You can see my also-rans. I still like “Cleave ever to the sunny side of doubt”
I went with Century Gothic for the font (font choice was hard!) and held up the bird part to see how the quote fit.
Sadly, I left out the L in “world” and didn’t notice until I was tracing.
Happily, I didn’t like the placement anyway, so I made plans to spray away the quote after I finished embroidering. I can fix both the missing letter and the positioning.
Internet advertising on Instagram did a good job targeting me. I saw a reel of this little device, and after some obsessive research, I bought two of them, one big and one small. Mine is not as nice as the one I would have bought from Snuggly Monkey, if they had them in stock. And I may yet upgrade. We shall see.
Essentially, the device is a loom that allows you to weave a bit of a rug over your holes. Here’s a sock with two holes in the heel.
Setting up the warp yarns. (I used sashiko thread for this one)
After that, you weave the weft yarns back and forth, reversing the direction of the hooks after every row. You end up with a little checkerboard that looks like this:
My first attempt shows some shoddiness, but that’s what first attempts are for, no? At the last row, you remove the loom and tack the loops from the warp yarn down on the sock (otherwise you are left with a little pocket) and then weave the ends into the sock.
I wasn’t sure if the darn would me distracting to me. It does add an additional layer to your sock. I’ve found that I can feel it when I first put the sock on, but after about two minutes, my body adjusts and I don’t notice the rest of the day.
Hooray for this fun new thing! I’m excited to see what else I can do with it.
Aside from the message, there were some other fun things in this sampler. I loved the curtain made from embroidery floss just hanging out after being woven through straight stitches. I also enjoyed getting the chance to embroider script (hard!) and keep working away at my satin stitch. (It took forever!)
I also learned that when filling a diamond with French knots, it’s best to start from the middle and work outward rather than doing the edges first.
A close-up of my satin stitch. It looks rough, but I’ll get the hang of it. I outlined in backstitch, which I don’t think was the best choice.
This was a great sampler! I had a lot of fun! Thanks, Badass Cross Stitch.
This kit came to me because I needed to spend a few more dollars to get free shipping on Amazon. I searched “embroidery kits” and this popped up. I liked the cat and the colors, and so into my cart it went.
Unlike all the other kits I’ve done, this one seemed to have no creator. I couldn’t find any information about the company. I’m guessing it was made to sell to people who search “embroidery kit” on Amazon. The directions sound like the kit creator speaks another language, in addition to English.
I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.
Let it be known that practice does help improve things. As this Kiriki Press sampler shows, my satin stitch is coming along.
Aside from general satin stitch skill building, the scroll stitch I embroiders, tore out, then practiced on another piece of material for a good chunk of time before I felt confident enough to try again.
The needle weaving was fun, but took a lot of attention. I loved the double herringbone and would like to use more of it in my stitching.
Here’s a close up look that shows off that there are few bald spots on my satin stitch. But I’m fine with it. It’s all about practicing.
You may recall that I was tracing this pattern on New Year’s Day. It has come to pass that I’ve completed it!
I did some experimenting with thicker thread and found I didn’t love it. But I am glad I did the experiment.
Because I traced a circle around the outside of the pattern, I embroidered over that circle with a sampler of the stitches we learned: backstitch (I attempted to do a Morse Code message) whipped backstitch, stem stitch, chain stitch, and couching.
This was a great way to start 2022.
I’ve signed on to Stonesoup recipes again. I need someone else to pick out things for me to eat, plus there was a half-price sale. Jules has revamped her program to better onboard new people into regularly cooking. I didn’t need that, but was glad to partake in her class about seasoning things. I listened to it while I traced my next embroidery pattern as part of the #YearofStitch from Badass Cross Stitch.
Here we did some adding of things to tomato puree. It was fun to see how it changed the flavors.
I love Kiriki’s different samplers and especially love this knit sweater one. I bought the kit with my birthday money. And now I have finished it.
It didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted it to. That cretan stitch was hard, as was the spider stitch. I learned that I should practice new stitches elsewhere before I stitch them on the main event.
Here’s what it should have looked like:
I sewed together my moon phase napkins this weekend, completing that project.
By the end, (I think I finished with the full moon) I wished I hadn’t made it such a starry, starry night. Just a starry night, like I did with the third quarter moon, would have been fine.
These napkins are made from an old sheet of Matt’s that I cut up. They are very soft.
I bought four pairs of pants in September and I have finally accomplished hemming them. (I marked them up the first weekend I had them, so it was getting out the sewing machine that was the impediment.)
I also sewed up the cloth napkins I embroidered. I learned that it’s best not to embroider into the corner, like I did with the green, because sewing the top and bottom halves of the napkin together will make another border and it won’t match the one I’ve embroidered. At least not with my freehand method.
This was me practicing a blanket stitch and a blanket stitch wheel.
