Edmonton Stash

Sorry for the lack of update, I've been away for two weeks for work. This time I was in Edmonton and it was FREEZING. I didn't have many opportunities for stitching as I was working long days. I only had time to stitch on the plane. I finally made it to the bottom corner. There will be more opportunities to work on it again as I will be travelling some more in the next two months.

I didn't meet the Edmonton embroidery guild on this trip but I did meet my Japanese embroidery teacher. It was great to see her outside of class and we had fun going around to her favorite shops. We went to a fabric shop called Quiltessential Co. where I bought some pretty fabric, including another bag pattern. I still haven't made the first one...

The other shop she took me to was an hour away from Edmonton and was the highlight of my trip. In Wetaskiwin, there is a shop called the Wild West Gallery. If my teacher hadn't taken me I would never have realized this place was there.

There were so many beautiful beads, I just pilling on stuff. I had to restrain myself at some point but I wish I hadn't. The total was so below what I was expecting to pay, I could have gotten more.

While I was in Edmonton, I wanted to see if the shop I went to in my previous visit in 2012 was still there. I'm happy to say that the Craft Connection is still alive and kicking.

(click on the post to see the video below)

It's mainly a cross stitch shop so there wasn't much to interest me this time around. However, I want to encourage local needlework shops so I bought this Sabrina pattern by Mirabilia that has been on my wishlist for a very long time. I'm a huge Audrey Hepburn fan and that dress is gorgeous. I also got all the beads and special threads. All I'm missing is fabric.

I've hardly been back a week and I'm already set to go to another city. Next Monday I will be driving out to Brampton, Ontario. I haven't done much looking yet but if you know a place you think I would be interested to visit, please let me know.

Back From Winnipeg

I'm back! And look two posts in one week. As I write this, I'm working my last night shift. Lots of time waiting around for things to go wrong. Luckily things have been going very smoothly.

I took three projects with me to Winnipeg, but only touched two of them. The third one was a really bad choice as it was on a dark fabric, not to mention it took up space in my suitcase. On the plane, I stitched on Bramble and the Rose. I'll probably do the same on the return flight. Trying to complete that bottom right corner.

The rest of my trip was spent working on my Hedebo piece. I've been avoiding it before as I have a lot of really short strands to weave in. To avoid dying of boredom, I'm doing enough at a time so that I can start the dove's eye pattern.

Every time someone sees me stitching this piece, they ask "you don't use a hoop?" Well, here I am finally using one. I always prefer not to use a hoop when working on counted whitework. I only pull it out for the pulled thread portions, as you need an even tension on the fabric.

After few days of working on and off, I can finally see the beginning of the starburst pattern. With the amount of weaving I still need to do, I'm a long way off from the end. But it's going to look so pretty when it's finished.

While I was in Winnipeg I had some free time. I visited Lizzy B's, a cross stitch store where I bought the Thea Gouverneur kit, Teresa Wentzler pattern and the pretty needle threader. It's purple, I couldn't leave it at there! The second shop is called NeedlePoint Place M & N's. The owner Ewa was nice enough to host me for a little stitch-in at her shop, so I would have a place to stitch outside my hotel room. I did buy some threads from her (not pictured) for a project I want to start very soon.

Before leaving for Winnipeg, I also organized a stitch-in with the Winnipeg Embroidery Guild (did you know that EAC was founded in Winnipeg by Leonida Leatherdale?). One of the guild members agreed to host it at her house and it was Kathryn Drummond. I met Kathryn back in 2014 at the Creative Festival in Toronto where I took Punto Antico for the first time. We had a lovely time catching up and I even brought back some goodies from her house: three new Punto Antico books. I also met a fellow embroiderer from Instagram. It's always exciting when I get to meet Instagram stitchers in person. Her name is Cathy Wiebe and she's a couture dress designer. We had a great time exchange information on embroidery, me on Japanese embroidery and her on Lesage where she is learning Luneville embroidery.

All in all I really enjoyed my trip to Winnipeg, despite the snow at the end of it. I could have lived without that.

Tansy Beetle - Textile Art Box

There are quite a lot of very talented embroiderers in Instagram and one of them is Kate Tume also known as Mother Eagle Embroidery. She makes beautiful bead embroidery pieces. Currently, she is working on projects around the disappearing natural world, and lost species. My favorite is her Extinct Icons series which you can check out here.

Saint Sultan by Kate Tume

For the past year she has been producing a line of textile art boxes. The first one was of a beaded stag beetle. Now I'm a fan of beads but not bugs. The beetle was a little too hairy for me so sadly I had to pass. In September, she released two more beetle kits: Tansy beetle and Ghost beetle. Still not a fan of bugs but the colors on Tansy beetle were so pretty (Ghost beetle creeped me out). So after seeing it multiple times on Kate's Instagram feed, it grew on me and I decided to order it.

 The kit came in beautifully packaged. 100% plastic packaging free, and entirely vegan friendly.

If you want to have an idea of what comes in the box, check out the video below of my un-boxing.

(click on the post to see the video below)

I'm still trying to figure out how to merge videos, so for now here is part 2 of the un-boxing. All the beads came individually packaged in tiny envelopes with numbers on them to make them easy to identify while stitching.

(click on the post to see the video below)

The kit came with everything for me to start, except scissors and something to hold your hoop so you can use both hands to stitch. It's an excellent starter kit for those wanting to try beading.

The fabric that came in the kit is a twill fabric. It has a nice weight to it so I didn't feel the need to back my fabric.

I started this kit immediately after finishing Mr. Blue. In fact I put in the felt padding Saturday evening.

(click on the post to see the animation below)

Sunday morning, I woke up early eager to start putting in some beads. I'm in love with the colors of the cupped sequins. I'm happy to say I have a bunch left to play with.

The head of the beetle is partially covered with an iridescent vinyl. It's stitched down the exact same way you would in goldwork but so much easier to pierce than leather. I put in lines of holding stitches to keep it in place while I was couching.

I was really speeding through stitching the beetle, but this is where things started to go wrong. See, I had noticed that I didn't have the same number of sequins in the first row as the model in the picture. I put it down to my not crowding the sequins, because I did start exactly where I was instructed to. However, when I saw the amount of beads I was expected to use to cover the head, alarm bells started going off.

I contacted Kate (love social media!) and she pointed out exactly what I had noticed: I was one sequins short on my first line, which is why I have bigger head area to cover. I knew this but at the same time, I knew I didn't make a mistake when I transferred my center line. So I went back to the cutout and did a comparison between my beetle and the actual instructions, to discover the center line in the instructions is longer than the one in the cutout. Mystery solved!

Future kits will be corrected, but in the meantime Kate offered three solutions for my problem: she can send me more beads, I could unpick and restart, or I could unpick just the head replacing it with beads from my stash. I went with option one as I don't mind if my beetle's head didn't match the model exactly. So now Tansy has been set aside until the extra beads arrive. Pity, I was so close to finishing.

Cataraqui Guild 2018 Needle Arts Fair

I was happy to be able to visit the Cataraqui Guild of Needle Arts fair again and reconnect with my stitching friends from Ontario. On the way in, I spotted the new bookmarks the EAC made this year to promote the association, one of which has my friend Natalie's design. I made sure to snag one for myself.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't able to get enough pictures to really show off the fair as we were busy all day (which is never a bad thing).  I just had enough time to take pictures of the setup for L'Atelier de Penelope's booth before customers started coming.

(click on the post to see the animation below)

This year the boutique was in the gymnasium which was a more comfortable setup.

There were some new vendors this year, one of which was Lianne van Leyen of 1897 Schoolhouse Samplers. I met Lianne at last year's fair and she had brought in one of her antique samplers that she was creating a cross stitch pattern for. This year she was back with her own booth selling her patterns. I'd been following Lianne's progress on Instagram and she accomplished so much in the last year getting her samplers in multiple shops. When I visited her booth she was in the process of acquiring a new antique sampler for her collection.

I did get new stash. I found Luzine Happel's book Fancy Hems at Books for you. I've been wanting it for a long time but only found copies online. It was good to save on the shipping.

Picked up a few things from L'Atelier de Penelope. More sashiko threads for my panel as well as the last Marie et Co. book on whitework (how could I resist?) and a box of Tulip tapestry needles.

I couldn't pass up these pretty glass head pins. They come in a blue color-way and a mixed color-way as well but I really liked the pink and purple.

Patricia just got these silk combo packs (I showed the purple one earlier) and this dark blue was exactly the colors I needed for a design I'm working on. I almost caved and got another one as well, but they are a little expensive so sacrifices had to be made.

(click on the post to see the animation below)

In July I bought this Mirabilia kit, called Mermaids of the Deep, that I will stitch as a gift for my sister's birthday. A while back Patricia mentioned she had someone at the boutique who has been experimenting with fabric painting and dyeing, and could create a custom fabric for the pattern. This is what came out of it. I did a floss toss just to make sure the colors will go well with it.

I love that shade of blue and there is just a tiny hint of purple in there. The colors are also not too dark so it will look great in her bedroom. The artist had also added some sparkle in there which you can't really see in the pictures unfortunately.

Now that I have my fabric, I can start stitching. I think it would be great if I can have it finished and framed in time for her birthday next June. I just need to finish Hanabatake first.

Twist Festival 2018

The Twist Festival was held this weekend. For the first time they decided to hold it over three days instead of just two, starting on Friday at noon. Since I had work, I joined Patricia to help out with her boutique Atelier de Penelope after work. Hurrah for half-day Fridays!

When I showed up the boutique was already set up. I think I prefer this year's setup over last years. We had more wall-space to hang things up.

The festival is really fun as I get the chance to meet stitchers and fiber artists. This year their was a great influx of young fiber artists as well as young stitchers-to-be. I had a great dinner with Annelise of Mamie Lisette, Natalie Dupuis of Sew By Hand Montreal and Patricia, just talking about embroidery and it's future. Annelise spoke about bringing back embroidery in the classroom. Wouldn't that be great?

Remember this piece that I saw at the Dentelles et Broderies en Lumière exposition? I got the chance to meet the lady who stitched it.

A stitcher came to our booth carrying this lovely tote bag from Mexico that was stitched using a luneville hook. The technique is called gancho which translates to hook in English. The colors just popped against that black. Check the link here for more pictures.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Monika of The Olive Sparrow. We had met her at her booth and she mentioned needing needles to embroidery her doll's eyes. She came to visit our booth with her two girls Nissy and Tamina.

Patricia and I got the chance to hold them. I got Tamina, she's so soft and cuddly. The dolls are made of 100% cotton and wool and she dresses them using recycled materials like wool sweaters and antique lace.

I was very good this year and didn't spend a lot of money. I resisted buying wool even thought there were so many pretty colors. I bough 100% wool felt from Monika's booth. These will be great for goldwork. I also snagged some pins by Twill and Print, they were just too pretty to pass up. I plan on turning these into needle minders.

Just because I was away all weekend didn't mean I didn't get any stitching done. In between customers I took out the sashiko panel I had bought back in June. I like doing this as it helps customers who want to try out this technique, to see it in action. It also pricks the curiosity of the ones who don't stitch and they usually come into the booth to ask questions.

Last night I wasn't up to stitching anything too complex so I continued working on it. It's a very relaxing technique. I finished all the outline that will be in white. I'm still trying to decide how I will stitch the inside but there will definitely be color.