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getting started with Portuguese Whitework

I have just finished adding the Portuguese Whitework supplies to the Vetty Creations site. You can now get all you need to explore Portuguese Whitework, in one place!

If you’re wanting to get started, I suggest you’ll need the following:

A copy of Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães A fat eighth of Graziano [...]

Thread a needle easily using a piece of paper

I recently shared this tip with one of my classes, and it was new information to many of them. While I have shared it previously on my blog, it seemed a good idea to share it again.

Sometimes you just can’t seem to get that thread through the eye of the needle, and you don’t [...]

spongy mats for damp stretching

Just in case you haven’t been reading the comments from Friday’s post, I’m making this into a post of its own, because it contains Really Useful Information.

After showing you my damp stretching set up on Friday, Kathryn asked for a better description of “spongy mats” – a great question!

I have heard of people [...]

damp stretching setup

I finally finished all the hemming yesterday.

I’ve now got the tablecloth soaking in a bucket so that I can carefully go around the whole thing and remove the wash out pencil marks. I’ve found that unfortunately, due to the density of the bullion stitches, the wash out pencil marks don’t simply disappear in [...]

Mountmellick: knitting with four strands

This is a technique that was discovered by one of my students up at Maitland recently.

For the traditional Mountmellick embroidery knitted fringe, we generally use four balls of knitting cotton together to provide a very full fringe. Rather than dividing a single ball into four, the student wondered if she could use two [...]

arthritis and embroidery hoops

Yesterday I had an enquiry about the wonderful embroidery hoops with stands that I sell:

I wanted to ask whether the 8 inch is the one you find best to use. I looked up White threads again, and saw that you said you can order in other sizes. I have inflammatory arthritis in a number [...]

playing with stitches

When you try out a new stitch, what do you do? When I try out a new stitch, I try to play with it as much as possible. In my playing with unusual stitches class in Maitland last week, my aim for the students was to get them to try some new stitches, and then [...]

trying something blue

When I was studying at uni, for some reason it was requested/suggested that I have amongst my supplies a blue lead mechanical pencil. By mechanical pencil I mean those ones that you click and the lead pushes up through the middle. Because the lead is fine, you don’t get thick, heavy lines, and nor do [...]

something all embroidery teachers need

Yesterday I received an order of The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion from a lovely lady who told me about the circumstances that resulted in her purchasing the book:

Last year I attended a course at [a patchwork shop], to do with hand-appliquéing designs. There were 3 left-handers out of 12 participants, and one had your book [...]

Testing for colourfastness

Yesterday I was considering doing some embroidery in red thread. It was Presencia brand perle, which I have not used before. So before I even put it anywhere near the white fabric I was going to use, I wanted to test its colourfastness (or “colorfastness” for those who prefer to spell it that way!)

I [...]