Tag: fabric scraps

April Threads

Hello, hope everyone had a good Easter break.

Some good news: there will be new threads in the shop later this week. 1,451 skeins of it, to be precise – yes, I counted – all wound and labelled by (my) hand.

Random thread collections

At present when you visit the shop you will see all the thread listings are labelled ‘coming soon’ but that will change once the threads go live, probably midweek or so depending on how I get on. And I’ve just realised that midweek is tomorrow. The week has almost gone before it’s started.

Coming Soon

Along with the good news, I’m afraid there’s some bad news. Royal Mail has increased their prices from today, and overseas shipping costs have increased by quite a lot. When I reviewed my shipping costs, I realised that I hadn’t been including the cost of packaging or the currency conversion fee, so in fact I’ve been undercharging for a few years on international postage. I’ve now rectified that, so you will notice the increase. As always, if the automated checkout overestimates your shipping cost, I will refund any overpayment. US customers, unfortunately your shipping is always going to be slightly higher than everyone else’s because it includes the 10% tariff.

beautiful silk sets

It’s much more cost-effective to buy as much as you can at once, as you only pay the shipping cost once per order. Because postage costs are calculated by weight, up to 100g of thread costs the same to post as a single skein.

While we’re on the bad news I’m afraid there’s a bit more of it, for some. A few thread types are now discontinued so when the current batch is gone, they’re gone forever. The discontinued threads are fine cotton boucle, DMC stranded floss, and cotton perle 5.

the last of the DMC thread skeins

Fabric packs are also discontinued and most are on sale, but there are still a few of those left so we’ll see how long they last.

fabric scrap packs

Thank you, as always, for your kind support.

The sun is shining this morning, the buds are unfurling into new leaves, the birds are singing, and all is well.

Wishing everyone a lovely week ahead.

Back to work

It wasn’t much of a week off in the end, because – surprise – this happened:

hand dyed threads drying in the sunshine

I just got lucky with the weather – decent light followed by a good drying day – so thought I would seize the day and all that. I’ll have a couple of easy days this week to make up for it.

I did manage to catch up with myself a bit on the other days. I got to the end of Tabula Rasa, and I’m not sure that’s its name any more but I’ve yet to think of a better one.

Tabula Rasa, the far end

I also enjoyed a little mixed media sketchbook exploration with some motifs based on the stitching.

circles
more circles

The thread will take a while to wind but in the meantime there is probably enough left in the shop to cover thread-based emergencies.

For various reasons, I’ve decided to streamline and simplify my shop contents. For the time being I won’t be making more fabric packs, so most remaining fabrics are currently in the shop on sale to clear. Prices have already been adjusted so you don’t need discount codes, and when they’re gone they’re gone so be quick if you’re interested. I hope you can find something lovely to add to your collection.

hand painted sheer fabric scraps for layering

Back to work after a holiday used to mean my apathetic return to the office where a thousand emails were waiting for me. These days back to work means winding beautiful thread by an open window listening to a robin singing in the garden. What luck. Hope your week is going well too.

Shop news

After a very busy few weeks, the shop is about as full as it can be.

I’ve re-stocked a limited quantity of hand-painted chiffon scraps:

hand-painted chiffon scraps 7″ x 9″

There are still some other lovely fabric packs too.

I’ve made some new half-skein Randoms thread collections – these are (broadly) colour-coordinated half skeins from my current thread range, in sets of 8-10. Good for small projects, and good for expanding your thread collection. Because we all need more thread, right?

new half-skeins from my Randoms

I’ve curated some cotton threads collections, one of each from my current range of cotton threads:

cotton thread collection

And I’ve made some really pretty mini-collections of silk threads, one each of silk perle 8, silk perle 12, and fine silk:

three silk threads

Good for secret Santas and stocking fillers, because we probably have to start talking about Christmas.

I’ll be closing my shop around 10th December-ish, only for the holidays and only for tangible items that need posting; PDFs will continue to be available throughout the holiday period. It seems early to be closing, but I really can’t do the whole panic-last-minute rush thing, spending entire afternoons in a queue at the post office, worrying about whether post is going to arrive in time etc. Last date for overseas orders (that’s outside UK) will be around 2nd December – so if you’re not in the UK, you’ve got about three weeks to buy what you need 😱

Three weeks? Better start writing a few lists myself…

Happy shopping! Get in touch if you have any questions about any of the products, and thank you as always for your valued support. I know I couldn’t do any of this without you.

Fabric heaven

It’s been a busy week of curating and creating some lovely new fabric scrap packs.

There’s a new selection of black/white/neutral sheer and semi-sheer fabrics for you to layer and/or paint:

sheer and semi-sheer fabrics

This one contains scraps of very sheer nylon chiffon, unusual textured tulles, dress nets and plain tulle, two-tone voile, and black and white printed chiffon that takes paints and inks beautifully. These are synthetic fabrics so they won’t take fibre-reactive dye. I’ve had great success using diluted acrylic inks on these fabrics – the inks are semi-translucent so they don’t interfere with the sheerness of the fabrics, and they’re pretty much colourfast when dry.

sheer and semi-sheer fabrics

There’s a collection of hand-painted fabrics (and I’m especially pleased with this one):

hand-painted chiffon, tulle and other scraps

This one contains paint-dyed synthetic chiffon, painted textured tulle, fine nylon chiffon, hand-dyed cotton scrim and a few snippets of hand-dyed cotton organdie and other tiny scraps. Fabulous for layering, and good for my Stitched Samples for Sketchbooks course, and my Stitch a Little Landscape course too.

hand-painted sheer/semi-sheer scraps

And finally, if you like a little luxury in your layered stitching, there’s a collection of hand-dyed silk organza and silk chiffon:

hand-dyed silk organza and silk chiffon

The silk chiffon is ultra-soft and floaty; the organza is stiffer and semi-transparent. This one comes with a couple of yards of hand-dyed/tea-dyed silk ribbon.

hand-dyed silk organza and chiffon scraps

I even made new labels and sourced some compostable cellophane bags to package them in.

new fabric scrap packs

These collections are available now while existing stocks last; I don’t plan to restock before Christmas so when they’re gone they’re gone. Still lots of choice in threads too. Just saying.

Overseas news: I’ve now sent a couple of trial packages to the US, one of which has been delivered (it took about a week) and the other is well on its way. The system appears to be working fairly smoothly.

Unfortunately for anyone in Canada, Royal Mail is not currently delivering there due to the postal strike. You can still place an order if you want to, and I will post it when the current troubles have been resolved.

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend.

Paint-dyeing

I paint-dyed some chiffon fabric this week.

paint-dyed chiffon

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 chiffon
paint-dyed chiffon
nice

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.

Have a lovely weekend.

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.

Making Zen workshop

Just a quick fly-through to remind you that my free Making Zen workshop is available for 24 hours today. Depending on your time zone, you may need to wait for it to become available.

Making Zen workshop

If you want to watch this (and the other 30+ workshops) in your own time, and if you want access to the inspirational artist free gifts, then you’ll need to upgrade to the VIP pass, which you can do here. It’s absolutely worth having, if you can – the value of the free gifts alone is over $3,300, and you get ongoing access to everything.

Making Zen workshop

For transparency, upgrading to the VIP pass from the links on this page allows me to receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) that helps to support my work as an independent artist.

Thank you, and enjoy!

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

Scraps

This week I’m in the scraps box as I start compiling my new forthcoming course on making stitched samples for sketchbooks. New courses take a while to create, but I do enjoy making them.

fabric scraps

However much I take out of the scraps box, it never seems to get any emptier. It always reminds me of the fairy tale about a magic porridge pot that keeps refilling itself. Not complaining, but I do wonder where they all keep coming from.

I like to use lots of layers in my stitched samples. I think of them as transparent layers of time.

stitched samples in progress

The one below is made from scraps of antique and modern lace covered with two layers of very fine tulle, with some textured cotton yarns couched onto the surface.

whites

I’ve also been painting some lovely patterned tulles:

painted tulle

Fibre reactive dyes won’t work on synthetics, but fabric paints do. I use Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow, which are very liquid and behave more like dye than paint. My Stitch a Little Landscape course has a section on painting fabrics this way. You could even use standard watercolours, if you don’t need them to be washable.

At some point it will all come together nicely.

layered stitched scraps ready to become something useful

Piecing it together

Everything patchwork here this week. A little sketchbook cover, with one of Jude’s moons finding a home:

sketchbook cover, 6″ x 5″

You can see that I’ve couched a thicker thread (silk perle 3) over some of the seams, just to define some of the lines.

couching in the ditch

The little book of patchwork, I’m calling it. Somewhere to collect and join fragments of thought.

patchwork objects
sketchbook page

Inspiration comes from unlikely places. This outdoor paving kit from The Range translates perfectly:

pavement patchwork

I’ve dug out these fragments of late Victorian patchwork, just to look and to touch the antique papers.

Victorian patchwork, impossibly tiny stitches

This week I’m putting a patchwork sampler together, just to see how that might work. At some point there will be a (hexagon-free) paper-piecing patchwork course. Nothing wrong with hexagons, but paper piecing is much more than granny’s flower garden.

paper-piecing sampler in progress

Looking at, and thinking through.

hand-dyed silk organza patchwork 6″ square