White Threads

A visit to The Crewel Gobelin

The Crewel Gobelin

Earlier this week I had to go to Sydney and while I was there, I took the opportunity to The Crewel Gobelin to get some thread. I always love visiting The Crewel Gobelin, because it always looks lovely and they always have wonderful new stuff to tempt me.

The Crewel Gobelin

I used to work there about 6 or 7 years ago and when I left, my twin sister, Prue, took over my job in a seamless transition! (We’re very alike, but I’m quite sure people can tell that she’s not me!) All the staff are lovely: Julie (the owner), Michelle, Julie (the other Julie – why have one when you can have two?) and Prue.

The Crewel Gobelin

The shop is looking simply gorgeous, and Julie allowed me to take some pictures to share with you. It’s not a large shop, but everything is delightfully crammed in there, even including a teaching area. If you’ve never been, you can see that there are so many luscious threads, beautiful fabrics, charts galore, framed and non framed pieces to inspire and delight, and lots of other goodies. And the staff are ever helpful!

The Crewel Gobelin

The Crewel Gobelin is at 9 Marian Street, Killara, and is close to the train station. If you’re a needleworky person visiting Sydney, it’s a great place to visit and find a souvenir to take home with you – threads and fabric pack nicely in suitcases! They also do mail order over the phone and through their website, if you’re further afield like me.

The Crewel Gobelin

This post is not a paid advertisement or anything like that. I just thought that it’s so beautiful I’d share it with you all. I know that many of you, like me, do not have a needlework shop anywhere nearby.

Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler Self-Paced Video Online Course is back!

For anyone who’s been wanting to take a class with me, my online course is back!

My Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler Self-Paced Video Online Course is taking registrations, and as it is self-paced, you can begin as soon as your supplies (included in the enrolment fee) arrive! You can even watch some of the videos before the supplies arrive, if you can’t wait.

As you can see from the video, Frisian Whitework was often worked in colour on samplers. When used on clothing and household linens, it was white on white, hence its classification as whitework.

Enrolments at https://onlinelearning.vettycreations.com.au

Gumnut Yarns Buds are BACK!

Gumnut Yarns Buds silk threads as used in my Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler.

I’m thrilled to be posting this today, because I never expected to be able to. Gumnut Yarns Buds silk threads are BACK (in limited colours and availability, but the ones I want are)! And that means, so are our Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler supplies packs, Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler thread packs, and even more excitingly, our Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler Self-Paced Video Online Course is also open for enrolments again!

Woohoo! I absolutely adore these threads!

Gumnut Yarns Buds silk threads and the Frisian Whitework Silk Sampler project from my book “Frisian Whitework”.

To purchase the supplies packs or thread packs, go to https://www.vettycreations.com.au/frisian-whitework.html#silk
To enrol in the self-paced video online course (start any time and progress at your preferred pace), go to https://onlinelearning.vettycreations.com.au

Any questions, please just ask.

EGA National Seminar

EGA 2019 seminar

To all the people who are currently at the EGA National Seminar in Atlanta, I hope you’re having a wonderful time! I submitted to teach at this seminar, WAAAYYY back, and am now so glad that my classes weren’t selected. I’m simply not well enough. Going all the way to the US for 5 days of very large classes (jetlag included!) is not the same as the quick hop across the ditch for a few days of classes in NZ.

I will keep submitting for EGA National Seminars (I have many times since my first trip in 2019, but haven’t yet hit on a submission that is compelling enough to pass the non-US teacher’s visa requirements again!) because I know that there are many in the US who would like to take a class with me.

I didn’t submit for Texas (2025) as I wasn’t well enough when submissions were due. I’m eagerly waiting to find out where 2026 will be.

Anyway, I hope you’re all having fun, catching up with friends, making new ones, and learning heaps!

The photo is of one of the events at the 2019 EGA seminar, which was held in St Louis, Missouri.

A trip to Paris

With the Paris Olympics on, I think back to the time (2018) I invited my twin sister Prue Scott who was living in Germany at the time, to visit l’Aiguille en Fête in Paris with me. We met up with Anne Nicolas-Whitney of Et Brode le Papillon. Prue and I also enjoyed other needleworky touristy things in Paris.

A snowy scene on my way into Paris from the airport.

Prue and I, out in the snow, just before we went in to Aiguille en Fete.

Aiguille en Fete

Me on left, Anne on right.

crochet by Nathalie Leverger on display at the show

Au ver a Soie isn’t generally open, except for classes. But we went there!

Frou Frou near Montmartre, selling fabric, passementerie, ribbons etc

A street in the fabric district near Montmartre.

Tissus Reine, near Montmartre, where I bought some embroidered fabric for a skirt.

Beautiful wools at Tapisseries de France

It was an enjoyable trip, and following our time there, I secretly went to the Netherlands to visit museums to do the research for Frisian Whitework.

Are you friends with finishing?

Organza Hardanger Ornament

Following on from my question the other day about projects in my books that you like to make, I’m interested to know about finishing. Most people indicated that the things they like to make are small things like needlecases, bookmarks, scissor fobs, biscornus and Christmas decorations (all of which I have featured in my books in the past).

Small things like this can often be fiddly to finish. From my wanderings on social media, it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are scared of finishing items and hand them over to a professional finisher for them to do them. Others are confident in doing them themselves.

How confident are you in finishing items when good instructions are provided?
1. I’ll give anything a go.
2. I’ll only finish items that are simple, so that I don’t mess things up.
3. I am not at all confident and while I enjoy making them, they end up in a drawer, unfinished.
4. I give them to someone else to finish for me.

In addition, does the need to finish a small, fiddly item put you off making it?

Finishing is something I enjoy doing, and I always do it carefully, so as to get the best results. After all that time embroidering, I’m keen to make the embroidery look great, by finishing the item well. However, as I know some people don’t feel confident doing it themselves, or don’t have the money to get someone else to do it for them, that’s why I often include projects in my books like runners that can be easily finished with simple turned hems, either with hand sewing or a machine.

Are you friends with finishing?

types of needlework projects

Hardanger projects from “Early-Style Hardanger” by Yvette Stanton

A question I ask from time to time, because I like to be meeting the needs of my audience, is what sorts of projects do you like to make? I like to include a range of things to make in my books, with some large and some small, some aimed more at beginners to a technique, and some for the more experienced or adventurous stitchers.

In the past I have included the following, amongst others:
runners
framed pieces
needle cases
scissor fobs
doilies
bags
samplers
pincushions
biscornus
cushions/pillows
shirts
bookmarks
tablecloths

What do you like to make? What sorts of projects do you like to see in books? What makes you think, “Oh, I must make that!”?

My formal qualifications

studying historical needlework samples

For some people, qualifications are very important. So as a needlework teacher and author of needlework books, what are my formal qualifications?

My training is in design. I have a Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication, and it helped me learn to think, problem solve and therefore be creative. While I didn’t much enjoy my time at university (I felt like a fish out of water), what I learned there has been absolutely invaluable to me. My degree included such things as typography, problem solving, the history of design, illustration and photography. The knowledge and skills I gained shape how I present the information in my books. After university, working for a non-fiction publisher, which presented information often in a step-by-step manner, instilled in me the importance of communicating clearly in both written and illustrated formats.

I do not have formal embroidery training and there’s a really good reason for that: no school teaches what I want to learn! I want to focus on lesser known forms of embroidery that are not taught formally, and often do not have a written record. I want to create that written record, and therefore the best place for me to learn is from historical items – primary historical sources. By studying a wide range of historical examples, I am able to understand my chosen style, and distill it down to clearly communicate it through word and image, and in-person teaching.

Some of my friends who are doing or have done PhDs have suggested to me that I could do further university training. I can’t really see any point in writing a masters or PhD thesis for the sake of gaining a qualification. My informal research, which I do for every book I write, is far more useful to me and to the audience for which I write my books. If I could see benefit from doing further formal education, I would, but so far, I have not found the circumstances where that would make sense.

And so, I will continue to forge my own path; doing my own thing, and doing it as well as I can.

The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion – revision schedule

The Left-Handed Embroiderers Companion

I posted about “The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion” only about 3 months ago, however as I am getting almost daily requests for the revised book, I need to address it again.

“The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion” is currently out of print, and has been for way longer than I had intended.

After I finished working on Hardanger Filling Stitches I planned to start work on a revision of this book, adding some new stitches. This plan has not yet come to fruition as I am still very unwell and not up to working on it. WHEN I am well enough – and I do not know when that will be – I will do the revision and it will be re-released.

While I sincerely appreciate the interest in the book, and the enthusiasm for it, the constant stream of requests are a bit hard for me, reminding me of how unwell I am. There is nothing I can do about this delay. You’ll just have to continue to be patient. It isn’t the way I want things to be, either.

needle problems

hand embroidery needles

Last year in New Zealand, I taught some Mountmellick embroidery classes. Mountmellick thread is very different to other threads: it is thick, has a number of strands though is non-divisible, and is completely matte. For those who are used to stitching with, say, a single strand of cotton floss, it is a very different experience! It can take a bit of adjusting!

In one class, the students were making good progress, however a couple of them mentioned that they weren’t entirely happy with their stitching and they felt that it might be the chenille needles’ fault (John James brand). They felt that the eye was not treating the thread well. As I had some spare chenille needles of the same size (DMC brand), I gave one to each student to try.

The difference was immediate, for those who changed over.

There may have been a bunch of the John James ones that had been manufactured in a way so that there were burrs or sharp bits inside the eye. These were either cutting into the thread or snagging the thread.

The substitute DMC needles obviously had a smoother eye, and therefore the problems disappeared.

It may just have been a bad batch, but I think the important things we can learn from this are as follows:
– paying more for a needle does not guarantee a better needle. I think there is a lot of needle snobbery going around. Sure, some more expensive needles are better quality, but that doesn’t mean the more economical needles are rubbish. I sell DMC brand needles and I really like them. I find they work very well for me.
– if you’re having difficulty with your thread in your needle – maybe it is snagging in the eye, or the thread seems to be shredding – swap your needle for a different one of the same size. A different brand or different packet mean that you can be surer you’re getting one from a different batch. If you use another one from the original packet, you can’t be sure that it isn’t a bad batch.

Of course, there could be many other reasons that the thread isn’t behaving well, such as operator error (!), or it could be that the needle is too small. However, switching your needle for one of the same size is an easy way to try to improve things.

https://www.vettycreations.com.au/catalogue-needles.html#needles