For years I had a hard time embroidering and set it aside because it was confusing & frustrating to [...]]]> In the comments sections of Mary Corbet’s last two posts, one a review of my Portuguese Whitework book, and the other about left-handed Schwalm embroidery, there have been lots of lovely things said about my books.

For years I had a hard time embroidering and set it aside because it was confusing & frustrating to embroider right handed. I bought Yvette Stantons Left Handed Embroiderers Companion and fell in love again with embroidery. Now I don’t feel frustrated. Joy Smith

I own Yvette’s amazing book on Mountmellick. Her instructions are amazing as are her designs. I am working on adapting her amazing florals to a 16 x 16 inch cushion design right now. Her books really are lovely. Anastasia

Yvette Stanton’s leftie stitch dictionary goes everywhere with me when I’m stitching. Julia Wild

Yvette’s book looks great. As well as being beautifully presented this compilation about Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães as a traditional needlework style, with information on its origin and instructional details on stitch techniques, is an important preservation of history. As time passes more of the intended original expression and knowledge of early needleworkers, and other information about the art style is lost, then sadly, remaining historical examples are misidentified or just lumped as whitework. Yvette brought us back to Mountmellick embroidery and now another whitework treasure. Lots of work done with love. Well done. I love it too. Thanks! Louisa

Thank you for saying such lovely things about my books!

You’ll see in the comments [...]]]> I have a number of alerts set up that let me know whenever they find certain search terms appearing new across the internet. One of them is for Mountmellick embroidery. One turned up this morning, so I went to visit the blog that was talking about Mountmellick embroidery: Barefoot Shepherdess.

You’ll see in the comments section my thoughts on the style of embroidery that the Barefoot Shepherdess was taught as “Mountmellick embroidery”. I agree with her that it wasn’t quite Mountmellick! If you’re interested in learning more about what does make Mountmellick embroidery its own distinctive style, you can find more information at the Mountmellick page on my website, or in our book Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature.

Barefoot Shepherdess’s work (Mountmellick or not!) is very beautiful, and that’s why I have decided to link to her today. Its a lovely blog to explore, with some really attractive work that she’s made. Have fun with the inspiration she provides!

The Snow Queen's Garden "Eau de Parfum" - all Natasha's designs are one offs. And of course, they [...]]]> Last week when I was in Tasmania I wrote that I met Natasha of The Snow Queen’s Garden, and purchased one of her gorgeous handmade, hand-embroidered Russian babushka dolls. I promised pictures, so here they are!

The Snow Queen's Garden "Eau de Parfum" - all Natasha's designs are one offs. And of course, they are all copyright to her!

Even the back is embroidered!

I am so pleased to own one of The Snow Queen’s Garden’s beautiful handmade babushka dolls. I will treasure her!

I will have [...]]]> 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!

Alison isn’t normally an embroiderer as such, more [...]]]> When I was at the craft show back in June, I met a lovely lady called Alison. She was quite interested in Mountmellick embroidery and wanted to give it a go. Her project of choice was my “Blackberry Doily” from our book “Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature”.

Alison isn’t normally an embroiderer as such, more an embroidery beader. She’s been doing it for years, and her teacher is Karen Torrisi, who is a lovely girl I met a few years back when we shared an apartment as tutors at Beating Around the Bush.

Anyway, Alison embarked on the blackberry doily, but eventually decided she’d feel more comfortable reinterpreting my pattern into bead embroidery. On Sunday she sent me some photos of the finished work. It is magnificent!

Alison has allowed me to share the photos with you. The work is ALL beaded, except for the fringe, which is the traditional Mountmellick knitted fringe. I think you will agree that the work is simply stunning, and a lovely interpretation of a Mountmellick embroidery design. Congratulations Alison!

'Mountmellick Blackberry doily' interpreted into embroidery beading by Alison

slightly closer in

Alison, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful work with us!

This is music to my ears. [...]]]> 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!

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 [...]]]> 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 balls, and take the ends from the outside as well as the inside of the ball, thereby knitting with four strands.

So she got herself two balls, and went home that night to try it out. By squashing the balls and folding up the cardboard tube inside the balls, she was able to make it small enough to pull the tube out from the centre of the ball.

She was then able to successfully knit with the outside ends and the inside ends of the two balls, thereby easily using four strands. An ingenious method!

We have knitting cotton that is perfect for Mountmellick work, available from Vetty Creations’ online shop. It is completely matt, is not fluffy, and has a good twist. By purchasing two balls, you can try out this fabulous technique!

Each ball comes with two patterns for making the Mountmellick knitted fringe. Our book Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature by Yvette Stanton and Prue Scott, also features a third method which is the most traditional method of producing the fringe (NB: only the edition with the cover shown has this third method – the first edition does not). It has step-by-step instructions, with words and diagrams for each step.

Thanks to Judy for working out this great technique!

One of the [...]]]> Tonight we were reading back through the notebooks we wrote in when our kids were very little; the silly things they said and did, and their latest achievements. We were actually trying to find out when they crawled and walked, for a medical questionnaire. Do you think we recorded that anywhere? Nope!

One of the stories written in one of the books was this:
“Yvette was embroidering at dinner time. [No surprises there!] Youngest child said “Mummy is making an extraordinary noise!” as the needle went into the fabric.”

And that reminds me of when our eldest was quite young and my husband had been in trying to settle her off to sleep. I was working on the first project for our Mountmellick book, which was the large blackberry runner. Previously I had worked mostly with linen, which is not such closely woven fabric as cotton satin jean, and the needle tends to go through the fabric more easily.

So there I was, stitching away, with my fabric stretched nice and taut in my hoop. After settling our eldest, my husband came out and said, “What IS that popping noise?!”

It was the needle going into the fabric!

I’d love to know what you think of the video, and if there are videos of other things that [...]]]> With a lot of experimentation, I have now finished and uploaded my video for how to knit the Mountmellick embroidery fringe. The method that is shown is method 2 from Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature.

I’d love to know what you think of the video, and if there are videos of other things that you’d be interested in seeing.

We’re going to talk about the knitted fringe that traditionally goes around the edge [...]]]> Finally, back to the Mountmellick embroidery stitch along today. I apologise for the very long delay in moving on to the next part of this. It has been weighing heavily on my mind, but I have had several projects with deadlines.

We’re going to talk about the knitted fringe that traditionally goes around the edge of all Mountmellick embroidery. For those of you who have our book Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature the fringe we will be using is method 2. If you have one of our balls of knitting cotton, you will also find the pattern on its wrapper too.

To knit the fringe, you’ll need four balls of 4 ply knitting cotton, which we have available for purchase. If you are working on a small project, you can sometimes get away with one or two balls divided into 4 equal groups. The easiest way to divide a ball is to note that one ball weighs 50 grams net. If you want half of this in a ball, wind off 25grams worth (use your kitchen scales). This should give you a new ball of 25 grams, and the remainder of the original ball at about 25grams. If you want to divide one ball into 4, you’ll need about 12 grams in each part ball.

The knitting cotton that we supply has been specially chosen for its appearance. It is completely matt – it has no shine. It is reasonably finely twisted, and is not fluffy. There are lots of white knitting cottons out there, but this is the best one that we have found available to us. And so we are pleased to make it available to you!

We need four balls of knitting cotton because we knit with four strands all at once. This gives the fringe a much more full effect.

Knitting needles: You will need to use metal knitting needles. You can’t use bamboo or plastic as they will break. Cotton thread has pretty much no “give” – its not stretchy – and four strands of cotton used together will break plastic or bamboo needles. Ask me how I know…!

What size knitting needle? No 10, 11, or 12 (UK), No 2 or 3 (US), or 3.25, 3, or 2.75 mm (metric) knitting needles are usually used to knit the Mountmellick knitted fringe. Larger needle size will produce larger scale fringe, with relatively longer loops, while smaller needle size will produce a more compact result.

I spent yesterday experimenting with making a video of how to knit the fringe, so hopefully I’ll figure out how to upload it today or tomorrow. So get your supplies together, and get ready to knit! (The video does assume some prior knowledge of how to knit, so hopefully you can…!)