At the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair last year I found some lovely scrummy Cottage Garden Threads colours and felt that I just [...]]]> On Friday I received my copy of the latest issue of “Inspirations” magazine. In it I have a new Hardanger project published. The project was a collaboration between me and Janie Hubble.

At the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair last year I found some lovely scrummy Cottage Garden Threads colours and felt that I just *had* to use one in a project. And so I quickly designed a Hardanger on my computer one night after the show, and started stitching it on the train on the way in to the city the next day.

I asked Janie, who I was sharing the stand with, if she’d be interested in collaborating on it with me. Janie makes beautiful fabric covered boxes. She happily agreed and so our Hardanger-topped box came about.

My only photo of the embroidery is where the fabric isn’t totally flat, but I guess its better than nothing. Its not mounted on the box lid because I then sent it off to Janie for her to do all that, of which she did a lovely job!

There are much nicer photos of the project – they’ve called it “Treasure Chest” – on the Country Bumpkin website and in the magazine!

If you’d like to make it, you’ll need to avail yourself of Issue 73 of Inspirations magazine.

My ornament sent to Carole. 'Green and Gold' by Yvette Stanton, published in November 2010 issue of The Gift of Stitching magazine

I started designing it when I was at the craft show that [...]]]> Every year at about this time The Gift of Stitching Magazine puts out its annual Christmas ornament issue, and this year I’m in it! You can sort of see my ornament in the top left corner of the cover, right behind the “o”.

I started designing it when I was at the craft show that I exhibited at way back in June. At that time it was on natural coloured linen in white and green. Its gone through a few different design stages and changed a bit since then, now being in red, gold, and green on white linen. With The Gift of Stitching being a counted thread magazine, most of the ornaments are in cross stitch. Cross stitch isn’t really my thing though, but I learned lots of wonderful counted thread specialty stitches when I was writing my left-handed stitch dictionary, so I decided to use some of them and others.

My design features queen stitch (two different variations), cable stitch, and Hungarian stitch. I’ve already gone on and on about the Stitches and Spice single ply silk that I used for it in a previous post, so I won’t mention that again! And it does also use Gilt Sylke Twist for the green.

Queen stitch (used in the centre and the corners of my design) is a stitch that I was introduced to by Kirsten Edwards, the editor of The Gift of Stitching Magazine. We were visiting a craft show together a few years back and were talking about what was going to be in my new left-handed stitch dictionary, because she’s left-handed too! I had thought that the book was pretty much finished, but then she rattled off a list of counted thread specialty stitches many of which I’d never heard of! I realised at that point that the book was definitely not finished, and that I had better get going on some further research! This was my introduction to Queen stitch, and I have to say, its become a favourite. (Thanks Kirsten!)

If you’re interested in Queen stitch, you can find step by step instructions in both The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion and The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion.

I’m currently still downloading the issue of the magazine itself, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the other designs presented for our stitching pleasure this month. For those of you who subscribe, I hope that you enjoy the issue!

What I have found interesting about this [...]]]> I’ve mentioned before that each Christmas I make tree decorations for my husband’s staff and my daughters’ teachers and tutors. I’ve been plugging away at them and have now finished the embroidery of 17 of them. I think that I have only one or two more to do.

What I have found interesting about this is that normally I hate doing any embroidery design more than once, and yet, I have been quite happy to do 17 of them so far! Maybe its just because I’m still so enamoured with the beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous, luscious single ply silk from Stitches and Spice that I have been using!

The design that I am working is going to be published in the next issue of The Gift of Stitching magazine in their Christmas ornament issue, so when its out, I’ll finally show you a picture. And you’ll be able to purchase a copy so that you can make your own if you’d like to! I’m really looking forward to seeing the other ornaments in the issue as well as they are usually very inspiring.

The thing that I have been enjoying about the silk is the way you can vary the look of it. For some of the stitches I have been untwisting the thread so that it sits flat and has great coverage. And for some of the other stitching I have been using it twisted as it comes. Its interesting to see the different effects you can achieve with the one thread.

The design also features a small amount of Gilt Sylke Twist, which is a thread that was developed to be used on the Faith jacket. I bought some quite some time back, wondering what I might use it on. It was terribly expensive, but I wanted to give it a try. It is very nice, and the little bit of gold that goes around the silk core does look pretty, but seriously I do wonder if its worth the expense!

Now, the thing I have been perplexed about for the ornaments is whether I should make some of them into bookmarks using the gold plated bookmark findings that I recently got. What do you think? (I guess it is a bit hard not knowing what the ornaments look like, but let’s just imagine a tiny pillow-like thing with embroidery on one side.) Would you prefer to receive a special bookmark, or a Christmas tree ornament? You could use one all the time, whereas the other would get put away only for Christmas use.

A few days later after receiving their copy, one of the [...]]]> There’s a reasonably new textiles magazine on the Australian market called Embellish. Its focus is shibori, embroidery, and other textiley things. I got in contact with the girls there a while ago to send them a copy of The Left-Handed Embroiderers Companion for review.

A few days later after receiving their copy, one of the editors Michelle, got back to me, asking me if I would be interested in contributing to the magazine, embellishing a garment with embroidery for each issue. I thought it was worth giving it a go! Michelle commented that kids clothing often has embroidery on it, and why should us adults have to miss out?

Michelle sent me a shawl and said “Do something with this.” And so I did. The resulting project features embroidered and beaded roses, and you can see it on the left of the cover. Its simple enough that its achievable quite quickly, even if you’ve not really done much embroidery before. And it makes an ordinary garment quite special.

In the next few days the new issue – Issue 3 – of the magazine will be out in newsagents. In there is the review of The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion, and the first of my embroidered articles of clothing. My favourite thing in the magazine was an article on a shibori artist called Amy Nguyen. Her work is amazingly beautiful!

So if you haven’t seen this magazine yet, give it a go!

Yesterday I spent some time with Kirsten Edwards planning for our joint stand (G32) at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show at Darling Harbour, [...]]]> I am no longer procrastinating! I think that I just needed to admit to myself that that is what I was doing, and that was enough to kick me into action!

Yesterday I spent some time with Kirsten Edwards planning for our joint stand (G32) at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show at Darling Harbour, June 16-20. I set up some of our stand in our lounge room, just to get an idea of how much stock would fit, and how it would look.

I left it there for the time being, so that I can add things to it. My husband walked in from work last night and said “oh, there’s a shop here!” While I was making dinner (with my 6 year old who had to help as part of this week’s homework!) he said that he went to the shop, but no-one was there to serve him!

I can assure you that there will always be someone to serve you at our stand at the actual show – just not in my lounge room!

In the past week I have been asked to contribute three new projects to various magazines, so I need to get cracking on them. One is already made, but I need to write the instructions. One is the embellishment of a piece of clothing, and another is a shadow work curtain (probably!). I’m sure I will enjoy all of them.

And then, of course, there are TWO books waiting to be written. There are other projects to work on also, so I just don’t have time to procrastinate!

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.