Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts

Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts
Visit Our Store!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Blackwork Embroidery

I was sitting last night looking though some craft magazines when I came upon a small article on doing blackwork embroidery in issue 173 of Cross Stitcher Magazine (from the UK). I've seen numerous examples of blackwork in other magazines and embroidery books, but have never attempted it myself. Thanks to the fact that I have all my embroidery supplies in a rolling cart near the couch, I was ready on a moments notice to stitch. Of course, I didn't have the right size fabric, but I didn't let that stop me. I did have a piece of Aida cloth that someone had already used threads to make the design ready to stitch.
Since the design was a strawberry, I decided to use red embroidery floss. Part of the design was in one strand of floss and others parts in two strands. The instructions were minimal, but I did figure most of them out and had to change some stitches because of using the wrong type and size of fabric. After the first few stitches I realized that I would have some trouble following the chart as it was too small to see clearly, so David very nicely blew the chart up for me and printed it out in color so I could still follow the color chart. I did find that at the beginning since it was new to me, that after 2-3 stitches I would cross off those stitches to be sure I was keeping the right count and was stitching in the right place. The one place that I did have trouble was the beginning and ending the thread, especially with the single strand of thread as the back of the stitching didn't  have the same type of set up to bury stitches like regular counted cross stitch. If I do this again, I will have to see if my other books have instructions or perhaps some one reading this could leave us all an explanation.

In the end after around 2 hours of 'work' I had a nice little design that I will eventually us for something. It was fun and I enjoyed myself. Here is my little strawberry design.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Embroidery Library Christmas Club

Be sure to sign up today for Embroidery Library's Christmas Club. You will get FREE desgins, Christmas projects and credit on your purchases towards more free designs, plus more! At signing up today I got three Free designs in two sizes each.

Monday, July 02, 2012

Nursery Rhyme Quilt

Secrets of Embroidery has many designers products at their site. Currently, if you visit there and check out Kreative Kiwi's site, you can get all the designs needed to make an adorable Nursery Rhyme quilt -- for FREE!. I don't know how long this will be available for free so stop in as soon as possible here.