Category: supplies

A pot of tea

Tea-drinking is a national sport here in the UK, but I like it best for dyeing fabric scraps and trimmings.

tea-dyed fabric scraps and threads

I thought while I was about it, I might as well dye some thread for the shop as well. I’m often asked for tea-dyed thread, and my usual answer is ‘dip some white thread in a pot of tea’ – it (almost) is that simple. But if you want the convenience of having it done for you, I now have a few tea-dyed threads in the shop. The silk threads have come out particularly nicely, a lovely golden dark cream. The cottons are much paler – in fact that’s how I like them, very subtly coloured – but if you want them darker, just let them steep in some black tea for a while until you get the colour you want.

I have some lovely space-dyed DMC threads still available, in most of the specified colourways:

delicious DMC stranded cotton

And still a fair bit of cotton perle 5 too:

cotton perle 5 threads

Some of the other lines are becoming a little depleted, so I’m in the process of preparing more thread for another dye session, probably later this month. Good job I haven’t got time to sit on this chair, it’s piled high with thread.

thread winding in progress

Very sadly, shipping to the US is suspended for now – I hope temporarily, but we will have to wait and see what options become available. Royal Mail has issued some rules about collecting the necessary tariffs, but with no clear instructions on how to do that. They also make no mention of the $80 admin/customs/processing fee, which to me is much more of a worry than the 10% tariff. If you’re in the US (or anywhere else, for that matter) and you have friends or family here in the UK, there’s nothing stopping them ordering threads for you as a gift to be sent initially to their UK address. Something to bear in mind for birthdays and Christmas, perhaps.

In the meantime, more thread-winding for me. Have a lovely weekend.

Collage papers

I found I had probably more painted collage papers than I need so I’ve made up a few mini-packs for the shop.

painted collage paper packs

Mostly small (approximately postcard-sized and smaller) pieces; there are some nice varieties, colours, and textures that will make lots of beautiful little collages.

representative sample

There’s also quite a lot of thread still available, plus some very pretty silk thread sets:

silk thread sets – delicious

I’ll be taking a break next week, so the shop will remain open until 2pm (UK time) this Friday after which it will be closed for a week or so.

Fabrics

I’ve been sorting through my fabrics and scraps, and I’ve put together a couple of options that are now available in the shop.

The first is a sheer and semi-sheer/textured fabrics scraps pack that looks a bit like this:

FSH – sheer fabrics scraps pack, example

You can see average contents here:

sheer fabrics collection

The second is a lightweight fabrics selection, mostly hand-dyed, and mostly cotton with some scraps of silk and/or linen:

lightweight fabric scraps, average contents

And one in the making:

lightweight fabrics

Both packs are good for layering, to create little landscapes or stitched samples. I used some of the scraps to create a very long cloth, which I’m starting to explore.

a long landscape

Not sure where this one is going, but it looks like a long road. It’s about 4″ wide by about eight feet.

in progress

Have a lovely weekend.

Thread

It’s been a busy couple of weeks: over 950 skeins of thread, wound and labelled and coming soon. Soon-ish. I’ve just got to list and describe a couple more batches, then I’ll take a couple of days off, and after that they’re all yours.

I picked out some of my favourites – I call it dyer’s perks. Hank ends, oddments and leftovers, and all mine. I wind any skeins that are for me onto rolls of paper to keep them reasonably neat.

threads coming soon

These are some of the thread taster sets:

delicious!

Be patient. Not much longer to wait, maybe a week or so.

In the meantime, we’re getting closer to the fabulous Making Zen stitching retreat week, which starts a week today.

join me and 31 amazing artists from 26th May

It’s not too late to get your free ticket:

get your Making Zen ticket here

The free ticket gives you access to the workshops for 24 hours on the day they’re released. Upgrading to the VIP pass gives you lifetime access to all workshops AND you also get the free extras that participating artists are generously sharing. If you bought your early bird VIP pass then I hope you’re enjoying your exclusive early access to all the amazing workshops and free gifts.

For transparency, buying your VIP pass from the links on this page will result in my earning a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps enormously to support my work as an independent artist. Thank you so much.

And a reminder that you can watch my Making Zen interview with Kate here

Watch here

Happy Monday!

Shop News

I’ve been busy producing this over the last couple of days:

hand-dyed threads and fabrics

It will take me a while to sort and wind the thread, as each skein has to be made by hand on this rather Heath Robinson contraption:

Patent thread winder

It’s basically an upended chair with a yarn swift fixed onto the seat, from which I can unwind a skein from the hank onto a niddy noddy (and the autocorrect wanted to change that to giddy body, which made me laugh). A niddy noddy is a hand-held frame that allows you to wind a set number of yards of thread into a skein. A somewhat ridiculous name, in my view, for a very useful gadget.

In the meantime, the shop is open for the remains of the last batch of threads and fabrics. A few announcements:

  1. The global price of silk and cotton has completely sky rocketed and I have no choice but to increase my prices when the new batch is listed. I’ve managed to keep prices the same for a couple of years now so an increase is probably overdue. The existing threads in the shop are still at the old prices, so last chance to buy at this price.
  2. Silk perle 3, extra-fine silk, and extra-fine cotton will all be discontinued when current stocks have gone. Silk boucle is currently under consideration but if I can no longer buy it at a reasonable price then that may well be up for the chop too. I haven’t dyed any more silk boucle in this batch, so what’s in the shop is all there is for now.
  3. SLLD and SLLU fabric packs will be discontinued when current stocks are exhausted. Commercial fabrics have increased in price as well, and I have to buy the fabrics for these packs at retail prices because I don’t have the means to store wholesale quantities. I’ll continue to offer general fabric scraps packs when I can, and these will probably have broadly similar content to the SLLD packs.
  4. I am sorry that I am currently unable to post items to Northern Ireland or Europe.
fabrics for ironing and sorting into packs

I don’t know how long it will take to get these fabrics and threads processed, but I would estimate they could be ready somewhere towards the end of the month.

Have a wonderful weekend while I attempt to find a way up the thread mountain. The colour-coded tags that you can see in the picture, by the way, are knitting markers and they’re there to tell me what kind of thread it is. It can be hard to tell what’s what when it comes out a different colour but these make it easy to see at a glance.

thread mountain

PS – If you haven’t got your Making Zen ticket yet (you’ll need it if you want to access the free extras from me and 31 amazing artists at the end of May), then you can get it here:

get your Making zen ticket here

Threads on sale

While we all wait for me to wind the latest batch of newly dyed threads, there are a couple of special offers in the shop right now.

**EDIT/UPDATE – now all sold out, thank you. Your threads are on their way.

These are the perle 8 silk skeins that are discontinued, and are reduced to clear. When they’re gone they’re gone forever as I won’t be buying this particular thread again.

Please read the full post before heading to the links – thank you.

There are some beautiful perle 8 sets here:

silk perle 8 sets

And there are some single skeins (not dyed by me; please read the shop listing for full details) here:

single skeins, perle 8 silk

Please, a caveat if I may – if you are in the US, please check that you’ve picked United States in the drop-down country menu and not United Kingdom. If you accidentally pick the UK option the system will charge the UK postage rate rather than the correct overseas rate, and this causes extra work and stress for me as I then have to email you to explain. Overseas shipping is expensive. I only charge what it actually costs, and I often make a small loss on international postage. The difference between UK and US shipping costs is about £10. This happens surprisingly often – several times a week, sometimes – and I simply can’t afford to lose £10 every time I ship goods to the US because the correct postage hasn’t been paid. It really isn’t fair to make exceptions.

If this continues to happen then I will have no option but to consider – with immense regret – discontinuing overseas shipping altogether.

Also – if you’re in Europe, please be aware that your country will charge import duties. This is an unfortunate consequence of Brexit and nothing to do with me; I have no control over the amount charged and I don’t profit from it in any way. You can use an online import tax checker to estimate what the additional cost will be.

Apologies for the ranting. Of course I could vastly inflate all my prices and call it ‘free’ shipping. I’d be interested to hear your views, particularly if you’re not in the UK.

Catching up

Operation Restock the Shop continues apace and is keeping me more busy than I thought it was possible to be.

Here’s what’s been happening this week:

A few are dry and ready to wind:

It will take me at least a few weeks to sort and wind everything here. There are some positively scrumptious colours, and they’ll be in the shop as soon as I can get them there – optimistically the second week in September, realistically probably a bit later.

As always, I won’t announce the shop update – I prefer to sidle everything in quietly – but keep an eye out if you’re interested.

For now I’ve got my eye on some of those delicious threads. Dyer’s perks, I call it. Looking forward to a colourful weekend.

Promotion

One of the challenges of being self-employed is that you have to do All The Tasks, including the tasks you don’t enjoy much and the ones you aren’t very good at. In addition to that, the less creative tasks (admin, accounting, stock control etc) seem to take a disproportionate amount of time, leaving less available ‘creative’ time. It’s merely an observation, not a complaint; I’m very happy with where I am, but also I’m often surprised by how little time or space there seems to be for my own work to grow and develop.

For me one of the tasks on the ‘meh’-list is self-promotion and marketing, so when someone is kind enough to do this for me, it really makes my day.

Jen has very thoughtfully taken the time to produce a really lovely response to my Intuitive Daily Stitching course here – a glowing review and some very lovely words. (Following the link may result in a pop-up asking if you want to subscribe to Substack – just click ‘no thanks’ and you should be able to see the post.)

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the course on my Teachable site here.

And you can buy my hand-dyed threads here

fabrics and threads in the shop

It will probably be a while before I dye more fabric or threads, so what’s in the shop is currently all there is. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I may never be able to keep up with the demand for thread (it’s physically impossible for one person, I had mild repetitive strain injury from winding the last batch) so new thread will happen as and when I can fit it in.

For now, I need to set aside some time to read, gather some thoughts, and start some new work – more of which later.

new work brewing

(Limited) progress

I was hoping to have the latest batch of hand-dyed threads in the shop next week but unfortunately that’s not going to be possible.

A few thread types are done but I still have many more skeins to wind, and then they will need sorting into sets, photographing, describing and listing, all of which takes more time than you might expect.

the winding chair

Further progress will be limited because it looks as if our long-awaited house move may finally be happening the week after next, and I will have to close the shop temporarily while I focus on packing.

The shop will close on Tuesday 20th February, and will re-open as soon as I’ve been able to unpack my supplies in our new home. I don’t know how long that will take, but I’m aiming for the first or second week in March. If you’re looking for daily stitching templates while the shop is closed, you can now get those through my Teachable school here.

A preview of some of the silk threads that will be coming next month:

silk threads coming next month

And in the meantime, here’s what I’ll be doing next week:

packing

See you on the other side 🤞🏻

Thread again

The thread update last week has kept me very busy, and if you have ordered some thread (thank you) it’s on its way.

Most of the thread collections have gone; (at the time of writing) there’s just one silk set left:

the last silk thread collection, very pink

I gave myself a surprise extra dyeing day yesterday. Normally I plan these events and spend a week or two preparing for it, but this time I wondered what would happen if I just wound some larger hanks and got stuck in.

And it turned out to be so much easier this time. Winding single skeins and dyeing them takes a bit of time and effort, particularly as many of them need winding again if they tangle too much in the wash. Bigger hanks don’t tangle anywhere near as much, and will yield several skeins of similar colours. They will still all need winding individually, but that’s fine. They’ll be done when they’re done.

threads in various stages of drying/waiting to be washed

This current batch will just be for thread sets, not single skeins. There will be some silk sets and some mini cotton sets, when they’re all dry and sorted. I like putting these collections together, finding colours that sit nicely side by side. They’re a bit like a choir, I always think. Some sing loud and clear, others sing a quieter underlying harmony that sits in the spaces between the more strident notes.

I have a tiny bit of dye left, and there is some fine silk thread that should be arriving today, so I will put all of that together later until all the colour is used up.

leftover dye, and waste not want not

In the meantime there are a few single skeins left in the shop but when they’re gone there will just be thread sets for now.

silk single skeins
cotton single skeins

I’m really looking forward to sorting this week’s threads when they’re all dry. There is nothing so joyful as glorious colour on a grey wet day.