So I spent the next few hours adding more of the Hardanger pattern to extend the embroidery. Fortunately there was ample material at the ends to do this. When I thought I’d done enough, I rolled the lampshade frame across it to check the length again. Finally, enough!
I washed it, spun it, lightly ironed it to get major creases out (leaving it still damp though), damp stretched it, and left it to dry. It’s now drying. Again.
I haven’t yet gotten to putting it onto the lampshade. Another day. 🙂
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
I’m growling in sympathy – that must have been exasperating!
Thankfully I was able to laugh my way through it. Two days of it in a row might be exasperating though!
Oh how easy it is to do that, Yvette. I know that painful moment of total frustration. (And aren’t you glad that it was fixable and that you left enough space at the edges to cope!) My old Dad used to say ‘measure twice, cut once’ – it’s good advice. Although I am very good only measuring once, or making a flying guess and hoping for the best – which lead to that same sense of frustration when the thing is just too short or big or whatever. As for the book, we must be good at being patient or we wouldn’t enjoy this sort of stitchery – we’ll wait until you are happy that it is ready, however long that takes. (The piece pinned out in the photo looks smashing.) Oh, and I’m going to steal your sensible idea and get one of those children’s jigsaw mats for pinning things out.
Oh no! How frustrating! I had this happen to me (the iron) and ended up getting a new one as I couldn’t get it clean. What did you use to flush it out?
These events make great stories later!
Sue, if you get one of the mat sets, just check that all the colours are colourfast. I once had a little bit of bleed from an orange mat onto the back of one of my embroideries. It did wash out, and it was only on the back, but it did scare me a bit.
Thankfully the iron can easily be flushed by pressing the shot of steam button. That shoots steam out through the holes and clears any residue out.
How frustrating! These things happen though and it all worked out in the end.
Love you idea for pinning your work out; I’ll have to get some for myself. (Will check they are colourfast.)