White Threads

more on linen shrinkage

Some weeks ago I did a series on 38 count linen and whether it was evenweave or not. At the time, Lilian from the Netherlands had been corresponding with me about this issue. After my post on prewashing, Lilian posed the question:

“Is it true that after you’ve washed the linen, it’s hard to take out threads as you do for drawn thread work? Has someone tried this? If not, I might give the method described by Mary Corbet a try and report on what happens.”

Lilian did try it out, and did report back. She’s given me permission to share her findings with you. Thank you Lilian!

As promised, here are my findings after shrinking the linen.

I used Sotema 15 threads per cm linen. It’s purple (don’t ask! I have a friend whom I stitch birthday and Christmas gifts for and everything has to be purple!) but I don’t think that confuses the matter, does it? 🙂

I tacked the outline for the little hand towel, and the embroidery would have been 25 cm x 6.1 cm. After the bath of boiling, cold, boiling and cold and once more boiling water as described by Mary Corbet, and flat drying on top of my marble counter, the dimensions had shrunk to 24.1 x 5.8 cm.

If I remember correctly, the long side of the fabric is the length of the fabric, and the short sides the width (it was an off cut of a piece used for a table runner).

I have so far pulled threads on 3 seams, the 1A-2A, the 2A-2B and the 2B-1B open work. If anything, I would say pulling the threads is easier now than before washing.

I am adding some pictures of the other embroidery I did, on the same fabric, using the same dimensions. (shown above) Also, the little doily/tablecloth also for the same purple loving friend, as it is being damp-stretched. Your tip on bending and pulling the bullions in shape is such a bonus! My “leaves” all look so nice and curved now they have dried.

I hope to hear from others what their experiences are after shrinking/wetting the pristine linen.

Now I am worried that when the fabric does not shrink after embroidering it, will the pulling together on the threads of the bars, scrunching the fabric up a little, come out after damp stretching? Oh dear, it keeps on posing new questions for us. How tight to pull? Do you pull the threads of the bars tight? In this particular case, it will not be very important, as the embroidery will become panels on a bath towel, so will get laundered a lot, and I daresay never ironed, but there are ‘heirloom type’ projects that you might want to know the answer to this question for, before undertaking the project!

I look forward to learning more on the subject of pre-washing, evenweave and whatever else this all may lead to. Thank you for your time and attention.

And thank you for yours, too, Lilian! Tomorrow we will look at Lilian’s questions about pulling bars tight, and associated issues.

Incredible needlelace ship

On Saturday at lunch time, during my class at Coffs Harbour, some of the ladies were talking about a 3 dimensional needlelace ship that one of them had made. It sounded quite intriguing.

At lunch the next day, Robyne brought out her ship. It was simply amazing!

Robyne Bunter's incredible needlelace ship

There is a story behind this incredible creation. Robyne saw a picture of a 2 dimensional needlelace ship in Ann Collier’s book “The Art of Lacemaking”. She liked the idea of doing a ship, but wanted to make the sails come out from it. She couldn’t get that to work, and eventually her creation became completely 3 dimensional!

Front of the needlelace ship designed and created by Robyne Bunter

Robyne whittled the base of the ship from balsa wood. The masts are wooden skewers, and her husband created the crow’s nest parts and finials on the masts for her.

The back of the ship created by Robyne Bunter

Because Robyne was making it up as she went, the two sides are different. She learned from the first side of the ship and made improvements to the second side. That’s not to say that the first side was a failure though – it certainly isn’t! It’s just that the second side is better.

Robyne used a number of different threads for the lace; using what she already had in her stash. All the threads are DMC Ecru threads. For the needlelace and ladders, she used Cordonnet Special No 80, for “other bits and bobs”, she used Cordonnet Special No 100 & 40. Robyne also used Perle No 8 and 12, and stranded cotton. The ship took Robyne about 2 years to make.

I’m sure that you’ll agree that this is an amazing creation. Thank you to Robyne for giving me permission to share it with my blog readers, and congratulations on your achievement!

A lovely weekend in Coffs Harbour

Last night I arrived home from a really enjoyable weekend in Coffs Harbour. I love going out to country guild groups to teach, as you’re always so very appreciated there!

We did the Portuguese Whitework panel from my book (p14) in a relaxed two day class. I started off by showing them a slideshow of photos that I took when in Guimarães. The photos gave the students a feel for the town itself. They saw some historical examples from a museum, and contemporary examples that are still made for sale in the town. I showed the photos again yesterday afternoon, and one lady commented on how different it was seeing them for a second time, after she had now spent a weekend working on the technique. She said she was seeing completely different things, because now she had so much more understanding of the technique.

Two of the ladies made extremely fast progress through the project, so on the Saturday night I quickly added an extra border of sham hem stitch to the project, to give them something extra to work on on the Sunday. It was a very popular move, as many of the students commented how pretty the border was, and they enjoyed learning the “bonus” bit!

I felt very welcome, and very at home. Thanks to Doreen (and Susan) for your lovely hospitality. You were wonderful hostesses! I hope to go back to visit the Coffs Harbour group again some day for another class. Thank you all for having me come to teach you!

Off to Coffs

This afternoon I am heading to Coffs Harbour on the NSW mid north coast. Tomorrow and Sunday I’ll be teaching Portuguese whitework embroidery at the guild group there.

Yesterday I loaded a whole heap of pictures that I took when we were visiting Guimaraes (sorry, I have no idea how to put the little wiggly thing above the second A when I am using my phone!) on to my laptop, so that I can show the students what I saw at the museum there and at the workshop where they create embroideries for sale. I really enjoyed looking at all the pictures again, so I hope they do too.

Next week I hope to get stuck back into the app again. It is slowly making progress. Slowly…

This morning I did hope to take a photo of the Mountmellick embroidery that I bought last week at the antique shop in Hobart, but I ran out of time. Next week!

Back home from Tasmania

After a wonderful 10 or so days away in Tasmania with my family, culminating in two days of classes at A Stitch in Time at Hobart, I’m finally back home and catching up with emails, orders and enquiries.

We all enjoyed Tasmania very much. For those of you who are not familiar with Australia, Tasmania is the little triangular shaped island off the bottom of the east coast of Australia. It is a beautiful place.

We arrived in Hobart, picked up our hire car and drove to the other side of the island, through the World Heritage areas in the south west, to the little town of Strahan. We arrived late in the day, headed out for dinner and then on our return were met by a taxi containing my husband’s bag, which hadn’t arrived with the rest of our bags on our flight. Happily, it arrived on the next flight and was sent across to the island to us. One Tasmanian taxi driver had a long shift that day, with an 8 hour fare ($$). The poor fellow didn’t have very good company though, as my husband’s bag is not known for its conversational skills!

In Strahan we went on the Macquarie Harbour cruise, taking us out to the harbour mouth, where the next landfall to the west is South America (it misses the bottom of South Africa by over 1000 km). We visited ocean trout fish farms in the harbour, then went some way up the beautiful, beautiful Gordon River, with its amazing vegetation including Huon Pines. Our last stop was on Sarah Island, the site of one of Australia’s harshest convict prisons – the whole island was a prison. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and interesting, and we all enjoyed the tour.

Mossy trees beside the Gordon river

Next stop west, South America!

The day was pretty horrible though. It was cold, wet and quite miserable. The host where we were staying had suggested that after our cruise, in the afternoon we might be able to hire toboggans and go toboganning on the local sand dunes (sounds terribly environmentally irresponsible to me!) but the weather definitely precluded any possibility of that! Instead we borrowed a couple of videos from their collection and enjoyed the warmth of being inside.

The next day we left early to drive back to Hobart. We had heard it was snowing elsewhere on the island the day before, so wondered if we might encounter some snow beside the road on our way through the mountainous region. We did! And there was snow prettily resting on the branches of trees. We found a safe place to stop and got out to enjoy the snow. Being Sydneysiders, where the climate is quite temperate, we never see snow in Sydney, so for us, snow is a real treat!

A little further on, we decided that the rain didn’t seem to be falling any more – it seemed to be floating. It was snowing! And then as we went further, the snow was heavier, until we were going through areas that were almost completely white with snow. It was quite magical. (Yes, I know this is probably completely normal for a lot of my readers, but we’re not used to it!)

The snow continued on and off for several hours of our journey. We stopped at Lake St Clair at Derwent Bridge for a rest break. It wasn’t snowing when we arrived, but soon after, it really got going again. The girls enjoyed playing outside, rolling up the snow off the tops of the picnic tables. They were quite taken with the fact that it rolls up like carpet! We huddled inside, sensibly enjoying the warmth, and enjoying watching them.

Back in Hobart, we enjoyed visiting friends, a trip to Port Arthur (another convict settlement, not quite a harsh as Sarah Island, but still not nice!), a visit to a boat building school (fascinating!), some of the local museums, the Theatre Royal (Australia’s oldest theatre), and just general sightseeing. In constrast to the snow earlier in the week, we also enjoyed a day of almost summery weather (26 degrees C)!

Port Arthur

It was lovely to take a break away from home and work. It is also nice to be back home again, getting stuck back into work.

Hobart fun

Tomorrow and Sunday I will be teaching a Portuguese whitework class at A Stitch in Time, here in Hobart. I’ve actually been here a few days now, and have enjoyed some of the sights.

Yesterday I had the delight of finding an “Edwardian carver cloth” in an antique shop. Despite the guy who sold it to me continually referring to it as lace, there is no lace on it at all. It is actually a lovely example of Mountmellick embroidery, sans the knitted fringe.

The design is one I have seen before, indeed it is shown in the introductory section of our book “Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature”, though with different choices of stitch placement.

The fabric is lovely finely woven cotton sateen. I’ll share a photo of the cloth with you when I get home.

Today I found some gorgeous red and gold brocade fabric which I would like to use to make an evening jacket. As part of my pattern drafting course we have to make a lined jacket, so if the teacher thinks it is appropriate, I’d like to use this fabric. It is just so so yummy!

I’m looking forward to my class tomorrow. Some of the students I have met before at previous classes at the shop and also Beating Around the Bush. And there will be new students to meet as well. We’re going to have a lovely couple of days.

school holidays again

We’re on school holidays again here, and as such I will be spending more time with my family over the next couple of weeks. School holidays are always a very busy time for us!

It may mean that any orders that are placed are not attended to straight away. I also may not get the chance to attend to any phonecalls as quickly as I usually would. I apologise for any inconvenience these delays may cause.

Next weekend I’ll be in Hobart for a class, so hopefully the weather will be agreeable! Even if it isn’t, I’m sure my students and I will have a lovely time at “A Stitch In Time” working on Portuguese whitework.

The following weekend I’ll be at Coffs Harbour, teaching Portuguese whitework there. Seeing Hobart is a long way south of here, and Coffs Harbour is a fair way north, I expect there will be a marked difference in temperature!

I probably won’t get the chance to post on here for about the next week, so you can look forward to my return to White Threads in about a week or more.

Crafty Girls Talk

Some time back I got an email from Jennifer Forest of Jane Austen’s Sewing Box fame. She was inviting me to take part in her latest book, which was going to be a series of interviews with crafty people (and we mean that in the nicest possible way!)

Of course, I was thrilled to be asked, and only too happy to be involved! Jennifer interviewed me, I supplied her with some photos, and that was that from my point of view. Obviously there was a lot more work to go into it for Jennifer. 🙂

I received another email from Jennifer this week to let me know that the book, entitled Crafty Girls Talk is now out.

She also let me know that as a special to launch “Crafty Girls Talk” there is a free giveaway this weekend for the Kindle version. You can download the Kindle version free and read it directly on your iPhone, iPad, Kindle or Kindle Fire. You can also download the Kindle App to your desktop computer to read the book.

The free giveaway runs from Friday 21 September through to Sunday 23 September, Amazon time which is California USA time. As we don’t all live in the US, Jennifer provided the following time suggestions:

“For Australians, this means that you can access the free download from about 5pm Friday to 5pm Monday. For New Zealanders this will be two hours later, from 7pm Friday to 7pm Monday. For the UK you can access it from 8am Friday to 8am Sunday.”

I haven’t read or seen the book yet (other than its cover!), but I expect it will be a really interesting read. The sorts of questions Jennifer asked me included:
“How did you get to where you are today? What did you do when you left school? Did you know what you wanted to do? Is your background / experience relevant to your business?”

“It always sounds so exciting, and far better than a desk job, to be running your own crafty, design or creative business. But what does that actually mean, what do you do each day? Describe a typical day.”

I don’t know whether the answers to all the questions she asked will be included – I guess that’s a question of how she edited all the information I gave her, both in my written answers, and when we talked on the phone. It will be interesting to see how she’s crafted all that information into an interesting and readable article.

I’m also looking forward to reading the other participants’ interviews. I have no idea who else was included, so I’m really keen to find out! Actually, I’ve just found that there’s a “look inside” feature on the Kindle version page, so you can have a little preview like I did. It looks great!

The Crafty Girls interviewed are: Tanya Marie Willis Anderson, Nancy Bell, Fiona Clark, Pat Dalton, Jan DiCintio, Elizabeth Dubbelde, Nicole Farrell, Arwen O’Reilly Griffith, Glenna Harris, Kim Hurley, Sally Lewis, Michelle Perdue, Rosalie Quinlan, Rebecca Ringwald, Lynne Sharpe, Yvette Stanton, Becky Striepe, Melissa Wastney, Tamara Watts, Morgan Wills and Marie Yolande.

Some of those names I recognise (and would love to read their stories) and others are new to me – more interesting people to learn about!

Congratulations to Jennifer on what promises to be another fascinating book!

Knitting while you wait

I posted this on my personal Facebook page and the Vetty Creations Facebook page yesterday, and it got such a great response that I thought I would share it here too.

At the doctors yesterday morning with one of my children, there was a new “waiting time” initiative. There was a box with wool and knitting needles on top of the table with all the magazines, suggesting you could help in knitting or crocheting some squares to make some rugs for charity. I picked up the needles and did some rows while we waited. We got called for our appointment, so I just popped it back in the box for the next person.

As the idea was so new (it wasn’t there when I visited last week), they were also asking for suggestions of where the eventual rugs can be donated, so I suggested Wrap With Love. They were very pleased with the suggestion, as I told them the wraps get distributed both within Australia and overseas. I said that we’d seen the wraps in action in Ethiopia.

What a great initiative! It was a great way to pass the time while waiting.

Since posting this on Facebook, many others have told me that they’ve seen it in hospitals and other doctors as well. It’s such a good idea that I hope many others do it too.

Another reprint

Today I will be sending files off for the next reprint of The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion. Now that I have my new logo, I will slowly be able to change over instances of the old logo. A new book reprint is one example of where it can now be implemented. As time goes on, I will slowly introduce the new logo in the many different places that it needs to go.

Thank you to those of you who offered feedback on the new logo yesterday. One person commented that she thought it looked a little bit like a piece of thread. 🙂 Excellent! That’s exactly what I had in mind for it. In fact, an earlier incarnation of the design actually showed the loopy V as twisted thread!

Today I will also try to get some more hours done on the app. It is still taking a very long time to get through all the data entry. One day it will be ready… I don’t know that I’ll be rushing to undertake this process again!

Yesterday I had to go into the Sydney CBD, so took the opportunity to also go to The Fabric Shop and Tessuti at Surry Hills. I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by the selection at The Fabric Shop, but Tessuti had some gorgeous fabrics. My main complaint is that so many of them are silk! I don’t wear silk for every day…

I wandered around the shops looking at all the lovely fabric, thinking “I’d love to use some of you to make something” but I didn’t get any inspired ideas. Oh well. My wallet remained happily intact. 🙂