What type of hoop do you like?

I've been embroidering since I was a kid and there is only one type of embroidery hoop I know; a round wood one with a screw for tightening it. 

When I was talking to my sister today she was lamenting not being able to find her favourite hoop. So, I figured I'd just bring up the same round hoop on Amazon and send her one. At one time I had a set of steel hoops with cork inlay for holding the fabric, that had a spring on the outer ring so there wasn't any tightening adjustment, but it has disappeared. It didn't hold as tight as the screw type, but it was real easy to use especially for older people who might have difficulty tightening the screw. (Who am I lidding, I'm starting to have trouble!)

I just went online to look for the simple little hoop I'm accustomed to and WOW have times changed!

There is the typical wood variety:

Then the more modern plastic ones:

The same thing in oval:

There is a square type:

There is a rectangular variety with the screw on the corner:

Then there is a peculiar spring type hoop:

Have you ever tried a clip frame?:

I wonder what different types people use and what they like or dislike about them? Comments? Please? Inquiring minds want to know.

Tree trunk

We've either had weather too hot to go outside, or too much rain to go outside. Either way we've been mostly stuck in the house instead of out on the scooters. We uploaded some videos that we did with the cheap body cam, but the movements were choppy even after applying stabilization software and we're dying to do them again with the GoPro because it's just so much nicer. We'll just have to wait for better weather.

Of course bad weather means I've had some time for stitching. I decided to start the embroidered landscape with the large tree on the right, working with 3 strands of thread. To get a more realistic tree trunk I used one dark and one medium brown. I cut the same length of thread for each colour and separated each of them them into 3 strands giving me 2 sets of medium and 2 sets of dark threads. I put one set of each colour aside. Then out of the second set, I pulled 1 strand out of the dark thread and 1 strand out of the medium thread. I paired 1 strand of dark with 2 of medium and 1 strand of medium with 2 of dark. 

That gave me two multi-colour sections of thread of similar but different shades. Then I used a split stitch on the trunk and limbs. When the first two sections of thread were used up, I repeated the process on the sections I had laid aside. It resulted in a nice effect on the tree trunk.

I don't really want to work on the tree leaves yet, so I think I'll start on the flowers at the bottom next.

Landscape embroidery

 I have just realized that a post I thought I had done some time ago is still sitting unpublished on my computer. During our enforced home lockdown during the pandemic, I amused myself by embroidering 5 large floral pictures, but I thought about doing a landscape picture to hang on the wall. I looked at adult colouring books and found some possibilities and ordered the most likely books.

While waiting for the books to arrive I went out and purchased several frames (five). After the butterflies, I'm not getting caught again without appropriate size frames.

I found one or two realistic landscapes I could use and selected one with a stream in the foreground with stepping stones leading across to a gazebo surrounded by trees and fields.

I pre-shrunk some cotton material. I've learned my lesson after ruining one tapestry size project, always wash the fabric first. Then I cut out a large rectangle, laid it over the selected picture and traced the image in pencil, omitting some parts I didn't want and modifying others. 

After I had my drawing done it was time to select colours. I have over a hundred shades of different colour skeins of threads, both the old Coats and Clark Anchor threads and the DMC threads from when I did petit point. I needed to sort out what colours and what shades of colour I wanted to use for each element. I used 3 strands of thread throughout and selected stitch types that best allowed following the natural contours of the object I was working on.

Selecting colours took several days as I planned things out. When you need to blend shades of colours, you have to make sure that you have enough of the colours you want to use for the entire project, not just the segment you're working on.

I think I used 7 colours in the stream, which I then couldn't use for the sky. I had several trees and bushes each of which took at least 3 shades of green. When you have grass, overlapping flowers, overlapping bushes, overlapping trees, overlapping more trees, the colours have to have enough contrast so that you can distinguish one from the other.

I decided to do the gazebo in white, which in terms of thread colour, was white, light cream, dark cream, beige and pale brown. I started with the bottom of the roofline doing rows of couching stitch in white, then the pillars also in white using a romanian couching stitch. for the caps of the pillars did a short row of fly stitch. I used an outline stitch for the roof and segments. The fill-in for the dome was done in long and short stitch using thread shades in light and dark with the palest shades in the middle of each segment.The base of the cupola was done in chain stitch followed by several rows of couching stitch and topped with tight rows of fly stitch and a few sraight stitches for the peak. The lower part of the gazebo was done in chain stitch, with long and short stitches for the inner part of the gazebo and satin stitch and split stitch for the floor and stairs. That's 9 different stitches just in the gazebo.

I didn't stop to take in progress pictures, but while I was working on it, my sweetheart was posting some things on our website and he took pictures of what I was doing and uploaded them. Grr! I don't mind the picture taking, but I don't like displaying half done work. At least that means I can show you what I did in detail.

The stepping stones and rocks at the water's edge, parts of the daffodils and the crocus flowers were done in satin stitch. The water, sky and background grass were all done in long and short stitch, blending two to seven shades of colour for each area. Long and short stitch works really well for blending colours.  There are 7 shades of blue in the water and 6 different shades of blue in the sky. The daffodils were done in daisy stitch, satin stitch, split stitch and straight stitch. The grass in the foreground used 2 shades of green in fly stitch.

The tree trunks were stitched in 3 shades of brown using a split stitch and the leaves were sewn using a daisy stitch in either 2 or three shades of green. I thought sewing every individual leaf was time consuming, until I had to go back and fill in the spaces between the leaves with tiny straight stitches. Doing those fill in stitches took me a whole week and I'm not even sure if it wouldn't have looked better just to fill in the large areas and leave the itty bitty one tiny stitch areas blank.

The original image called for lots of background shrubs and trees and fields which don't lend themselves to stitching, so I opted to replace them with a field of grass. I chose 2 shades of a bright green that would stand out behind the shrubs, trees and flowers and filled in the area with vertical long and short stitch, which contrasts with the horizontal water and sky. Since I omitted the shrubs that were in front of the trees on the left, I had to extend the tree trunk to come down behind the gazebo so the it didn't look like the tree was floating in the air.

The low lying shrubs to the right of the gazebo were done with rows of  open daisy stitch. I kept on debating whether I should fill in the open area, but it felt like it would bring more attention to an area I wanted to fade into the background so I left them blank.

The original diagram had tulips along the water's edge, but they were so much smaller than the daffodils in the foreground, tulips didn't make sense so I changed them to crocuses. The weird little lumps that were supposed to be on the right didn't have definite shape or position so I replaced them with evergreens that I did in a vandyke stitch that lent itself to an evergreen shape.

The rest of the picture was filled in with long and short stitches in six shades of blue. Now that it's done I wish that I had worked with lighter shades of blue for the sky. 

I also wish that I had paid more attention to the size of the picture. The image is 6.5 inches across. I stitched some extra so that the stitching would go under the mat in the frame. The interior size of the mat is an opening 8 inches wide. I added about a half inch on each side  which left me with a finished size of about 7.5 inches, which was not quite enough. I can fix it by sewing a little more along the edge, except that I'm not sure which colour I used where. I started out keeping track of which colours I was using, but stopped at the last couple of shades, which just happen to be the ones along the right hand side of the picture. It will be easier to just swap out the mat for a wider one.

If you were counting, that's 12 different stitches in the whole picture. Thirteen shades of blue, twenty one shades of green. Twelve shades of brown, five shades of cream, four shades of yellow, one shade of pink and one shade of purple. 

I bought 5 frames and only one is filled. I just went on line and ordered some more colouring books. I wonder if I have enough thread or if I should order more colours just in case.

Better late then never

In 2007 I started embroidering 8x8 inch squares in butterflies, thinking that I'd make enough for a quilt. After I'd done a few, and couldn't find pictures on line of things I wanted to use and a little bit of math told me that it was going to take years to have enough patches embroidered, I scrapped the idea. 

In 2018 I finished larger bird and flower picture which is also an odd size that's hard to find a frame for. Not being able to frame this picture made me think again about what I could do with a few very densely embroidered patches. The problem is that an 8x8 patch works for a quilt square and not much else. Then I had the bright idea of stitching the small patches onto a bigger square and mounting the larger square onto some masonite that would allow me to stretch and block the embroidery flat. Concentric rows of dense embroidery results in hugely puckered fabric so stretching was definitely necessary.

I had some 11 inch square sections of masonite which I used. The embroidery was done on cream coloured fabric and the outer square was white. I wanted a royal blue mat large enough to cover over the white fabric so that all that would be visible was the original 8x8 patch and a plain 11x11 frame. I kind of just wanted a blue frame, but I couldn't find what I was looking for and couldn't find anything in the appropriate size frame. There's no way I'm going to pay for a dozen customized frames. So the patches have been stitched up sitting here waiting for years for me to do something with them.

I kept ruminating on different ways the I could get the blue framing I wanted. I have the mat and that would cover the top, but then what do I do with the sides........if only the white fabric could be covered with some way to wrap the colour around the edges.....Then I had a Duh! moment. The obvious solution was to rip off the white fabric and replace it with royal blue!  A week's worth of effort and here are the pictures with blue frames stretched and blocked and finally, finally hung. It only took 15 years.

I got smarter, when I embroidered the flowers I did in the winter of 2019 and spring of 2020 and bought the frames first. The pictures were made to fit the purchased frames so that all I had to do was stuff the embroidered fabric into the frames. So easy!

Now if I can only find a frame for the large bird and flower picture they can all get hung!

Trapped in isolation or An excuse to create

I haven't blogged in ages. I've almost forgotten how. I haven't done much tatting, mostly because I've been doing a lot of embroidery. Back before Christmas I wanted to embroider a floral picture to hang on the wall. I love embroidery almost as much as I love tatting, but when it comes to making something to hang on the wall, I just think embroidery is a better medium. 

I embroidered a series of butterflies thinking that I'd do enough for a quilt working each one in about an 8 inch square which is fine for a quilt. After I'd done a few of them I ran out of patterns for butterflies and decided that I'd frame them instead but 8x8 is an odd picture frame size so THAT didn't work out. 

This time, I used a 7x9 picture frame I already had and sized the printout to fit the frame. I ran out of the cream colour fabric I'd been using a did this one on white instead, which I didn't like as much. The small bouquet of roses and lilies turned out pretty good and I decided to do a floral series of 5 pictures that I could frame and hang as a grouping. 

Having already run into the picture frame sizing issue, I thought I'd be smart and buy the frames first and size the pictures to fit the frame. Then I needed to make a trip out to the fabric store, which is kind of out of the way, for more fabric. From my years of doing petit point I have a 30 drawer case of various colours and shades of embroidery thread. Just about the time the pandemic hit I had my fabric, embroidery thread, and frames all collected up so that I could start sewing. All I needed was patterns. 

When planning for several pictures where I wanted to be able to blend shadings of colour I was restricted to large flowers. I love lilacs, but they're a collection of teeny tiny flowers which aren't easy to depict in thread. That meant that my search for pictures was restricted to real not fantasy flowers and to flowers with large individual petals. Some of the nicest pictures I found were for detailed single flowers but I wanted groupings. A lot of the flowers were cartoonish and a lot of them were shaded too much to make good embroidery outlines, but I finally found some I thought would work.

The first picture I did was a grouping of bearded iris which I chose because it let me use a variety of colours I think there are 26 different colours in this one and it's one of my favourites. The flowers were done in an outline stitch and I used mostly long and short stitch to blend the colours of the petals, with french knots for the "bearded" part. The stems and buds where done in satin stitch and the leaves used a couching stitch. I included a ruler in the picture for scale.

I chose not to completely fill in the leaves for a number of reasons. The lines gave them texture. They're boring. That's a lot of green. We're in lock down and the stores are closed, so I can't get more green thread and there's more flowers to sew.

A typical flower choice is roses, but I'd just done roses in the small picture so I went for peonies. The picture I selected to work from had 3 flowers and since peonies come in red, pink and white, I tried to work with pink and red. I needed at least 3 graduated shades of red and 6 of pink.The trouble with it was that I didn't really have enough shades of either the pinks or the reds to work with. I don't like how this picture turned out at all. I used outline stitch for some of the flowers and filled in a lot of the sections in satin stitch, and other sections in long and short stitch. Because I didn't have a lot of colour choices to work with I did some blending of colours using 1 strand of one shade paired with 2 strands of another. It sort of worked, but I don't really like the final result.

At this point I had a picture with purple blue and yellow and one with pink and red, and I didn't want to miss out anything in the colour palette, but I don't really care for yellows and greens. The greens would get picked up in the leaves, but I needed some yellow and orange. I didn't care for any of the images I found of sunflowers, which is why the next picture was tiger lilies and I like how this one turned out. I used 6 shades of orange, 3 light and 3 dark in long and short stitch with pale yellow for the stamens done in satin stitch and 3 shades of green for the stems and leaves also mostly satin stitch. The dots of brown are french knots and the brown pollen is done in boullion stitch.

I really like/love blue but there aren't a lot of flowers that fit my criteria in blue. There's a florist iris, but I'd already done an iris bouquet. There's columbine, but the flowers are smallish and they come with more leaves than flowers. Then I found this picture of clematis which seemed perfect. I used 6 shades of blue with yellow centres and 2 of green, making a point of using a yellow green instead of a blue green for the leaves. I didn't think it would turn out very good, but when it was finished it was one of my favourites.

For my 5th picture I wanted a floral grouping in multiple colours and tulips seemed a "made to order" choice. It let me use a lot of different colours, but I don't like the looks of it. I didn't have as great a selection of colours as I really needed and about the only store open during our isolation was WalMart, whose selection of colours was just as limited. Consequently the tulips look like balls of colour on sticks instead of like a pretty bouquet.

The flowers are done and stuffed in frames. They really need to be blocked before they can be hung, but my enthusiasm has waned since I'm unsatisfied with 2 of the 5 pictures. But here they are in a group.

The embroideredy that didn't work

I have been trying to finish off some things lately that have been hanging around for a while. Some time ago I posted a picture of a partially embroidered butterfly. There was a discussion on the Yahoo group, hand-embroidery, about creating a transfer from a printed page and out of curiosity I had to give it a try. It turns out that any clip art, or scanned colouring book image can be turned into an instant transfer when you use a laser printer. Laser printers make use of powdered ink mixed with wax. When you apply the heat of an iron to the printed page you get a decent transfer image.

At the time the ladies in the hand-embroidery group were working on each one doing their rendition of an embroidered butterfly, so I used the butterfly image as a trial transfer. It worked so well I instantly thought of doing a quilt with a whole series of embroidered blocks. I jumped into the process with great enthusiasm, and selected a skein of turquoise embroidery floss that I had been saving to do the butterfly.

Turquoise is an odd colour. It's just that mix of blue and yellow that it makes it difficult to pair up with other colours and still look good. I did the outer border and then started working on the inner part of the wings. The first colour I tried I didn't like, so after several hours of work I ripped it out. The next colour I liked but not the kind of stitch I had chosen to use, so again I ripped it out. The third time I tried it using a third combination of stitching and colours, and finally found something that looked OK. By this time I had done hour and hours of stitching and my hands really started to hurt. So by the time I got the butterfly done, I was in too much pain to continue. Today I picked it up and finished it off.

For some reason the camera just doesn't want to take a decent picture of it. I guess it's been doomed from the start, but I had to get it finished just so that I can put the embroidery tools away. I love the turquoise colour, but the thread is dull and lack lustre. It wasn't easy to work with, but after everything else I was determined to work with it. When I came to doing the flowers I ran into the same problem of matching up contrasting colours that didn't just clash with the vivid turquoise. The thread is manufactured in China and doesn't have the same sheen and twist as DMC or Coats Anchor and it snagged and snarled all the time I was working with it.

The stitching doesn't show up very well in the picture, but the dark pink flowers have pale pink straight stitches inside the daisy stitches and there is a similar light green straight stitch inside each of the leaves. I had planned on doing the flowers in satin stitch, but when it got down to, I just want this thing finished, I opted for something less time consuming.

When it was all done I, popped it out of the hoop and hand washed it in Ivory soap to get rid of the printer ink and the soiling from working on it, and slapped it down on the ironing board to press it dry. Out of habit from working with lace I sandwiched it between sheets of paper towel and applied the iron. Good thing I did. The lovely vivid turquoise thread bled like mad into the paper towel. I have a perfect imprint of the turquoise section.

The butterfly is done, and now that I know that I could create all kinds of unique transfers just by scanning, cutting, pasting and printing, I'd love to embark on making a whole quilt of embroidered pieces. Unfortunately, I also discovered that my hands won't take the hours of stitching the would be required. So I guess I'm not going to get a one of a kind embroidered quilt, but I am going to be able to sleep at night without major pain medication. Just as well really. I don't have enough hours in the day to tat and embroider. I picked up a pair of pillowcases I may do as a gift, but I don't think I'll be doing much more than that. Now I need to think of something to do with an embroidered 8 inch square that has been embroidered in thread which might bleed when it's washed again.


I think I may take all of the suitable transfer images that I found on the internet and put them into a PDF file. At least then if I do decide I want to do another chunk of embroidery, they'll all be in the same place. I can always put the file into the PDFPick software and use the embroidered butterfly as the front cover to remind me of what's in it.

Embroidered Butterfly

I've taken a bit of a break from tatting to do some embroidery and I'm not at all happy with the way this is going and I think what is giving me the most trouble is that I don't have a specific purpose for the finished piece, so I have no goal to work towards. I like butterflies and so I used the butterfly design from the Yahoo group
hand-embroidery challenge. This is a poor scan of it still in the hoop and the bright turquoise blue is really much brighter.

I began by selecting colours and I was all over the map. I have no goal. I finally decided that I was definitely going to use the turquoise blue. I love the colour. I came in a no name batch of embroidery thread and years ago I bought the whole batch for that one colour. I haven't used it yet because A- it needed to be something special and B- it doesn't blend with any of the other colours I have in the Anchor and DMC floss.

Once I decided to use the blue I had to match other colours to it. I selected a darker teal blue and a very pale silvery blue that is almost white. I can work with a monochromatic palette, but I thought I'd add in another colour for some interest. My chest of embroidery floss has several hundred blended colours of thread from years of doing petit point pictures, but the only colour that appealed to me when laid alongside the eye popping turquoise, was an equally vivid yellow.

I thought that I would do the butterfly going from dark blue nearest the body and the brighter blue on the outside. I wanted a stitch that would cover the area quickly and I worked a couple of rows of fly stitch starting from the tip of the wing and working toward the body. Then I did the outline of the outer edge of the wing in chain stitch in the bright blue. U-G-L-Y I liked the fly stitch effect but the colour was too dark. I ripped it out and tried again using the yellow for the central stitch to see if it brightened things up. U-G-L-I-E-R. I ripped it out again the dark blue just wasn't going to work. I outlined the second wing in bright blue as I thought about what to do with it.

The yellow and blue seem happy side by side so I tried again using just the yellow. Better, but I didn't like the stitch so I ripped again. By this time the fabric was beginning to show signs of wear so I started in on the second wing and started just filling the area with rows of straight stitches. It covered the area, but it had no real eye appeal. I outlined the area in split stitch as I considered what to do. Yellow is not my favourite colour, so to partly cover it up I began couching down the straight stitches with the pale blue. I'm not sure if I like the effect or not.

I began a second row of chain stitch in the bright blue and I've done this kind of thing before where I follow the outline in ever decreasing rounds until I end up in the middle and the lines of the stitching draw your eyes to no where. I stopped before I had gone to far to turn back because I have the feeling I'm not going to like how this shapes up.

I have an idea to turn these oval shapes on the outer edge into the "eye" that you see on some moth wings. They were outlined in black to stand out. With the pale blue I used a spider web filling stitch which gave me a raised round shape in the middle and I extended the weaving to fill in the oval shape. I am thinking I might use the dark blue on top of it as an iris with a yellow french knot in the centre. But I don't like how it looks and I'm thinking maybe I should rip now before I waste more time on it.

Then there's the body. I did it in black and added some pale blue highlights and I'm not sure if I love it or hate it. I used 3 strand of thread but I'm thinking that one strand would let me get in between the rows of split stitch easy so that the pale blue just peeks out in between the black.

When I started I chose an 8 inch square of fabric and then I started thinking I could do a bunch of squares, maybe all the same butterfly but done with different colours or maybe several different designs done with harmonious colours that could be pieced together as a quilt. (It's that goal thing again.) After re-doing the same part of the same wing a zillion times my thumb started hurting in a major way. There's not much to show for all of the stitching I've done, mostly because I've ripped it all out.

I tat excessively and the repetitive motion causes pain at the base of the thumb. I have discovered, that holding a needle to embroider aggravates that already tender digit. Now I find that the pressure of resting the base of the thumb on the desk to use the mouse hurts too. So it looks like embroidering enough squares to make a quilt is going to be out of the question.

I need to tat. I have an obligation to the subscribers who have purchased the Tatted Lace Pattern Collection Newsletter to create the designs for them. I can't afford to let any other activity, not matter how enjoyable, impair my ability to do that. It's frustrating me, because by nature I like to jump into an actively with both feet. I rarely have unfinished projects, they are either in the process of being done, or they are completely abandoned. I am being pulled to either, just get this done now or just give up on it entirely.