Back on the wagon: WIP Wednesday

I can't remember if I've shared any photos of the latest stocking project, but I have been slowly plodding away at it since the end of last year.  I'm finding it a bit difficult at time taking what I have finished and where the gaps that need to be filled in are, so I'm currently doing some of the backstitch as I go. That way I know that if it's backstitched then I have checked that all the gaps are meant to be there!

Second page of stocking done

In the weekend I finished page 2 (of 3), this is the progress as of Wednesday night. The obvious line on the snowman's body shows where the page ended.

WIP Wednesday

For ages I have seen people posting works in progress on Wednesdays, and thought it seemed like a nice idea. But by the time I would take a photo, extract it from the camera, and formulate a post it would almost certainly not be Wednesday, and absolutely not the one on which the photo was taken.

Just this last weekend I decided I wanted to track progress on the Christmas stocking, I remembered the WIP Wednesday concept, and realised that I have a smartphone with a passable camera at the moment. I've only been using this phone for 3 months so far, I work these things out eventually.

I will aim to post a single WIP photo every week, which means I will by cycling through projects, depending on whim. To kick it all off, here is the current state of the stocking. Apologies for the sidewaysness!

Knitting progress

I thought that my general knitting speed was around 25 stitches per minute, but discovered yesterday that it is more like 35. This doesn't really mean except I will have a new cardigan slightly sooner than I expected. I started it last December, and am expecting to finish it just in time for it to be too cold to wear it...

I have also finished a shawl that must remain secret until later in the year as it is for a luxury yarn club, and failed to finish a sock. The construction on the sock is a little interesting, and consequently the fit is not quite what I would like. When it has had a wee rest I will rejig the numbers in an attempt to make it work better.

Putting the sock aside has also given me more time to work on the Christmas stocking, which may actually stand a chance of being finished in time. I don't think it will be an actual stocking, I may just pin the embroidery onto a pillowcase this year...

Belated Stocking post

I finished this at the beginning of the year, and forgot to post about it!



It hasn't turned into a stocking, I am planning to make this up when I have the next one to do too. This is how far the next one has got so far.


With any luck they will both be usable by Christmas this year!

Wedding Sampler

I finished this and got it framed just in time for the wedding we went to a few weeks ago:


The colours are a bit more vibrant than the photo indicates, but this was the best photo I managed to get. I'm just pleased I managed to remember to get one at all, the carpet in the background was on the floor in our motel room...

Pattern is All Because, by Imaginating. I changed most of the colours to match the paua shell theme a bit better. It was a fun pattern to stitch up, and reasonably quick too!

I also made some tidy clothes for two little boys, but failed to get any decent photos of both of them dressed up. This is the larger one, showing what church pews were really designed for...

Long post, lots of photos

First up - embroidery. The stocking is currently making good progress, which is nice. I'm sure it will slow down again when I get back to some of the more bitsy bits, but I'm enjoying seeing actual progress while it lasts.

(For some reason it will happily go every way except upright. A sideways picture will do, I can't be bothered arguing with it)

I've also been knitting a bunch of Small Things, although I think the only new items are a pair of mittens (so quick to make!), and a Very Small Singlet.

Mitten pattern is The Stay Put Mini Mitts, wool is John Q Heather DK from my stash. I used half of a 50g ball, so I may do a second pair the same, but will more likely use a different colour for the emergency backup mittens.

Singlet is shown with the 18 month size one, and it really is ridiculously tiny. (I have compared it to other clothing of an appropriate size, and it appears to be correct...). The larger singlet used 83g of wool, this one used only 34g of Vintage Purls Sock - which is lucky, as I only had 35g of it!
Next singlet-related job will be writing up the pattern, and seeing if it makes sense to anyone. This is my first attempt at making a knitting pattern to fit multiple sizes, and as far as I can tell from my two samples it looks at least somewhat plausible that it is correct.

On the sewing front I have finished my first ever Proper Trousers. Peter hates trying to find decent trousers, so I finally convinced him to let me try making a pair. The pattern is taken from a pair he had made when we passed through Bangkok on the way to Europe a few years ago, so it should fit fairly well.

The fabric was from the $8 table at Fabric Vision (when they had their last 25% off sale), and is a heavy cotton broken twill. It got a wee bit creased when I prewashed, but for a pair of prototype pants it'll do. There are a few things where I could have done things in a slightly different order, but I've never done a trouser fly before and I was making it up as I go along. I think at very least they have worked to prove that I can make something that fits from the pattern, and that trousers aren't really that horrendous to put together. Next pair will be trying out some moleskin from the same sale.
I have also reached the decision that I really need to do something about my wardrobe. I haven't really added anything to it for a while now, and it's getting pretty dire. First new item is (theoretically) going to be a top from a blue striped knit fabric.

Not sure what it is, but it has a nice drape. I may test some to try to work it out, but I'm not sure I actually care enough. It will be a bit of an adventure, since the styles of clothing I like best are nicely fitted woven fabrics, but that's not really practical with constantly changing size/shape and needing access for feeding Small People. One day I can go back to that, but in the meantime I will have to venture into the world of knits.

And lastly, spinning! I have just acquired a second-hand Majacraft Suzie.

I suspect it's quite old, given some of the features, like the metal knob on the front that is now being made from wood, and the straight plates on the crank assembly. Also, it has hooks on the flyer, rather than the sliding hooks that are the norm on all the other ones I've seen.

I've started spinning some merino on it, and it spins nicely. When I've finished the first half I will go through and do some maintenance/tweaking, and spin the second half. It definitely feels more enticing to sit down and spin with it than with my old wheel (an Ashford Traveller - nothing wrong with it, the Suzie just feels a lot more Engineered).
I also finished off the purple corriedale that had been sitting half spun for far too long.

I couldn't quite ply it all onto one bobbin, so there is a smaller second skein with the purple, and I found a bobbin with a bit of brown corriedale to finish off the uneven end with. So I not only finished up some long delayed spinning, I also cleared an extra bobbin.

Whew, that was long.

Embroidery photos!

Well, it's taken me a while to get the photos of the finished cushion off the camera, but it's finally done. I finished the pillow on the Saturday morning at about 9.30, the wedding was midday. I had hoped to get it finished a bit earlier than that, but various unforeseen circumstances conspired against me.



The colours in this photo are not quite accurate - the ribbon and edging cord were a little closer in colour to the silk, but other than that the colours are pretty good.

I enjoyed making this pillow, although I was glad to take a break from satin stitch when I was done.

Ring-pillow - started stitching

First step, and one that I find oddly satisfying - transferring the design to the fabric. If the fabric is pale I will sometimes just trace onto it using a pencil or water-disappearing pen (not sure what the proper name for those is). On dark fabric I will sometimes use a pale coloured pen (white, gold etc) - but I mostly use this (and pencil) for sewing and marking seams rather than embroidery where you run the risk of being able to see it on the finished product.

Tracing has the advantage of being fast, but it also has a chance of rubbing off before you finish the embroidery. My favourite reliable method of transferring embroidery is as follows:

Step One - trace the pattern onto tissue paper. (This is the first time I've used tissue - in the past I've just used lunch paper. The tissue paper is definitely easier to remove in the last step though).

Step Two - pin onto the fabric, ideally with it held taut. Tack along the lines with sewing cotton, using a colour you can see. On straight lines you can use long stitches, shorter on curves.

Step Three - when you're done tacking, tear the paper off. This is where tissue paper is great - I found that it tore along the stitch lines much more easily than the heavier lunch paper.

Here's a photo showing halfway through removing the paper. It's a little hard to see the stitching (yellow on blue), but that's mostly because it's winter and the lighting is terrible. (Maybe I'll try this again in summer...)


After removing the paper you're ready to stitch. I'm picking the tacking stitches out as I go, but this will depend what sort of stitches you're doing. Because this is fine, I didn't want to be trying to pick out stitches that I couldn't really see when I'd probably stitched through the thread a zillion times.

The petals and leaves are done in satin stitch. First step is outlining in split stitch, then filling the middle with some longitudinal stitches, then the final pass of satin stitching.

This photo shows the three stages:

The three petals on the right are complete. The top left is outlined and filled, ready for the satin stitch, and the bottom left is just outlined.

I found that with the red I could do the satin stitch on 3 petals before the thread started looking a bit fuzzy, but I could only do 2 leaves with the green. I'm not sure if this is related to the dye, the age of the thread (both unknown), or something else.

At this point I have done both flowers, and the 6 leaves on the G. Still 5 leaves on the M left to go.

I intend to do the split stitch on the letters next, then see how I'm going for time. If I've got plenty of time then I'll satin stitch the letters too (and outline in gold), otherwise I'll leave them as a split stitch outline. The centre of the flowers, and the buds will be small pearls, and for the stems I intend to use gold thread couched with green.

Ring-pillow design details

Over the weekend I got a pattern drawn up and transferred to the fabric.

The fabric is a medium blue dupion silk, which I've backed with calico. After messing around with colours a bit, I decided I had to options. One option was to make all the embroidery pale, which would look very pretty and delicate. The other option was to use the bold colours I had originally thought, and outline everything with metallic gold. I thought this was probably the better option for the recipient (the wedding dress is red, so the flowers match).

This meant that I chose to go with a cream for the letters, rather than gold - I didn't want to use both a yellow and a metallic gold, and I don't think my goldwork skills would be up to the delicacy of the letters.

Here is the pattern - both the original tracing, and the photocopy that I played around with colouring in.


I'm using DMC stranded cotton, mostly because of convenience. I only have two weeks, and I didn't want to lose time to waiting for silks I had ordered to arrive. (I may have been able to find the right colours locally, but I didn't want to rely on it).

I'm fairly sure the gold thread I have is Kreinik japan thread, but I've had it sitting around on an old sewing thread spool for a while so I can't be sure.

And the embroidery makes an entrance

Okay, sometimes I do things that aren't weaving. I think this is the point at which I decide to give in and post a few of them, if I deem them to be worthy. (Also, if I'm doing something that means I'm not weaving, then I should still try to post occasionally).

I have a giant cross-stitch under way that I expect to take approximately forever. It doesn't actually eat weaving time, because I only work on it in my breaks at work. I started about 8 months ago, and I think I might be nearly 1/8th done.


The dotted lines mark the centre - as you can see there's still quite a lot left to do.

More importantly though, I've been asked to make a wedding ring cushion for a friend who is getting married in 2 weeks. I have been given some fabric, ribbon and thread, which I can use or not as I see fit. Beyond that, the specification is that it should be about 20cm square, it should have nice long ribbons on it, and it can have a 'G' and 'M' if I feel like it.


This is the drawing, fabric and thread I was given.

Because I've only got two weeks for this project from start to delivery, I need to try not to make it to complicated. There are some nice monogram patterns on Needle 'n Thread (M here and G here). I'll probably use these letters, although the G could do with some modification to make it look less like a C. I think the letters will be in gold, the leaves and vines in green, and the flowers red with a pearl in the middle.

At this point, though, everything could change. I'll see how I feel about it when I've drawn out a few designs, and played with colours (and then had another look in daylight).