White Threads » Elegant Hardanger Embroidery

BATB: stitchers village fair

yvette — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:45:50 +0000

As you’ve read through my class details for Beating Around the Bush over the last few days, if you were paying close attention to the dates, you may have noticed I will not be teaching on Wednesday 18th April. This is because there will be a Stitchers Village Fair on that day.

I will have a stall at the fair selling my books, and will of course be available to autograph copies of them. I will also have examples of embroideries from my books on display for you to see in person.

At the last BATB, it was a fun day, where I met many lovely stitchers, and was reacquainted with some after meeting them at classes from earlier times. There was an Inspirations magazine launch that day, and I spoke about an article that I had written for the magazine.

Apparently this time there will be book launches and exhibitions as well as needlework vendors like me being there to sell our wares.

The day is free for conference registrants, and there will be a nominal cover charge for the general public.

I look forward to meeting you there!

Make me smile

yvette — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:14:33 +0000

I heard from the wonderful Barb Suess yesterday that she’d recently been teaching at an EGA seminar and my stitch dictionaries The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion and The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion were disappearing very quickly from Ruth Kern Books. (I don’t think she meant that they were being shoplifted, either…)

This is music to my ears.

If you like my books, the nicest thing you can do to encourage me is let other people know how much you like them and why. Putting a review on Amazon, the Nordic Needle website, or submitting one to your favourite needlework shop’s website is something that would make me forever grateful. Putting one on your blog would make me smile all day. If you’re a member of a guild, submitting a review for your newsletter would make me very happy too.

See how easy it is to make me happy? Thanks in anticipation!

New book reviews

yvette — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:06:29 +0000

Time for a round up of new reviews of my books today. From Amazon US, we have…
Review by Claire Nardone on The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion:

I’ve been doing needlework of all types for more than 40 years and this is the best all around handbook I’ve ever seen. Details are wonderful and it even has a diagram for a lefty.

Review by M. LeMay, on The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion:

Great book to have in a how to library–I’ve had to adapt right handed embroidery instructions over the years to left handed, or embroider right handed–finally a book that shows me. awesome!

From Amazon UK…
Review by Dekka, on The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion:

A gift for my left-handed wife – a 60ish grandmother. She loves it – has been taught (sometimes unsuccessfully) by right-handed people to embroider and knit…..strongly recommended for all ages.

Extract from a review by Brigitte Picart, on Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery:

I was fascinated by drawn thread embroidery and the geometry in Ukrainian style. This book provides a step by step tutorial with both a clear drawing AND a clear photo of every step in the process so you can’t fail.

From Nordic Needle…
Extract from a review by Joy Lodge on Elegant Hardanger Embroidery:

An excellent book for everyone wanting to learn Hardanger. Also has tips to help the more expert …the projects are lovely, filling half of the 62 page book. I’m preparing to start two of them which is an indication of value of owning the book. There are some helpful sections when you have made mistakes with cutting and information about caring for your finished work, often not included with the instructions for the stitching.

Couldn’t find any new reviews of Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature, so if you want to write one somewhere public, I’ll be happy to feature it here! In fact I’d be happy to feature reviews of any of my books here! Why not tell us why you love them?

hardanger: flavour of the month (or week!)

yvette — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:38:56 +0000

In the past week I have had not one, but three very nice reviews of my book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery sent to me. It has been lovely reading people’s comments about why they love the book so much.

I wrote it 10 years ago now, which seems pretty mindboggling, actually. (I’ve been writing books for 10 years now! Me, who didn’t even like the subject of English at school!) But to continue to have people saying very nice things about it 10 years on is quite lovely and very encouraging.

Amongst the things people have said this week about Elegant Hardanger Embroidery:

Your writing style and illustrations finally made everything come into focus and showed me that I don’t have to feel like I am all thumbs when I am doing hardanger. This book will be my constant companion for at least the next two project and treasured reference thereafter.

I also am very appreciative of the way you pointed out the path to common mistakes without talking down to the reader. I tend to be one of those stitchers who makes the mistakes without the skills to get out of the mistakes because almost all my instruction comes from the written word and diagrams. Thank-you again for giving me tools to increase my confidence.

I am really impressed with it. I knew there must be more to Hardanger than the simple Kloster blocks you see demonstrated on the web. I feel quite confident now to try a project, and I’m hoping I won’t need to refer back to your section on fixing mistakes!

Thank you to each of you who has sent me these encouraging words. Each time it happened, it made my day!

If you don’t have your own copy of Elegant Hardanger Embroidery, perhaps you should! To try before you buy, you can see an online turn the page preview at Scribd. You can purchase it from your local needlework store (and if they don’t have it, ask them to get it for you!) or otherwise online from me at Vetty Creations.

From yesterday, thank you to all who have made suggestions of items for embroidery. I’ve loved reading them all, and it has been quite thought provoking. Please keep the suggestions coming!

Teach yourself Hardanger embroidery

yvette — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:01:55 +0000

Thank you to all those who have commented on my idea for a beginners Hardanger booklet. It has been interesting reading why you think it would be helpful to you – such as that you’d like to use a booklet like that while travelling. This makes me think that you’d like it in a smallish size, so that it can be easily popped into a travel bag. And the fact that many of you *can’t* get to classes due to work commitments or geographical location is also a good reason for a booklet like the one I am planning.

Well, I will get on with it, and continue adding more info to make it as complete and thorough as I possibly can.

If you’d still like to add your comments and ideas, I’d be very interested to hear them. As you know, I love feedback like this, and usually incorporate all that I can into the relevant project. When working on The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion I was thrilled to have so many wonderful suggestions from all around the world, and where possible, I included what I could, definitely making it a better book.

Of course, for those who can’t wait, you can also purchase my book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery, which has already taught thousands of people how to do Hardanger embroidery.

books and inspiration

yvette — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:23:42 +0000

I was talking with the ladies in my beginner’s Hardanger class yesterday about my “depressing” list of books that I have to find time to write. (Its only depressing because it will take me 7-14 years to get through them all!) They wanted to know if any of them were Hardanger. I think there was one or two that were.

I told them how I had actually started writing one on Hardanger with sheer fabric overlays and then put it aside when I got CFS. As owners of my existing Hardanger book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery, they were familiar with the sheer fabric project in that book already, and loved the idea of a whole book about it.

I said that I had not really got back to the book as I wondered whether no-one other than me would be stupid enough to try such a difficult technique – it is hard to see through the overlay fabric to the evenweave underneath, making it quite a painstaking thing to do, though extremely lovely in appearance.

We moved on in the conversation, but later, one of the ladies brought me back to what I had said about others not wanting to do it. She said that while she might never be accomplished enough to do it herself, to her it would be a the type of thing that she would find inspiring to look at, even if she was never able to do it. She encouraged me that others need something to aspire to, even if to them it feels like “the impossible dream”.

She said that without something like that, that seems way beyond one’s own abilities, you never have something to reach for and to try harder for.

I thanked her for her ideas. It was really interesting to hear her thoughts.

It reminds me of a lovely lady who was browsing my stand at the craft show. We’d had a bit of a conversation and off she went. A second later she was back to say that she really wanted to say thank you to me for all the pleasure and enjoyment that I had given so many people with my books. I was completely touched by her words, and that she’d actually shared them with me. Being thankful is one thing, but these days I find that actually expressing that thanks is much rarer.

So, do you enjoy books as much for the inspiration they provide as for the things you can learn from them?

Popular at the Vetty Creations stand

yvette — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:42:05 +0000

So, what was popular at the Vetty Creations stand at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show last week? I’ve already mentioned how “hot” Mountmellick embroidery was, with so many people stopping to admire the display and ask what type of embroidery it was. A common refrain was, “is that candlewicking?”

Mountmellick embroidery wildflower cushion kit

The most popular sellers were definitely The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion (what a surprise, seeing there’s nothing else like it!), and Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature. Of the kits, the most popular were the Mountmellick Lily Runner and the Mountmellick Wildflowers Cushion.

I also had people wanting to learn Hardanger as absolute beginners. This is so exciting! Hardanger is seen by some as being very difficult, and slightly scary when you think of the cutting of the fabric threads. But with good instructions, anyone who can count and has good eyesight and/or lighting, should be able to enjoy the delights of Hardanger.

If you’ve never given Hardanger embroidery a go, and would like to, we have a number of patterns (with step-by-step instructions) suitable for beginners, such as the Sapphire Hardanger bookmark, and the Margaret Hardanger Hand Towel. Of course, there is also our book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery which is filled with step-by-step stitch instructions, and also a good number of projects on which to try out your skills.

One of the great things about having a stand at craft shows is finding out what people are looking for, and what really catches their eye.

Elegant Hardanger Embroidery online preview

yvette — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:14:55 +0000

Here’s the next online book preview: Elegant Hardanger Embroidery.

This time we have a preview of the cover, the inside front cover showing some of the projects, the contents, the first few pages of information, part of a project, the index, the inside back cover showing the remainder of the projects, and the back cover.

PREVIEW Elegant Hardanger Embroidery by Yvette Stanton

Please note that all content in this preview is just as copyrighted as the actual book, so it cannot be reproduced.

Needlework shop and bookshop owners: You are welcome to go to Scribd by clicking on the link at the top left of the preview, and getting a copy to embed in your website or blog, as a promotional tool. If you can make no sense of it all, email me for information on how to do it!

Elegant Hardanger Embroidery review

yvette — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:11:07 +0000

Yesterday I accidentally found another review of one of my books: this time “Elegant Hardanger Embroidery”. (This is fun! I should accidentally discover these things more often!)

On the Nordic Needle website, Carol P of Hopkins, MN has written the following review entitled “A new Bible!”:

This is the book I now recommend be in every Hardanger stitcher’s library, from the beginner to the advanced stitcher. With very clear instructions, diagrams and photos, it clearly and thoroughly describes each aspect of Hardanger embroidery. Plus the projects included are beautiful.

Well, thank you Carol P! Thank you very much!

You can purchase Elegant Hardanger Embroidery at Nordic Needle, using the link above, or direct from me at Vetty Creations.

I’d love to hear what your reviews of my books are. If you write a review of any of my books on any website or blog (and I certainly encourage you to!) please let me know!

And I never mind hearing directly from you, via email or in the blog comments, about your thoughts on my books.

Book reviews

yvette — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:00:01 +0000

I love receiving emails from people who say nice things about my books. Who wouldn’t?! They usually make my day!

I have a favour to ask. If you love my books – any of them: Elegant Hardanger Embroidery; Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature; Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery: Merezhka Poltavska; or The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion: a step-by-step stitch dictionary – then I’d be forever grateful if you would hop onto your favourite Amazon site, blog, stitching forum, or anywhere else that seems appropriate, and tell the world how much you love my book, and why. You can say a little or a lot. Please be sure to mention my name and the book’s title.

This will help others to find the books, and let others share the joy!

A thousand thank yous!