Time on my Hands

Apparently I’ve had glandular fever. While I felt perfectly well I was ordered to rest. Definitely no dyeing allowed! Kumihimo is relaxing, so is stitching. I got out my list. You know the LIST. The one with all of those projects you will make “one day”. Mine is actually on paper and prioritized.

I first looked at the braiding list. I got to work and finished off the 3 braids for the competitions. They’re in the mail. I made braided a heap more with no immediate plan for their use.

I then decided I would make a bookmark from STITCH magazine. If you are not familiar with this magazine it’s published by the UK Embroiderers Guild. It’s my current favourite. Mind you by the time we get it in Australia we are at least 1 issue behind.

Back to the bookmark. When I had a look at the requirements list I realized I was missing the correct thread colours. With no hope of going shopping, remember I’m resting here; I decided to use some of my hand dyed cotton spiral threads. Of course then I had to change the actual pattern of the stitching. I decided its been ages since I’ve used Cushion or Norwich stitch in anything so they got an airing.

And I used a Kumihimo braid in coordinating colours instead of using the suggested twisted cord.

STITCH magazine also has a brilliant website. With a complete stitch library for you to use there is no excuse to try something new. There are also a heap of projects that you can download. This is where my stitched angels came from.

Now for this project I didn’t even have the right base cloth because I had used the last of that on my bookmark. I used a 14ct Aida and some of the left over pink cotton spiral from the bookmark.

Instead of the suggested gold thread I used some pink rayon thread. The background was filled in with 3 strands of pink stranded cotton.

The angel was made using some of my hand dyed Cotton Linen Viscose thread. It has a slight glittery effect where the viscose is. I didn’t have any white felt for the face. I have every other colour of the rainbow but no white. I used some white lawn and the hair was a small length of Cotton Crepe thread stitched into place.

I made a second angel. This time I painted the background with some acrylic paint. As the project will not be laundered I wasn’t bothered about colourfastness. The angel was made from rayon thread in 6 different colours.

I'm also working on some embellished flowers from STITCH. No photos because I need some florist tape and I haven't got any. I might sneak a trip to the shops during this week. The next issue of STITCH should be at the newsagent any day now.