Jennie's Threads

Earlier this month I finished a little embroidery I started back in March. The pattern is called Bloom by Jessica Long at Namaste Embroidery and it was run as a Sew-Along which I failed to keep up with! After my success using colour-tinting on my February embroidery , I had another go for this, and again I'm really pleased with the results. I love the depth it gives the piece without the need to infill entire flowers or leaves, yet it doesn't over-power the embroidery. I have bought a greater variety of pencils already so expect more colour-tinting to come! I've done embroidery for a long time, firstly cross-stitch and then free embroidery, but I rarely use any more than 2 threads (of 6-stranded embroidery thread - normally DMC). This was a little different as large parts of the work were done in all 6 strands. And much as I love the finished look with the large flowers popping out boldly, I did not enjoy sewing it. Even after changing to a larger needle, there was a l...

I've really been enjoying my embroidery this year, after not doing very much last year. One of the challenges I set myself at the start of the year was to learn to colour tint my fabric before adding the embroidery - I love buying the pre-printed panels, but I'd like to do this myself as well. And the opportunity to learn this arose in February. Meg Hawkey of Crab Apple Hill Studio hosted a stitchalong to celebrate National Embroidery Month, and the first step was colour your fabric. I bought the pencils she advises,  the blending stumps, something called fabric extender and the pigma pen. And I gave it a go. My first attempt ended badly. Because the one thing I didn't buy was a new, clean paintbrush. So when I came to add the fabric extended, it went all bleary and muddy as, despite cleaning the paintbrush thoroughly, it obviously wasn't clean enough. It was unsalvageable so I started again, and I was so much happier with the results. The practice piece was, in...