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My good friend Belinda loves quilling. For my birthday some weeks ago, she decided to use a lily motif inspired by the Mountmellick stitch along design, and re-interpret it in quilling. Thanks Belinda! I sat down last night and wrote out a list of ideas for books I want to write. Unfortunately there were no less than seven. And how many of me are there? Just one… Oh dear. Considering that it often takes me a year to write a book, that’s the next seven years all taken up. And that’s not including the new book ideas I might get during that time. And it doesn’t take into account any little flits off to far flung places to do more volunteering. (Not that that’s on the cards, but then it wasn’t until about six months before we went to Ethiopia, either!) Maybe I need to consider cloning myself? How can I do all that, and run our household and be a mum, and do justice to all those roles? So I come back to the advice that my aunt gave me many years ago, “You don’t have to do everything NOW.” So I’ll just get on with the first one on my list and see where that takes me. A little while ago, Angelina from Ireland commented on one of the posts on this blog. She told us that she and the ICA group that she is part of, are currently learning Mountmellick embroidery in Ireland. I was so interested that I asked her to share some more with me and all you lovely readers. Following is what Angelina had to tell me:
Angelina, thanks so much for telling us about your group’s adventures with learning Mountmellick embroidery in its home-country! The pictures are beautiful, and we look forward to seeing some of your finished pieces after your summer break. But I’d love to know who your teacher is so that she can get the recognition she deserves also! If anyone else would like to tell us all about the embroidery group that they are part of, please let me know. I think I can safely say that we all love reading this sort of thing! So, what was popular at the Vetty Creations stand at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show last week? I’ve already mentioned how “hot” Mountmellick embroidery was, with so many people stopping to admire the display and ask what type of embroidery it was. A common refrain was, “is that candlewicking?”  Mountmellick embroidery wildflower cushion kit I also had people wanting to learn Hardanger as absolute beginners. This is so exciting! Hardanger is seen by some as being very difficult, and slightly scary when you think of the cutting of the fabric threads. But with good instructions, anyone who can count and has good eyesight and/or lighting, should be able to enjoy the delights of Hardanger. If you’ve never given Hardanger embroidery a go, and would like to, we have a number of patterns (with step-by-step instructions) suitable for beginners, such as the Sapphire Hardanger bookmark, and the Margaret Hardanger Hand Towel. Of course, there is also our book Elegant Hardanger Embroidery which is filled with step-by-step stitch instructions, and also a good number of projects on which to try out your skills. One of the great things about having a stand at craft shows is finding out what people are looking for, and what really catches their eye. It has come to my attention that over the last few weeks emails to me through my vettycreations.com.au address have not all been getting through. Not being terribly technical, and with my tech-head brother currently overseas, I haven’t really known what to do about it. If you have tried to contact me and have had no reply, its not that I don’t want to, or don’t like you, its very possibly that the email hasn’t made it through to me. For this I apologise. Leave a comment below if this is the case, and I will get back to you privately on an alternative email address that I know IS working. I have today contacted my hosting service to see if they can sort it out for me. Apparently my request is now underway, so hopefully all will be fixed soon. Again, I apologise for any non-replies to emails you have sent. It is not my intention to ignore you.
You can see that they have a divine shine to them. I love the colours, though a few more reds would be to my liking! I have a problem though… You can see a bit of mess in the middle. While they come nicely twisted into skeins on their cards, they won’t stay like that for long. They are so springy which makes them a bit hard to keep neat! I was talking yesterday with a lady who does Japanese embroidery, and she said that their silks come on cylinders, which keeps them neat, but doesn’t give kinks like regular thread winders would. I haven’t got any inside tubes from fax rolls at the moment (though it doesn’t take long – I get so much fax spam!) but I’m thinking that they’d be good to wind the thread onto. I did also purchase some Thread Heaven (thread conditioner for springy threads) from Stitches and Spice which will help when I use the threads to stitch with. I’ve never tried it before and am looking forward to trying it. But that’s for stitching and not for storing. How do others store springy threads that don’t want kinks? Can you share any good tips with me? Well, I have succumbed… As of today I have a Facebook account. I have never seen the need for one before and I’m still not sure that I need one! But now I have one (and I am not planning to use it for “social networking” so don’t bother asking me to be your friend – its nothing personal, but I’m just not interested in that!). I have it for the specific purpose of having a fan page for Vetty Creations. So you can now go to the Vetty Creations fan page and become a fan! I have no idea what happens on Facebook actually (never having used it before) so I don’t know even if I have the RSS feed for the blog working properly, or if I really need to manually link to the blog from there. I guess I might figure it out in time. 🙂 Maybe some of you will take pity on me and share some of the nifty things you can do on fan pages… Another review of The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion for you today. This one is from Mary Hickmott’s New Stitches. I received my copy of this a while ago, and just yesterday found it again at the bottom of a pile of books, so now I can share it with you. From the review in the May 2010 No 205 issue:
Check out the magazine for the full review. Thanks to the lovely people at New Stitches for sending me the copy of the magazine. The show finished last night at 5pm, and my husband and I had packed up and were out of there by 6:30pm. Home to my kiddies and all the things that have been put on hold for the week. Tomorrow I’ll be starting to teach a beginner’s Hardanger class (project picture below) for The Crewel Gobelin at Killara. There is still time to enrol if you wish to come along. You will need to contact The Crewel Gobelin for all the details and to book. I’m really tired so that’s all you’re getting from me today. 🙂 I was racing through the craft show yesterday to get myself some Kaalund yarn, and went past a spot where they were having a forum with a panel and an audience. I heard the girl running the forum ask the panelists about what they have on their stands or have seen at the show that is “really hot” right now. (A teenage girl phrase if ever I heard one…) I was well past them before any answers were given, so I have no idea what their pronouncements were, however, from my point of view, Mountmellick is REALLY hot at the moment. With the QCWA doing Mountmellick, an embroidery group near Maitland NSW doing it also, and from the amount of interest it has garnered from people walking past and seeing it on my wall over the last few days, Mountmellick is hot. So, if you would like to join in the “heat” (!) please join us in the Mountmellick stitch along that we’ll be starting towards the end of July! More info can be found by selecting the “stitch along” category in the right-hand column. |
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
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