White Threads

More reviews of Yvette Stanton needlework books

I received an email this morning from Karen Platt, who, according to her website is primarily known in the UK for her gardening books. Also being interested in creative crafts, she has recently moved into reviewing books on craft, including embroidery books.

Karen has written a completely unsolicited review of each of my books, and wanted to let me know. It was quite a lovely surprise, and she’s said some very nice things about our books.

In her email she said,”I am in love with your work. I did not realise they were self-published – good for you. I have self-published 20 gardening books, so I know how hard it is. I wish I were in Australia, I would attend your classes.”

Her reviews can be found at www.karenplatt.co.uk/reviews.

Excerpts from Karen’s review of Elegant Hardanger Embroidery:

Learn how to create the stitches, even the harder ones. Find professional hints and tips and how to fix mistakes… Fifteen exciting projects help you to explore the skills you have learned… Absolutely fabulous, I would recommend this book to anyone. Yvette Stanton is an embroidery teacher who puts her message across effectively.

Read the full review of “Elegant Hardanger Embroidery” here.

An excerpt from Karen’s review of Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature:

…This is an amazing book that will introduce you to the art of this type of embroidery – long may it be kept alive. I fell in love with it at first glance. Like Yvette’s other embroidery books, I would recommend this to anyone without hesitation.

Read the full review of “Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature” here.

An excerpt from Karen’s review of Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery: Merezhka Poltavska:

Yvette Stanton is one of my favourite embroiderers and all her books are well worth buying. Why not explore this fantastic type of embroidery with Yvette’s aid? In this book, Yvette provides an introduction to Merezhka Poltavska…

Read the full review of “Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery: Merezhka Poltavska” here.

Now you’ve read the reviews, make sure you pick up a copy from your favourite needlework shop. We have far-reaching distribution, so our books are available around the world. You can also purchase all Yvette Stanton’s embroidery books from Vetty Creations.

left handed stitch dictionary – chain stitch

This week I have been getting stuck into doing the illustrations and instructions for all the various chain stitches – and there are so many! But its filling in lots of pages so I feel like I am making a lot of progress.

If there is time later today, I think I might get started on the stitch samples, showing how each finished stitch looks. It seems like time to do some more embroidery. 🙂

Guest writer on Needle’N Thread

Mary Corbet of Needle’N Thread has a special guest spot with me on her blog today, talking about my experiences with self publishing. There are also a couple of examples of my work that you may not have seen before.

The post can be found at Needle’N Thread.

Thanks so much for hosting me Mary! 🙂

Teaching in 2009

Over the past few years my teaching engagements have been steadily increasing. It has been wonderful to go to various shops and guild groups around the country to share my embroidery skills with them. Its been a lot of fun, and I’ve met some wonderful people.

Due to continued illness I have decided (well, been forced really…) to take this year off from teaching. The only booking that I still have is for Country Bumpkin’s Beating Around the Bush in October 2009, which I certainly intend to be at!

I sincerely apologise to all the people who hoped/thought I would be coming to visit them this year. I just am not well enough. Having battled with ill health for much of the last two years, I need to take a break and stop overstretching myself.

I’ll see you at Beating Around the Bush!

Finished Elizabethan embroidery

Happy New Year to all my blog readers!

I have now finished my Elizabethan embroidery. It is unlike anything I have ever stitched before and I had so much fun doing it. This all came about because of a sort of personal challenge from Mary Corbet for me to include plaited braid stitch in my left handed stitch dictionary.

If I was going to include it, then I had to know plaited braid stitch back to front. So that meant doing a lot of it, and I wanted to make it worth my while, and make it into something pretty or useful. So this is the finished embroidery. I have ummed and ahhed about what I will make it into, and have decided that I will make it into a bag – sweetbag style. I did consider framing it and sticking it on the wall, but we’re running out of wall space, and besides I want to show it off! So it will be a bag that I will wear when teaching to keep my scissors, threads etc in as I wander around the teaching room. And I can wear it to any shows that I attend. What a show off I am!

Therefore, plaited braid stitch WILL definitely be included in the book (I know I’ve already said it would) but now it HAS to be, because I’ve invested all this time and effort in making this piece.

I did learn a lot from it too. About the thread thickness, and about the spacing of the stitches. And about starting off on angles, and things like that.

And as a by-product, I now have lots of experience with detached buttonhole and trellis stitch.

I am unsure as to whether anyone else would want to make this project too. Because I could write the instructions and make the project available at some point in the future… Or even teach it… So please let me know if you’d be interested.

Benton and Johnson gold thread

For my current needlework project, I needed some gold thread for stitching plaited braid stitch.

A few days ago I had tried the 371 Jacobean Gold thread that I’d bought last week (a small amount of to test) and it was too thin and didn’t give good enough coverage. Then I’d tried some Kreinik #7 Japan thread, which was a good thickness, but it didn’t curve well, and looked very fake and plastic fantasticky. I really didn’t think I was going to be happy with it.

Despite the fact that I said I was going back to The Crewel Gobelin to get the T69 Benton and Johnson imitation Japan gold thread, plans changed. An unexpected visit from an out-of-town old school friend and her children!

But, this morning I went back to choose the thread I needed. It turned out that the T69 was too thick, so I got the T71 instead. I tried out a small section of it to see how it stitched up and was very happy with it. I then estimated how much I was going to need (I think I’ve completely overestimated actually, but too much is better than too little!) and purchased the rest of what I needed.

I also got some slightly thinner T72 thread for the smaller tendrils.

Started stitching and mmm… I like it very much!

I’ve been doing embroidery!

The title of this post doesn’t seem particularly remarkable for someone who is a needlework designer and writes books about embroidery. However, I have been seriously ill for much of the last year, and during the worst times I have been unable to stitch. It has therefore been a wonderful thrill to me that I have spent much of the last week (with a break for Christmas!) working on a new needlework project. I have SO enjoyed stitching again, and SO enjoyed feeling well enough to do it!

Yes, I had done a few little bits of needlework recently (as you will have noticed from my blog posts), but this was my first new project in a VERY long time. I took a little trip to Killara to visit Margaret at the Crewel Gobelin to purchase the silks that I wanted to use for the project, and some gold thread. It is the first time I have used Au Ver a Soie silks, and my, they are so nice use and to look at!

I’m now in search of (I think) some T69 Benton and Johnson gold thread, but don’t know of anywhere that I can SEE it, buy a short piece, and try it, before I calculate how much I’ll need to complete the project. I have great sympathy for people who have NO access to a needlework shop. I am grateful that I have one very close by and two others within 15 minutes drive.

So, here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve been working on. I’ve never done this sort of embroidery before and I have enjoyed it very much. The colours have been so nice to work with. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet.

A few minutes later: Just called Margaret, and she’s got the T69! So, guess what I’ll be doing today?

NOT plaited braid stitch?

Ok, I’m going to be a little controversial here, or maybe just show my ignorance… 🙂

I have been looking at the front cover of a book that I own “Three Hundred Years of Embroidery 1600-1900: Treasures from the Collection of the Embroiderers’ Guild of Great Britain” by Pauline Johnstone. On the front cover it shows a close up of a panel owned by the Embroiderers’ Guild, that is mentioned as being possibly a coif. According to the information inside the book, this piece has the accession number EG 79-1982.

I have found another (dreadful) photo of it at here and here.

Apparently it is also included in the book “Treasures from the Embroiderer’s Guild Collection” by Lynn Szygenda, though I don’t have a copy of that book.

In the “Three Hundred Years” book and on the Elizabethan Costume website, it says that the piece features plaited braid stitch. I beg to differ! One assumes that they mean that the coiling stems are stitched in plaited braid stitch – because its certainly not anywhere else. But by looking at the close up photo on the cover of the “Three Hundred Years” book, you can see that it is definitely not plaited braid stitch.

So what is it? Well, with lots of careful studying, that would have of course been so much better in person, looking at the actual piece, and not a photo of it; and with my needle and thread in hand, I think I’ve sorted it out.

It appears to be a variation (possibly) on ladder stitch (aka ceylon stitch), with the ‘rungs’ of the ladder back stitched so that they are grouped together in twos.

I’m not sure that it is all plain and simple ladder stitch/ceylon stitch (some parts DO appear to be, but other parts don’t), because in parts the stitches seem wider and more interlaced than that. So what I propose it is in some parts, is like a heavy chain stitch in that each subsequent stitch goes under two of the previous stitches, rather than just one as you would have in broad (or reverse) chain stitch. Of course, I’m quite prepared to be wrong on that. Actually I’m quite undecided about whether it is normal ladder stitch or a variation…

I’m sorry that I don’t have a close-up photo of the original to show you. Perhaps if you have the book, you can take a look yourself and see what you think. I’d love some other opinions.

Colourstreams hand dyed wool felt

Look what arrived in the post today! I purchased some Colourstreams hand dyed wool felt. It was rather difficult choosing from their website, because the only colour preview they give you is of their thread skeins. It is extremely difficult to imagine how that translates into hand dyed fabric.

Thread and fabric are different! One is linear and the other is a flat surface…

Anyway, I was pleased with the pinky-yellow one. It was about what I was expecting. The blue-green one was basically what I expected, though I really would like them to add a more baby blue colour scheme to their range. The purpley one was not at all what I was expecting. On the thread sample for that colour (fuschia) it was pinky-purple. Well, that’s not what turned up at all. Not sure what happened to the pink…

For reasonably expensive bits of fabric, it was a little disappointing, but I suppose that’s what you get for having to choose over the internet.

I’d really love for Colourstreams to have a better system of choosing swatches for the fabrics on their website. Previews of *fabric* would be nice. Its probably a lot of work for them, and that’s why they’re not doing it, but gee, it would be a bit more helpful for the customer.

I am sure that I will have fun using them, they’re just not quite what I expected!

Beating around the Bush

Yesterday I received my program/class list booklet for Country Bumpkin’s Beating around the Bush Needlework Convention. I’ll be teaching Mountmellick, Merezhka and Hardanger embroidery at it.

Reading through the brochure, I can’t wait to go! I’ve never been to an embroidery convention before. I think it will be so wonderful to spend a week with other people who are as passionate about embroidery as I am.

Ok, I’ll stop my breathlessness now…

But I really am looking forward to it!