White Threads

Right-handed stitch dictionary now available!

The Right-Handed Embroiderer's Companion Ta Da! The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion: a step-by-step stitch dictionary was delivered yesterday afternoon. That means I will be posting all orders today, and all future orders will be posted as they are received.

The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion came about because The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion was receiving such rave reviews from both left and right-handers, that right-handers were getting jealous. It was a situation that was completely solvable by me doing the right-handed version to keep all the right-handers happy.

The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion is the book you asked for, and here it is! I had said that it would be available from August, but happily it has arrived about three weeks earlier than I had originally hoped.

You can find more information on its page on our website, and you can also see a turn-the-page preview on Scribd. (It is pretty memory intensive, so it may be slow to load. Please just be patient.)

For those of you who are left-handed, our book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion has been available for several months, and is still receiving rave reviews.

So whether you are left-handed or right-handed, there is now an embroidery stitch dictionary just for you! Add yours to your bookshelf, workbasket or embroidery bag today.

Guest spot on Needle’nThread

Just in case you’re not a reader of Mary Corbet’s Needle’nThread (and if you aren’t, you should be!), my guest post went up yesterday. It’s about writing needlework books, but specifically evaluating ideas for embroidery books.

And if you are visiting from Mary’s blog, welcome! I hope that you stick around. You can subscribe to White Threads by clicking on the little envelope in the top of the right-hand column. I’d love to have you join us here regularly. 🙂

French Mountmellick embroidery

When I was away in Ethiopia, my colleague Belinda sent me on an email that she had received in my absence. It was an enquiry from a publisher in France who wanted to know if I could supply them with any images for an article that they were writing on Mountmellick embroidery.

On my return home, I was able to scour through my hard drive and send them suitable images.

The resulting article has recently been published in Mains & Merveilles No 79. I have no idea what the article says – I didn’t write it, and I don’t read French other than a word or two here or there – but the photos are very nice! (Yes, I am somewhat biased…)

In terms of words though, both my husband and colleague Belinda (who are both somewhat able in French language) were baffled by the word “époustouflante”. My husband looked it up, and according to his dictionary it means “mind-boggling”. I can’t believe that in all her time living and working in France, Belinda never came across that one! 😉 I’m not sure what, in the article, is referred to as mind-boggling… Ok, I just looked it up with Google Language tools, and it comes up with “stunning”. That’s probably a better translation, as I can much more imagine Mountmellick embroidery being referred to as “stunning” rather than “mind-boggling”!

The magazine itself is quite lovely, with many attractive projects. If you are in France, you might enjoy a copy of the magazine.

And if you are wanting to learn more about Mountmellick embroidery, or try it for yourself, why not join our Mountmellick stitch along, starting 20th July? We’d love to have you along for the ride!

Right-handed book arriving this week

Not much to say today. I haven’t been well – been sleeping, knitting and keeping warm.
The Right-Handed Embroiderer's Companion
But I thought that you would like to know that failing dock strikes (and they haven’t happened around here in many a year) or such things, my shipment of The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion should be arriving some time this week. That means that all you lovely people who have pre-ordered a copy will have yours sent out most likely on the day after they arrive.

Anyone who hasn’t pre-ordered can order their own copy now, and it will be sent as soon as the shipment arrives (well, the next day – I do need some rest!)

Of course, if you are left-handed, your very own stitch dictionary The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion is already available, and receiving rave reviews. If its not already on your bookshelf or in your embroidery workbasket/bag, it should be!

Paths to abstraction

We went to the Art Gallery of NSW yesterday to see their new big exhibition called Paths to Abstraction. It only started last week, so we thought it might be a bit crowded, but it was fine.

The exhibition was great. We arrived shortly before midday, and there was a free tour starting at noon. So we joined the tour, taken by one of the volunteer guides. It was really interesting, and my youngest daughter was quite taken with it. Being young and therefore short, she moved to the front of the “mob” wherever we went, so that she could see what the lady was talking about. Quite often she wanted me to go with her, so I did a lot of crouching down and walking with bent legs, so as not to upset other people! I’m not sure how much she understood, but she clearly loved looking at all the pictures, as she stayed interested right to the end of the one hour tour.

Because the exhibition was “paths to abstraction” there was actually very little abstract art in it, as it was about the journey towards abstraction, from fully recognisable subjects, to completely abstract ones.

I learnt that when Kandinsky first saw Monet’s haystacks, he didn’t know what a haystack was, so to him, he was seeing strange shapes within Monet’s landscapes, rather than objects. This is what started him towards abstraction.

The standout painting in the whole exhibition for me was Kupka’s “Discs of Newton”, which I loved for its play with colour. I know why my daughter loves rainbows so much – probably because she’s a lot like her mum!

If you’re in Sydney, do go and see the exhibition. Its on until 19th September.

old becoming new

About twenty years ago, we went on a family holiday to New Zealand. While there, we purchased some wool to have jumpers/pullovers/sweaters/jerseys knitted out of. Mine was a gorgeous cream wool, the sort that you might have an Aran knit made from. On our return, my grandmother knitted a beautiful jumper of my choosing, for me.

I loved that jumper. It was pretty and warm. My grandma loved it too.

When I was at university studying graphic design, I happened to wear it on the first day that I ever did photography in a darkroom. I don’t think I realised that I was going to be in the darkroom that day. At the end of the day, I found that the jumper was now stained with photographic chemicals, on the front and on the sleeves.

I was so sad. My beautiful jumper, stained. From memory, there was no easy way to remove the stains. The ones on the front were slightly lightened, but the sleeves remained heavily stained.

But it was too lovely to throw away, especially as it was a souvenir from our holiday, and because my grandma knitted it for me. So it has remained in my wardrobe, pulled out occasionally to wear at home on cold days, or to be worn with a jacket over it, meaning the sleeves are covered.

With our very chilly weather here this week, it has become obvious to me that it is knitting weather. I pulled out the old jumper and decided to breathe new life into it. Partly this is due to a realisation that keeping it as is, though sentimental, is just keeping more “stuff”. By making it new, I’ll be bringing another good piece of clothing back into regular wear, thereby getting more use out of something that is and has always been special.

I chose a new pattern, and have begun undoing the old jumper, and reknitting it in a more up to date style, also cutting out the stained sections of wool.

I DO feel a little sacrilegious undoing all my grandma’s lovely knitting, but I feel good knowing that 20 years on, my lovely jumper is going to start a new life. I really hope that there is enough wool left over (it was a very bulky style, given that it was knitted in the 80s) to keep a small portion of grandma’s bit, not undone. I keep marvelling at the fact that after so long, it doesn’t have any moth holes, and the wool is still in excellent condition (apart from the stains).

And after so long, I’m looking forward to being able to happily and proudly wear my lovely jumper again.

Mountmellick stitch along – the details!

I have put up a new Mountmellick stitch along page which has all the information you need to take part in our Mountmellick embroidery stitch along. Read it all through, and then if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

A link to the stitch along info page can also be found in the right-hand column.

I’d love you to join us!

turning versus mirroring

Yesterday I had an email conversation with a friend who is left-handed. She has a copy of my book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion (and loves it), but she’s about to do some highly technical historical style stitching for which there are no stitch diagrams and instructions in left-handed available.

She asked me if mirroring will work. Mirroring is the technique that is nearly always suggested by right-handers who sometimes have little idea what stitching is like for left-handers.

Sure, mirroring can work, but it doesn’t always work. If you always mirror, sometimes you will get the completely wrong result because of the thread twist.

So, if you don’t or can’t mirror, what can you do? You can also try turning the work either 90 or 180 degrees. Whether you use 90 or 180 degrees is a matter of experimentation, to find out what works comfortably.

The reply then came back from my friend “Is there a difference between 180 and mirroring?”

YES!!! (sorry about the triple exclamation marks, Rachel.)

Turning 180 degrees means that the thread twist is not affected. Mirroring means that it is. The best example of that is stem stitch versus outline stitch. Compared to each other, outline and stem are mirrored. But turn each of them around 180 degrees and they still each look the same as they did before. So in this case, turning does not affect the stitching outcome, but mirroring does.

So there is a difference between turning and mirroring, and you can’t just always mirror!

If you’re left-handed, the easiest thing to do is buy a copy of my book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion, as you’ll find that with about 170 different stitches in there, I’ve already done the thinking for you. 🙂

books and inspiration

I was talking with the ladies in my beginner’s Hardanger class yesterday about my “depressing” list of books that I have to find time to write. (Its only depressing because it will take me 7-14 years to get through them all!) They wanted to know if any of them were Hardanger. I think there was one or two that were.

I told them how I had actually started writing one on Hardanger with sheer fabric overlays and then put it aside when I got CFS. As owners of my existing Hardanger book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery, they were familiar with the sheer fabric project in that book already, and loved the idea of a whole book about it.

I said that I had not really got back to the book as I wondered whether no-one other than me would be stupid enough to try such a difficult technique – it is hard to see through the overlay fabric to the evenweave underneath, making it quite a painstaking thing to do, though extremely lovely in appearance.

We moved on in the conversation, but later, one of the ladies brought me back to what I had said about others not wanting to do it. She said that while she might never be accomplished enough to do it herself, to her it would be a the type of thing that she would find inspiring to look at, even if she was never able to do it. She encouraged me that others need something to aspire to, even if to them it feels like “the impossible dream”.

She said that without something like that, that seems way beyond one’s own abilities, you never have something to reach for and to try harder for.

I thanked her for her ideas. It was really interesting to hear her thoughts.

It reminds me of a lovely lady who was browsing my stand at the craft show. We’d had a bit of a conversation and off she went. A second later she was back to say that she really wanted to say thank you to me for all the pleasure and enjoyment that I had given so many people with my books. I was completely touched by her words, and that she’d actually shared them with me. Being thankful is one thing, but these days I find that actually expressing that thanks is much rarer.

So, do you enjoy books as much for the inspiration they provide as for the things you can learn from them?

Afghan embroidery

Some friends have recently come back from a trip to Afghanistan – as you do! Knowing of my interest in embroidery, they brought back some Afghani embroidered bookmarks for me to see.
They are incredibly finely worked, with everything in counted satin stitch, worked by hand. The stitches are miniature! They appear to be worked on a slightly synthetic fabric, with a slightly synthetic thread for the embroidery. It has a lot of sheen, but doesn’t appear to be silk. The designs are gorgeous geometric designs.

I asked my friends if the embroidery was in a traditional style, and they didn’t know. (They didn’t ask enough questions!) But seeing some of their photos of shops selling textiles, there appeared to be a bit in similar styles, so it possibly is a traditional style. But from what area or tribal group or tradition, I do not know.

Interestingly, one of the bookmarks has a cross on it. I asked why this would be, coming from a Muslim country. They said that basically all Westerners are seen as being Christian, so it was done for the tourist market. I can’t imagine they get many actual tourists there, but I suppose there are a lot of NGOs and military people passing through.

The bookmarks were a wonderful treat for me to see!