La Broderie de Perles - De Rose Vêtues Finished

Friday I came home to find not only my bead order from Artbeads is here but also my copy of Inspirations magazine.

And I've already set my sights on another whitework piece ;) This is another Schwalm piece by Deborah Love the same designer as Eidelweiss.

But I digress. So my order of beads coming in means I can go back to working on my bead embroidery piece De Rose Vêtues. The bead I was missing was the green at the middle. I still don't know how I missed it in the first order. I've gone through the beads for the other patterns and double-checked everything so I should be okay now.

The last time I showed this piece I had stitched the pink tulips. I then spent the weekend just staring at it and having the sensation that the color was just wrong.

The sensation quickly turned to dislike as I found the color too close to pepto bismol pink rather than the lovely pastel pink in the original photo.

Luckily when I ordered all the beads, I happened to throw in an extra pink. A habit I find myself doing often when ordering beads ;) The pink is a paler pink than the other one and has a lovely shine to it.

I decided to restitch the flower on the left, since I wasn't very satisfied with it anyways. Side by side, I liked the left one better but just to be on the safe side I decided to put it aside until I got my missing green beads in. That was two weeks ago.

Friday night I started stitching the stems and leaves. This is stitched using the stem stitch. Once I put in the green I was even more convinced that I preferred the pink on the left.

So out came the scissors.

I'm so proud, I was able to do this and not lose a single bead =P When I cut out the left one I lost quite a few to the floor that I was never able to find.

I put in the last bead on Saturday. If I take out the time it took for me to redo each flower twice and the week I had to wait for the beads to come in, this project would have actually taken a day of stitching at most. All the stitches are simple and the beads covered a lot of ground very fast.

Since the piece is so small, I decided to try out a new finishing technique. This is something I've been wanting to do with finishes that I don't want to frame as a frame would be too bulky for storing them. I had even bought an acid free mat board last summer, but I chickened out >.< But after seeing Catherine's blog post it gave me that boost I needed to go forward with the experiment.

I measure out my piece giving a half inch margin on three sides and about an inch at the top and cut a piece of mat. Since my embroidery is already backed with muslin I didn't have to cut another piece to go over the mat board, but I did pull out some fusible wadding. I cut the wadding piece slightly smaller than the mat board so the that embroidery will sit nicely on top of it.

After fusing the wadding to the mat board, I pinned the muslin to the board and started lacing it. I placed a beading mat underneath it so I don't accidentally disturb the beading at the front.

Once it's all been laced, I started stretching and pining the main fabric to the mat board.

I personally like to have the corners mitered. It just comes out much neater that way.

The main fabric is then stitched to the muslin at the back using the Herringbone stitch exactly the same way Catherine did.

I obviously couldn't leave the back like that. Luckily I had a lovely blue-gray satin fabric in my stash. I stitched it to the finished piece using a ladder stitch. The fabric is a little puckered here and there but it looks nice regardless.

The finishing took all afternoon. I think if the piece was bigger I would have done this in stages over a couple of days. I was so tired when I finished framing it that I didn't end up doing anything else that day. Also, I don't think I would use a satin fabric for the backing. It looks lovely but it's very slippery. I'll have to stick to a nice cotton.

I really like how it looks using this finishing technique. I can see why embroidery teachers use it a lot. It's very practical for storage and it looks lovely. I just need to find some acid free plastic sleeves to store it in so it doesn't get dirty.

For this week, I haven't decided what I want to work on. I really want to start another of the bead embroidery patterns from the book, but the next lesson for Pearl Butterfly comes out Thursday. I don't know if it would be practical to start something new. Decisions, decisions...

Pearl Butterfly Lesson 1

Friday night, I got the chance to start working on Alison Cole's Pearl Butterfly cyber class. Before I show you my progress on the piece, I wanted to share what an Alison Cole cyber class comes with.

The first thing is obviously the kit.

The kit contains everything you need: fabric with muslin for backing, felt and wool for padding, Gutterman thread for couching, Au vers a soie thread for embroidery, all the goldwork thread and for this project pearl beads.

Other than the typical things you need for embroidery, here are things you definitely need but doesn't come with the kit:

• Scissors: You need a pair for cutting goldwork. You can use an old pair (never your good ones!) but I bought a pair of scissors with a serrated edge from Golden Hinde which are specially made for goldwork embroidery.
• Beeswax: This one is very essential! I bought mine from Amazon here.
• (optional) Mellor: Since I was ordering the scissors, I figured why not get this too. I read it helps with moving and shaping metal thread.

The fabric by the way is GORGEOUS! It's a delustered satin and is great for stitching, especially hiding your tiny stitches in between the weave. I'm definitely going to have to place an order for more of this fabric.

Lessons are published on Alison's website in PDF form. The password to access the lessons is given to you by email when the class begins. For support, you also get a user login to a forum so you can submit questions and get advice. I like to print out my lessons in case I want to add in notes.

So now to start. I first began by tracing the template onto tracing paper.

To transfer it onto the fabric, I got this product by Clover. It works much better than the other product I tried last week.

It's very faint and I did find it hard to see the white on the fabric because it's so shiny. But once I got to applying all the felt it gets easier.

Friday night, I concentrated on transferring the pattern and cutting out the felt pieces.

Saturday I took the time to study up on stitching down felt padding. Luckily I had some great resources:

• On my tablet is Craftsy's Goldwork class Embroidery: Essential Techniques with Lucy Barter. It's a really excellent class. The class covers every part of goldwork and Lucy shows you exactly how to do each technique from anchoring the thread till the very end when you end the thread.
• Hazel Everett's Goldwork: Techniques, Projects and Pure Inspiration. This is a great book to accompany the Craftsy class as it contains a thorough explanation of supplies and techniques.
• Alison Cole's The Embroiderer's Little Book of Hints and Tips. This book is great for those uh-oh moments you experience when you're first starting. Plus it covers both goldwork and stumpwork as those are Alison's specialties.
• RSN's Goldwork book. It's a nice little book but doesn't have a lot of details. I use it mainly for the picture examples of each technique comparing it to the other books.

The butterfly had two layers of padding.

This part was great fun to do. I really love how it comes out.

Sunday, I started with gold threads for the first time. As we all know Kreinik and DMC metallics don't count. The thread below is pearl purl and comes coiled. It's usually stretched out and then couched as an outline around goldwork designs.

It was really scary touching it for the first time. All the experts kept saying you shouldn't touch them too much. This was repeated so many times, that I was scared to touch it. Having to pull on it made it more nerve wracking!

But I quickly got over it. It's actually quite fun once you get into the rhythm.

I still have the lower wings to do, which should be done before the end of the week and then it's a long wait till the next lesson in two weeks. It will give me time to catch up on other projects.

January TUSAL

Very short post for me to catch up with all my SAL posts. This month's jar was filled with whites and blues from Hearts and Flowers. The pink at the very top is from my beading project De Rose Vêtues. Tomorrow, I'll be (hopefully) sharing my progress on Alison Cole's class Pearl Butterfly.

WIPocalypse 2017 – January 29

This month's theme is: What Stitch-a-Longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? Except for TUSAL and WIPocalypse I'm not really participating in any SALs. What I am doing is taking classes with other stitchers either in person or online. Does that count? There are 3 so far: a cyber class with Alison Cole which has started already, a class at the JEC (Japanese Embroidery Center) in April and a class at the EAC seminar that will start once I get my kit.

This month I worked on many things, none of which are my WIPocalypse project. But I did finish one project so that's good :) There are more pictures here for those who are curious.

The rest of the post is pretty sad, but I'm sure it will be better next month.

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Ink Circles - The Bramble and the Rose

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Teresa Wentzler - Tracery Dragons

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Satin Stitches - Donna's Fantasy Lace

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Kathryn Drummond - Romantic Rosebud

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Annie Penin - Fleurs de Sakura

Great News!

A short post today, I just received an email confirming my class for EAC Seminar 2017.

I hope you enjoy seeing my whitework projects because you will be seeing a lot of it soon :) The class is with Jette Roy Finlay-Heath and will be on traditional Hedebo embroidery which is a Danish whitework technique.

Also, thanks to the magic of time zones the class materials for my cyber class with Alison Cole were released today instead of tomorrow =D I've already printed it out, now I just need to get home to start. I'm hoping to have something to share with you on Monday. If you can't wait till then, you can follow along with me on Instagram.

Hearts and Flowers

I had a very slow weekend and did very little done. In fact I got no stitching done, but I did bake cookies and a cake :) I also managed to get a tiny bit of sunlight in the morning to take final pictures of Hearts and Flowers.

The above is a slideshow of all the pieces together, but just in case you can't see them here is a close up of the faces of each accessory.

Starting with the scissor fob which was the last accessory to be finished. The fob is stuffed with polyfill and there is also a 2016 Canadian quarter inside it for weight. Very apropos as I got this kit from Seminar 2016 in Toronto. The scissors in this picture are Nogent scissors I bought a few years ago. I don't think I've ever used them for cutting anything.


My favorite part of this fob are the Swarovski crystals I managed to find that matched this project perfectly. A little white heart and a blue flower.

The second accessory is the needle book.

And when you open it, you find the thread counters we received as gift favors at Seminar 2016, this time the heart is blue.

And the last one is the pincushion which I think is my absolute favorite. Bullions are a pain in the behind to stitch but you can't argue the results you get when they are finished.

My one regret is that I didn't have pretty pins to stick in my pincushion to really show it off. I will have to look around and see if I can find some for exhibition.

This set will be joining Fandango and Hana at Seminar 2017 :) Notice I've only picked pieces that don't need to be framed >.< All my other larger pieces are not framed and there's no way I'm dragging them on a plane with me. I will have to see if there is a lighter, temporary way I can frame some of them.