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the mail out begins

yvette — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:59:50 +0000

Now that I am back from Beating Around the Bush, the HUGE mailout begins! Today I will start sending out pre-publication orders of Portuguese Whitework. There is a huge pile of orders to go out – thank you to everyone who pre-ordered! – so it will probably take some days to get through them all.

I am also waiting on the bubblewrap mailing envelopes to be delivered, as I have only a few left in my old box. They should arrive today, but if for some reason, they don’t, the mailing will grind to a halt until they arrive!

So if you’ve ordered a copy of Portuguese Whitework, hopefully you’ll be holding it in your hot little hands quite soon. If you’re not in Australia, the post will take a little longer to get to you, so please continue to be patient.

When you get your copy, I would love to hear what you think of it. If you find any mistakes (I really hope there aren’t any, but it is a fact of life that these things sometimes slip through) please let me know, and I will correct them in the next print run.

It would help me greatly if you could blog about the book, or add your review to websites which accept book reviews, such as Amazon or Nordic Needle. I’d be forever grateful for your assistance with this!

I am not sure when the bulk order will reach my UK/Europe distributors, but it will hopefully be soon. The US stock is supposed to get to my distributors there quite soon as well, so hopefully you will also start to see it out there in the shops very soon.

(I do also have my daughters home from school today, as although the school holidays have ended, they both have pupil-free days where the staff do professional development. This means that I will not be working for the whole day, but combining mothering duties with work!)

Hardanger Treasure Chest write-up

yvette — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:55:13 +0000

Last night, on a forum that I belong to, I read that someone had done a write-up of their experiences with making my Hardanger panel for the Treasure Chest project that’s in the current issue of Inspirations magazine.

You can find Jillian’s write-up on her blog, AlwaysStitching.

Congratulations to Jillian, on such a magnificent result. I’m thrilled that you did so well, having never done any Hardanger before. (In fact I find it amazing that you’ve never done any before… an experienced stitcher nonetheless, I am sure!)

Has anyone else made this project yet?

Hardanger step-by-steps

yvette — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:47:06 +0000

In the most recent issue of Inspirations magazine I have a Hardanger project – Treasure Chest – a collaboration with Janie Hubble.

One of the features of this design is needleweaving that has groups of three parallel woven bars. The process for doing these neatly so that the thread doesn’t show up obviously between the bars, is a precise one. I sent detailed step-by-step photos and instructions to Country Bumpkin to help them prepare the instructions to go into the magazine. They always do their own photography of their own step-by-steps so that they fit with the style of the magazine, based on what the designers supply them.

Unfortunately what went into the magazine did not show exactly the same process that I had shown. At times, mistakes happen. As soon as I noticed, I let them know, and in an effort to rectify the mistake, they have now placed revised instructions on their website.

http://www.countrybumpkin.com.au/article_info.php?articles_id=693

Please note that the bars they have shown do not have the correct tension. Bars should be thin and narrow – not fat and wide as they are shown – as that is how they were worked on historical examples. However, if you keep that in mind and work with these instructions, you’ll now get the correct results.

Thanks for supplying these correct instructions, Country Bumpkin!

Treasure Chest hardanger project

yvette — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:20:40 +0000

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.

Green beading

yvette — Mon, 23 May 2011 23:12:13 +0000

I received the latest copy of Embellish magazine yesterday. This issue I have a green beaded shrug in it. The beading is a band along the edge of the sleeves. Its quite simple, but really adds that little something special to the garment. You could also bead similarly down the front of a cardigan or even on the collar of a shirt.

My favourite article in this issue is about a type of shibori that is based on origami techniques, called orizomegami. Its quite beautiful!

The magazine will be out in shops around June 2, so look out for it!

Off to Adelaide

yvette — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:17:29 +0000

Today I’m off to Adelaide to speak at the launch of Inspirations magazine Issue 70. I have an article in the magazine on my visit to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, when we were there at the beginning of last year. I also have a project in the magazine: a shadow embroidery curtain featuring fluttery butterflies.

They’ve asked me to talk on my visit to the hospital, but rather than simply rehash the article, I’ll also talk about our time in Ethiopia in general, Ethiopian embroidery, AND my visit to the hospital. Of course, I’ll also be mentioning my participation in the Walk for Women, and that people can support the hospital by sponsoring me!

If you’d like to sponsor me, please do. You can donate through the Australian Fistula Fund’s website. Please specify “Walk for Women: Yvette Stanton” in the ‘Event’ field. If you know me in real life, you can also hand me the real money, and I will fill out a donation form for you, and the fund will issue you with a receipt. All donations of $2.00 and over are tax deductible.

When I last invited sponsorships, one of my valued readers in the UK let me know that she was unable to, as she didn’t have an Australian postcode. I have asked the fund to resolve this problem, and apparently they are still working on it. I will definitely let you know as soon as I know, when it has been fixed. You could always just enter a spurious one, such as “2000″… but then the receipt might not make it to you…

Anyway, I plan to have a lovely day in Adelaide (and on planes and in airports…) meeting with nice embroidery type people.

Published designs

yvette — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:27:51 +0000

I got an email yesterday from Julie, who told me that because she was on holidays she’d had the chance to browse in a newsagents and found some designs of mine in a “new” magazine called “Hardanger & Drawn Thread Embroidery” published by Express Publications. She wondered if it would be possible for me to announce here on my blog whenever any new designs of mine are published.

Julie, that’s a great idea, and usually I do announce them. I didn’t with this one, because its a slightly different case. You see, this magazine is a reprint of one that was first published a year or two ago. They’ve probably just updated the advertising and reprinted it. And the other important thing about this magazine is that all the designs that are in it have been previously published in earlier issues Express Publications magazines, such as Embroidery and Cross Stitch. So many people possibly have already collected these designs, and wouldn’t want to buy a new magazine just to get designs they already have elsewhere.

If any others of you are interested in checking whether you have these designs already or whether you’ll need to get them, there are two designs of mine in this magazine: Night at the Opera, and Hardanger Bellpull.

Night at the Opera is my maroon/blood red little handbag, with Hardanger embroidery on a red chiffon overlay. It was on the cover of Embroidery and Cross Stitch a few years back.

Hardanger Bellpull is a pretty hardanger band design in white on white. It was also featured in Embroidery and Cross Stitch in the past. If you want to do this project and find that you need some help, please contact me. When you decide to do it, you’ll understand why.

I do endeavour to let you know when new designs are published in magazines. I know that I have one or two coming up in Inspirations, but I have no idea when they might be published! There’s a new issue out just now, and I’m pretty sure there’s no design of mine in it, though I’m still waiting to find out if I have any articles in it! Hopefully they’ll send me a contributor’s copy soon if I do have something in it.

Christmas ornaments swap

yvette — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:48:32 +0000

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

There are a number of us taking part in a Christmas ornament swap this year. I know that some people have sent theirs off to their recipient, because they’ve told me. And I know of one person who has received hers (the one I sent, actually!), because she’s told me and thanked me. I know of someone else who has sent hers off, but hasn’t heard yet whether it has been received.

I’m just wondering if the others who are taking part might be able to give a report on whether they’ve received theirs yet, so that their senders can know that the ornament they sent has been received.

It would also be really lovely if we could share photos of the ornaments we have given and or received. You are welcome to email them to me so that I can post them here on White Threads. If the design is by someone else other than you, please let me know of the design’s name and designer so that we can give credit where credit is due.

Looking forward to hearing about your swap experiences. As soon as mine arrives, you can be sure that I’ll be telling you about it!

The Gift of Stitching ornament

yvette — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 19:52:15 +0000

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!

Christmas decorations

yvette — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:36:30 +0000

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.