White Threads

tablecloth photography part 2

I had a lovely morning yesterday taking photos of my tablecloth outside at a relative’s place. I always find it interesting seeing how long it takes me to start to “see”.

By this I mean starting coming up with interestingly composed photos. Normally I start off with a whole raft of really boring looking photos. I change things like the angle of camera, the direction of the lighting (when you’re outside, the lighting tends to be quite fixed, so you need to move the items in relation to the lighting source), the arrangements of the things being photographed. With a process of continual tweaking and “trying this”, the composition gradually improves. Of course, some of the ideas are not good ideas, but you can discard them and move onto other ideas.

It took me about an hour to start seeing, yesterday. And then the photos improved dramatically, until I got an absolute pearler. I was REALLY happy with one of the photos, and you can be completely sure that it will feature prominently in the book!

Was it good enough to make into a large poster to display at Beating Around the Bush, so that I can enter the actual tablecloth into the Royal Easter Show? I think maybe it was!

I nearly finished all the hanging ornaments last night. I decided in the end to make them into single ornaments. I have one left to finish off this morning, and then I’ll be taking more photos! What fun!

tablecloth photography

Yesterday I took some photos of The Tablecloth for the Portuguese Whitework book. (If you’re wondering why I’m calling it The Tablecloth you’ll need to read older posts to learn how it seemed to go on forever and ever!)

I got some photos that I am very happy with, however I’m thinking that I’d like to try some more in a different setting today. I might use both in the book if today’s ones also turn out well.

It is lovely filling up the pages with photos of the projects. It fills in a lot of holes and starts to make it look like the book is really moving along. It has been moving along, but adding a photo really makes you see that!

I spent some time over the weekend working on the hanging ornaments. I have to buy more supplies today as I wasn’t happy with how the first one turned out. Still needs more tweaking. However, once they’re done, that will be the end of the project making. Its a bit sad to come to the end of it really! Making projects for a book is always my favourite part. Though photographing them comes a close second!

My aim is to get the book finished before Christmas. I have no idea if that is achievable or not, but I certainly hope so! It does mean that I may post a little more infrequently over the next few weeks. Some days I’ll have nothing to update you on, and others I’ll be too busy. I apologise if it means that you have to do without me a bit. It will be all worth it in the end though – with a beautiful new book to show for it!

historical photos

I haven’t really got anything to say today. But I suppose that I can tell you that things are moving ahead with gaining permission to use some photos of real, historical examples of Portuguese embroidery in the book. We edged closer yesterday, and the person who I’ve been arranging this through said that they were looking forward to seeing my book, which is very nice.

That’s all. I hope you have a great day!

pretty balls of pearl cotton

I called my favourite local needlework shop yesterday to check whether they had the balls of DMC pearl cotton that I wanted. As they did, and it was a rainy day I decided to catch bus to the train station, rather than walking. I checked the bus timetable, and found that the bus would be going past in about a minute!

I quickly grabbed my needlework, my scissors and some supplies (gotta have something to do on the train!), my CD backups of my book that go everywhere with me, my umbrella… all the things I’d need. Or so I thought.

On closing the front door behind me I had a horrible thought. MY KEYS! I felt my pockets, and the pockets in my bag where I would have put them, but they weren’t there. Given that it was only 9:30am, I had a long, wet day ahead of me, locked out of the house. Fortunately I had my wallet with me, so all was not lost. At least that meant I’d be able to buy some lunch somewhere!

Feeling rather deflated, off I went on the bus to the train station, and sitting on the seat waiting for the train, I felt around in my bag for my needlework. Instead, I brought out the CDs, and heard a slight tinkle. My keys! In grabbing the CDs, my keys were obviously with them (they travel as a set these days) and I just chucked them into the same pocket – not the pocket I ever usually put the keys in. Thank you God!

Down at my favourite local needlework shop, I picked up the three balls of coloured pearl cotton that I needed. The shop assistant and I were both surprised how bright the blue is (DMC 796), though it didn’t look quite so luminous outside the shop as it did in it!

They did warn me that I’ll have difficulty finding Anchor Pearl, because the Australian distributor (a new one took over the brand a few years ago) has done such a great job of running down the range that now its pretty much only available in one of the larger, lower quality chain sewing stores.

What has happened to Anchor? I’ve had emails from people in other places around the world in the last few days telling me that they find it difficult to get Anchor these days too. Why is this happening? My experiences with Anchor – admittedly none of them have been particularly recent – have always been satisfactory. Why are they not being supported by good distribution? Its very sad and disappointing. I suppose its all to do with global economic difficulties…

Anyway, I did get the DMC pearl cotton I wanted, so was pleased to be able to use them yesterday afternoon. Lovely feeling thread (I’m sorry Presencia, but I really do prefer DMC, no matter how much I really wanted to support you as a newer player in the market) which is so nice to work with.

2010 Christmas ornament by Yvette Stanton

The hanging ornament that I made a gazillion of last Christmas.

Now, I have a question for you all. I’m making hanging ornaments for the Portuguese whitework book. There will be five or six little square pillows. In the past, I have made similar things into single hanging ornaments, which hang on the diagonal. To the right, you can see an example of one I’ve designed and made in the past. Instead of the embroidery shown though, there will be a square of Portuguese embroidery on these ones.

So that’s one option – all of the little pillows hanging as separate ornaments. But I did have another idea: a swag of the pillows all joined together that could be hung across a mantlepiece. You can find an example of the sort of thing I mean here, on Etsy. Mine would be little pillows, though, not flat.

This would just be a little bit different than what I normally make, so to me it has appeal. But does it appeal to you? Or would you prefer the single ornaments? They’d be more suitable as gifts that way… What do you think?

While it might be ideal to put both of these ideas in the book, unfortunately I don’t have the space to include instructions for both.

DMC and Presencia

Yesterday I got stuck into the last projects for the book – a set of hanging ornaments. I had some different colours to use, some of which were DMC and some were Presencia threads. Both were pearl 8.

The difference was quite pronounced. DMC is marginally thinner, and much more smooth. Presencia is marginally thicker and much fluffier. Just looking at the balls together, there appears to be little difference, but when you actually try working with them, the differences become apparent.

I much preferred working with the DMC. It gave finer wrapped bars, and I know from previous days that it also gives finer bullions, though I didn’t work any bullions yesterday.

I am interested in trying some Anchor pearl also to see what the difference is there, but I’m not sure that I actually know of anyone who stocks Anchor pearl! (I don’t even know that they make it, or if they do, whether their distributor brings it into Australia, which is probably more to the point!)

I think I’ll do a bit of ringing around this morning, and see what I can get my hands on. Getting the right colours is going to be particularly interesting!

photographing cupcakes

I spent some time on the weekend taking more photographs of embroideries for “Portuguese Whitework”. I took delivery of the cupcakes I had ordered from a friend so that I could use them as props for one of my photos. They were absolutely gorgeous, and I was really pleased with how the resulting photo of the embroidery turned out.

Yesterday I spent several hours removing the wash-out pencil from and damp stretching the tablecloth. It is now drying on the floor in our lounge room. I had hoped to photograph it this week, but it looks like the weather is not being my friend. I had hoped to try photographing it at my sister’s – she has a nice outdoor area with a table that might work – but with showers forecast for the whole week, I don’t think it will be happening this week!

I also started work on the final projects for the book – a set of Christmas tree ornaments, though of course they don’t need to only be used on a Christmas tree!

When all the embroideries are finally finished and photographed, I will be sending out another of my email updates about the book with some sneak previews of some of the projects. If you’re not signed up for the email list specifically for “Portuguese Whitework”, you may like to get yourself on that list.

If you’d like to join, please let me know in the comments section. I should be able to get your email address from that. Alternatively, you can go to our contact page and fill in the form there, to let me know of your interest, and your email address so that I can add it to the list.

spongy mats for damp stretching

Just in case you haven’t been reading the comments from Friday’s post, I’m making this into a post of its own, because it contains Really Useful Information.

After showing you my damp stretching set up on Friday, Kathryn asked for a better description of “spongy mats” – a great question!

I have heard of people using a number of different types of things such as cork board, or polystyrene. For small pieces, in the past I have used my ironing board.

However, one of my dedicated readers, Renee, suggested to me to use those high density foam mats that have alphabet cutouts, the type that are for kids to put together as a large floor jigsaw. (You can slightly see the A and B in the photo.) I immediately saw the benefit of something like this: they can be packed away when not in use, and you can use as many or as few tiles as you need for the size of the piece.

I had been troubled by the fact that I was going to have to stretch my Portuguese whitework tablecloth for my book, and this perfectly solved the problem of what to use. I got mine quite cheaply at my local Kmart store (Australia).

Renee has glued the letterforms into her mats so that they do not dislodge. I haven’t yet done this with mine. It hasn’t bothered me that they can fall out, but if I find it is a problem then I’ll superglue mine in too. Potentially it could be a problem if I had to pin into one and the tension of the fabric caused it to pop out. This started to happen with the side of the B, in the example photographed, but you can see that the box is holding the edge of it down.

Given that there are about 30 mats within my pack, and I’ll very rarely use all (or any!) of them, I can’t imagine they’re going to wear out quickly. They will get wear and tear by being pinned into – the pin holes will gradually cause them to break down – but considering how long it will take for this to happen, and that I only paid $15 for the whole set, I think I’ll be getting very good value out of them!

The surface of the mats has texture on them, which if you’re using a not very firm fabric, could show up as texture wiggles on the surface of the fabric when it has dried. If you were concerned about this, you could use the back of the mats instead – on mine these are completely flat. I also found that a light press with the iron (after the work has been unpinned and removed from the mats!) removed any of these texture wiggles.

'Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães' by Yvette Stanton, due for release in early 2012.

I’ve been using the mats with the damp stretching technique for all the projects that are going into “Portuguese Whitework”. So that you can do it too, the book will have full instructions on how to damp stretch.

Thanks Renee, for sharing the wonderful idea of the alphabet mats with me, and for allowing me to share it with others. It is such a Good Idea!

damp stretching setup

I finally finished all the hemming yesterday.

I’ve now got the tablecloth soaking in a bucket so that I can carefully go around the whole thing and remove the wash out pencil marks. I’ve found that unfortunately, due to the density of the bullion stitches, the wash out pencil marks don’t simply disappear in water. I need to give the fabric a tiny (and I do mean tiny – there’s no scrubbing here!) rub with my finger nail. It makes it very time consuming to go around checking every stitch on the whole tablecloth, but when I’ve already spent *so many* hours working on it, I’m not skimping at this stage either!

The runner that I hemstitched on Wednesday was damp stretched yesterday, and I left it sitting like that overnight to make sure it was fully dry before removing the pins. Damp stretching makes such a good result. Full instructions will be included in the book, so that you can use this wonderful technique to have your embroidery looking “just so”.

I thought you might like to see the setup I used for the damp stretching yesterday.

Underneath the embroidery are my spongy mats into which I pin. I have used normal dressmaking pins, and lots of them! Around the edges are 4 cartons of my books which are holding down the edges of the spongy mats, to stop them from curling up under the tension of the fabric.

I could use anything heavy, really, but I’ve got lots of book cartons just lying around and they’re definitely nice and heavy! Having them that large around the edges does impede the airflow and probably slows down the drying a bit, but that’s a price that’s worth paying if it means it will give a good result.

hemming still

I know, this is getting a bit repetitive, isn’t it? I finished another hem yesterday, and still have another one to go. I’ll probably try to get it done today. The remaining one is just going to be a machine sewn hem, so it won’t take so long. It will still need its corners neatly mitred though.

However, having another embroidery finished means I could have a go at photographing it instead. The problem is that I am all out ideas for photographing this particular embroidery! As this point, I go back to all my magazines with still lifey type photos and have a look at photography and get some ideas.

And then there’s a couple of very small embroideries that still need to be done, but I feel like I’d like to get the existing ones properly finished before I start anything new.

Oh, decisions, decisions…!

another hemming day

Yesterday I finally completed a little square mat that’s been hanging around for ages. If you have been to any of my Portuguese Whitework classes or saw me at the Sydney Craft and Quilt show back in June, you’ll have seen it without a hem. Well, now it finally has a hem! I mitred the corners and used an antique hemstitch to finish it, removing just one thread for the hemstitch. (Thanks to those who responded to my question about how many threads you prefer to remove when hemstitching!)

I also rewrote and re-diagrammed (ooh, new word I’ve made there!) my instructions for mitred corners. I’ve organised for some pretty cupcakes to use as props for when I photograph the square mat. I didn’t realise how hard it would be to find pretty cupcakes in the colour scheme I wanted – red, white, and gold – not a particularly outlandish colour scheme, I would have thought!

A friend, Kerrie, does beautifully decorated cupcakes, and I enjoyed decorating some with her earlier this year. I hadn’t realised that she does commissions though, so when another friend suggested her, it seemed like a great idea. I contacted Kerrie, and she’s very happy to make some for me. I’m very pleased, because I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to make my own!

Today I will be continuing on with making mitred corners and hemming. I have a longish, narrowish embroidery that will become a table runner, and then there is THE tablecloth. It should keep me busy for the day!