Eidelweiss Part 1

Last month I finally decided to subscribe to Inspirations magazine after deliberating for months.

Issue #86

I found a few projects I'd love to stitch, but the first one I decided to do is a Schwalm embroidery piece called Eidelweiss. It is designed by Deborah Love from Australia. I think it was a teaching piece from Beating Around the Bush 2014 (click on 2014 to look at last year's catalog). I remember it from all my drooling of their catalog.

Eidelweiss - Deborah Love

Unfortunately, it would be too expensive (not to mention a really long flight) to hop on over to South Australia to attend workshops. I will have to make do with the magazine.

The first step is transferring the pattern onto the fabric. I used a Copic archival sepia pen (for those interested you can get them from Amazon). It's permanent, but it's faint enough that it will be covered once it's been stitched. Archival pens are awesome for this since they don't bleed into the fabric. The fabric I am using is a 32 count Belfast linen.

Pattern is traced

I like organizing everything before I start, so I made a photocopy of the pattern and highlighted each part with a different color for each stitch type.

Once that was done I was ready to start. The threads used in this are DMC broder special in #16, 20 and 25. You use it right out of the skein.

Floss toss

 I'm using one of Hazel's needle books since it conveniently has all the needles I need in one place :)

I started with the flower in the lower left. The first layer is the reverse chain stitch (click the link for instructions). It's a really easy way to do the chain stitch. I know I enjoyed it more than the regular chain stitch.

The second layer is the coral stitch. It's not as fun as the reverse chain stitch, I found myself constantly turning the fabric around. This stitch I had to do in hand (i.e. without the hoop), it made it easier to poke the fabric.

Here's a close up of the coral stitch.

The first filling stitch was the honeycomb filling stitch. It looks nice and was easy to do. The hardest part was figuring out where exactly to start, but once that's done you just follow the pattern and compensate for the rounded edges. I followed Hazel Blomkamp's rule from her needle lace class (paraphrased) : "If you're not sure if you need that extra stitch, add it anyways because in the long run you'll find that you need it." :)

Honeycomb filling stitch

The next filling stitch was a cross stitch filling stitch. Being a cross stitcher, this is the easiest stitch so far ;) I did notice that mine doesn't look like the picture because of where I stitched my starting row, but that's OK as long as the stitches are all consistent.

Cross stitch filling stitch

 Here it is at the end of the first day. Sorry the fabric is all wrinkly. Between the hoop and my hands, it's gotten wrinkled.

That was one day of my weekend. I also spent some time on Tree of Hope and Fantasy Lace. I did promise to post more updates.

It's not much, but it's something. I finished a big block right above the bird in Tree of Hope and have started stitching the eyelets in Fantasy Lace.