I’m Weaving!
August 28, 2007 at 5:49 pm | In Weaving | 1 CommentAfter seeing some beautifully woven fabric in plain weave on Woven Thoughts, I decided I had to do some Weaving, too. Never having actually used my rigid heddle loom for a real project, I dug out some cheap yarn I have lying around for “just playing”, and warped the loom:
The comb of this loom has 40 dents/10 cm, so the yarn needs to be quite thick to be able to do plainweave. But from the looks of it, my play yarn has just the right size. Here’s a close-up of the first few picks:
The violet yarn at the start is waste yarn that will come out at the end, the dark pink being the first color of the weft. I’ll be using the same colors in the weft that I used in the warp, in the same order, with a large area of the off-white going in the middle. So far, I really like how this comes out, although I probably wouldn’t use those colours on a “real” project.
Appliquéd Pillow Cover – “You’ve Stolen My Heart!”
August 22, 2007 at 8:57 pm | In Book Review, Patchwork, quilt | Leave a CommentSince I like to design my own projects, I like either technical or inspirational needlework books, but mostly not those that only consist of patterns to execute. The book I’m going to introduce today is a mixture of both the technical and the projects aspect.
Appliqué 12 Easy Ways by Elly Sienkiewicz teaches lots of different ways to do appliqué. The author uses a project with a simple heart pattern to introduce the different possibilities. The heart pattern is chosen because it has an inside and outside corner, straight lines and curves, so you get to exercise the different situations you come accross when doing appliqué. I didn’t really like the very traditional red and blue pattern the author presents, so here’s my version in a bit more colour:
I think I already mentioned that I love to make pillow covers, as they are just the right size to try out something new. I used some of the fabric I’ve collected over time together with black to set it all off. Following the instructions, the hearts are worked in the different techniques, so you get to figure out what works best for you. I really like the book for its technical aspects. The patterns presented are generally very traditional in nature, so I’m not very likely to do any of them, but I think they would be great for somebody who wants to make traditional appliqué quilts.
Book Review: Carrickmacross Lace
August 15, 2007 at 2:21 pm | In Book Review, Lace | Leave a CommentI promised to write a little bit more about the needlework books that followed me home from Ireland when I hava actually read them. So, here goes the first one:
Carrickmacross Lace—Irish Embroidered Net Lace by Nellie Ó Cléirigh is a very nice book I really enjoyed. Starting with a short history of lace-making in Ireland it goes on to show numerous pictures of old laces. The technique is explained in a very short and concise form. This should be sufficient for somebody with some experience in lace-making to get an idea of the technique, but is probably not detailed enough for a beginner. At the end of the book there are numerous patterns to work, most of them copied from original Carrickmacross patterns.
Carrickmacross Lace is an appliquéd lace. A fine cotton or organdy fabric is appliquéd onto fine net (preferably cotton), and the fabric outside the pattern is cut away so the net shows through. There are numerous embellishment techniques possible, including cutting away the net as well and using lace stitches such as described in my tutorial to fill in the open areas.
After reading that book I’d really like to try a simple motif using that technique. It definitely looks much faster than making the whole lace up from scratch! Although I don’t like most machine-made laces, a hand-made lace using a machine-made background does sound like a good idea.
Needlepoint Lace Tutorial – Part 9
August 11, 2007 at 12:31 pm | In Lace, Tutorial | 9 CommentsAt the end of the last part I had a finished piece of lace still attached to the pattern. So, the next step is to remove the lace from the pattern. For this, take out the stitches that hold the doubled-up piece of fabric together first. After that, you can go on to remove all the stitching that holds the pattern and the lace to the fabric by cutting the threads between the two layers of fabric. This ensures that you don’t accidentally tear or distort the lace while removing the threads. When you’re finished with this, it should be easy to remove first the paper pattern and the lace from the fabric and afterwards the lace from the pattern. The result of this operation looks like this from the backside:
You see lots of little thread-ends sticking out of the outline. These need to be removed next. A pair of pliers comes in handy here. Most of the threads should be easily removable. Sometimes, there’s a thread that’s attached to the lace so firmly that it’s impossible to remove. In these cases, I just cut them as short as possible. They’re all but invisible if the sewing thread has the same colour as the lace, therefore I always use the same colour.
When all of this is finished, all that’s left to do is to take a nice picture:
As for taking good photographs, I’ve found it important to use a non-reflecting background. For this, I use a piece of black cardboard that works pretty well. When the surface is reflecting I’ve found that my cameras auto-focus has problems focusing and I get blurry pictures. The other essential for me is good lighting. Using the flash isn’t too successful and I always get problems in artificial light, so I try to get natural light whenever possible.
With this installment, we’ve followed this small piece of lace from start to finish, and I really like the result. I’m still learning a lot with each piece of lace I make, and I already have some ideas of things I want to try. But more about that later.
Needlepoint Lace Tutorial – Part 8
August 5, 2007 at 9:24 am | In Lace, Tutorial | Leave a CommentDuring my holidays I managed to finish up that little project, and I’ll do the write-up of the last steps over the next days.
All the outline threads need to be covered with dense buttonhole-stitches. They are worked over two additional threads that are laid over the outline:
It is important to work the parts that should appear in the background first, so the foreground has a continuous line at the end. In this project, the foreground is the complete seed at the top and will be worked last.
The short lines inside the seeds are worked when you come first across them. Take one of the inlaid threads to the end of the line, secure them under the outline thread there and bring it back:
Now the working thread is brought to the end of the line, secured there, and buttonhole stitches are worked towards the line we started from. Here’s the finished line:
Now the main line can be continued until all outline threads are covered. Then we have the finished lace still attached to the pattern:
Looks good already, right? In the last part of this tutorial I’ll show you how to get this off the pattern and into a presentable form.
Celtic Knot Cross-Stitch
August 3, 2007 at 8:18 am | In Embroidery | Leave a CommentTags: cross-stitch
I spent two very enjoyable weeks travelling through Ireland. I always liked the knotwork designs that are visible in so many places there, so I was delighted to find a needlework pattern with a knotwork motif to take home:
This is a pattern for a greeting card produced by Celtic Cross Stitch, and the finished motif is just 5*5 cm in size. It is a nice and easy pattern, and I was able to finish it in just a couple of days while still on holiday. The blue of the background is actually a lot darker than in the photograph.
There’s more to come along those lines, since I couldn’t resist buying another pattern, but I haven’t even started that one yet. It comes from the Book of Kells Collection, depicting the letter “R“.
I also bought a number of needlework and design books, and I’ll give you a short review of those once I’ve actually read them.
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