Another month completed and only the last quarter of the year left.
As always, there’s no plan at all – just thread a needle and begin. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s how life is. I don’t judge the daily stitching; it is what it’s meant to be, however it turns out.
September, detail
As usual, it’s mostly straight stitch and running stitch in various guises. Life is complicated enough at the moment.
There were poppies for my mother’s birthday earlier this month.
September, detail
Today is a few back stitch squiggles. Two steps forward, one step back, a path that loops back on itself sometimes but still gets to where it’s headed eventually. Taking the scenic route, perhaps.
30th September
The other side is just another kind of perspective on where we’ve been.
September, the other side
And October tomorrow…
October ahead, or behind
Onward and maybe upward. Most paths lead somewhere.
I’ll be back later this week with what I hope might be good news for those of you in the USA. 😎
It’s the same technique demonstrated in my Stitch a Little Landscape course, very easy and very effective. Any fabric paints will work; acrylic inks will work too.
If you let the fabric partly dry while it’s scrunched up, you get these really attractive watermark effects where the colour settles into the creases:
paint-dyed chiffonpaint-dyed chiffonnice
An unexpected extra – I laid the fabric strips to dry on some packaging paper and now I have free collage paper too:
packaging paper accidentally paint-dyed
Some of the chiffon will end up in sheer fabric scrap packs next month. I’m pretty pleased with these, which is always a good way to end the working week.
I was a little disappointed to find that my new backpack doesn’t have a designated pen holder section. Lots of other very useful zipped pockets, but no pen pocket. And as someone who always has a pen about them, this was a bit of a problem.
Easy enough to fix, as it turned out.
DIY pen holder
A piece of mount board cut to fit the zipped section, covered with collage papers, a band of elastic stitched down across the middle and there it is. It fits into a zipped pocket perfectly and keeps pens and other drawing equipment nicely accessible.
I think we’re nearly about there with the threads update. First I’m taking a couple of days off, so the new batch of threads will be live from Wednesday, ish.
Here’s my dyer’s perks collection, just some of my favourites from the new batch – silk boucle, fine cotton boucle, silk perle 12, silk perle 8, fine silk and cotton perle 8:
a few new threads for me
I still can’t post anything to Europe or USA, I’m afraid. If you live in one of these areas and have family or friends in the UK, they can order for you as a gift using their UK address.
I have some very pretty silk thread collections, if anyone is thinking about (whisper it) Christmas yet. Just saying.
Silk thread collection: silk boucle, silk perle 3/8/12, fine silk
I’ve also got round to making some better labels for the thread tasters:
thread tasters
I increased the number of Randoms, since these are always the first thing to sell out.
Randoms – 10 mini-skeins, roughly colour-coordinated, various types of thread
You can preview the new threads here; when they’re live they’ll be available to purchase.
Having spent most of this week winding thread, I thought a behind-the-scenes glimpse might be interesting.
I dye thread in hanks, then wash and rinse it, letting it dry outside on a sunny day. When it’s all dry it comes in to be sorted into groups.
hand-dyed thread hanks, grouped by type
I then wind each hank into smaller skeins. Hanks will yield anything from four to ten skeins, depending on the thread type. Pictured below is a new fine cotton boucle yarn that I’m trying. I can no longer get the chunkier cotton boucle that I’ve had previously.
cotton boucle yarn, hanks into skeins
When each hank has been turned into skeins, each skein is twisted. This helps to prevent tangling and keeps them neat and easy to pack for shipping. I use a miniaturist’s drill with half a large paperclip glued where the drill bit should be.
twisted skeins
Then I label each skein with the thread type and yardage. I print, cut and hand write each label. Shown below is the new batch of silk perle 8.
labelling skeins
Once each batch has been labelled, the skeins are sorted by colour ready to be counted, numbered, named, photographed, described and listed in the shop.
skeins ready to be counted, numbered, and named
This entire process has to be repeated nine times, since I currently stock nine different types of thread (four silk and five cotton). I can only wind for half a day at a time, to avoid repetitive strain injury, so it does take a few weeks to get all of it into the shop.
The best bit about the whole process is that there is no waste. Any part-skeins go into Randoms, to be gathered into mini-collections, and anything shorter than a yard goes into the ends pot to be used as ties for tags or in daily stitching.
ends pot (left) and Randoms (right)
Did I say that was the best bit? I meant it’s the second-best bit. This is the best bit:
Mine! Dyers’ perks
I only take a few yards for myself, and only in the colours that really appeal to me. These threads are wrapped round paper tubes, made very simply by rolling a 3″ square piece of copy paper and cutting a little notch in one end.
So there it is – the process from start to end. Threads should be available from around mid-September, if all goes to plan. In the meantime there are still some very pretty threads in the shop here.
For me, back to the daily grind. I mean daily wind.
