My First Big Project ... and why I thought embroidery might be for me.

This is a picture of my first real project. It is resting comfortably by the blanket that my mother-in-law, Susan, crocheted for us, on my very classy $250 couch. I'm very proud of it, an I intend to go into it in detail, but first I want to talk about something else.








This is a picture of my maternal grandmother, Nancy, or as we
affectionately call her, Bunka. This lady has a lot of grit. She walked out on her first husband when she was 19 because he was cheating on her, and didn't bother to get a divorce until she met my grandfather. She raised my mother and her four siblings on what I'm sure would be considered a pittance now. And she has been doing very well living on her own since her husband passed away in 1995.

She is pictured here at our wedding in 2009. I'm very glad to say that she is doing alright now. She can't drive, and a lifetime of smoking has led to some pretty serious deterioration in her lungs, but she keeps plugging along. Like I said, she has grit.

I have a lot of fond memories about my grandmother. When I was in Junior High she moved into a house near ours, and I would occasionally go over and help her cook. I don't want to make it sound like I was the best granddaughter ever (I wasn't), but I love my Bunka enough to eat beat pickled eggs with her, which is quite a lot of love, let me tell you.

Some of my favorite memories of Bunka from when I was growing up was doing crafts with her. She would paint cards to send for holidays and birthdays. She would knit. And she gave us our first cross-stitch kits. When we lived in Ohio she came to visit us and in the evenings she would work on the border of a table cloth. I remember being so impressed by the size of the project, and the huge skeins of floss that she was using to complete it.

Because she always enjoyed doing embroidery projects, and because she was always so supportive, I thought that I might like branching out from the pre-printed kits and starting to do my own projects. This first one was a gift for Bunka. I am proud of it, but of course I can see all of the flaws, and I know that it's not everything it's supposed to be. She says she loves it, though. Of course, she has to say that; she's my Bunka.


The cloth I used on this project is burgundy flannel. I really enjoyed working with this fabric. It is thicker than cotton, and has a closer weave. I find with cotton (or at least the cotton used on pre-printed pillow cases) that it feels like you are working with a grid - your needle naturally wants to go between the threads, which can make placing stitches a little difficult. With the flannel, it felt like I could put stitches wherever I wanted, which is nice. It did shed quite a bit, though, so if I wore light colored pants when I worked, they would come away with a dingy, lint covered look.


I designed the celtic knot based on some instructions on the internet. I thought that I had saved the webpages so that I could link them, but it turns out that I am not that smart.

The design is supposed to look like the leaves of a thistle plant, and I was going to add a thistle flower to each corner. I actually stitched several versions into one corner, but I never liked them enough to keep them. Eventually, I decided to finish it as it was, rather than continuing to mess with it, and potentially end up ruining the whole thing.

The design uses border (or stem) stitch on the outside edges in brown, gold running stitch in the center, and green chain stitch to fill in the blanks.

I like the colors on this project - I think that they work well with the darker background, and look good without being too childish or cheery. I like the way the stitches look sort of organic - almost scaly.

One of the main flaws with this piece is that it turned out rectangular instead of square. I'm not sure how this happened. My two leading theories are, 1) that I cut the front and back of the piece at the same time and ended up stitching the piece that was meant for the back, or 2) that that I was too rough with it when I was washing out the marker, and it warped either from being wrung out or from hanging to dry. Because the dimensions turned out wrong, I had to sacrifice the stuffing from one of the pillows on my couch to fill it, rather than using the pillow form I had bought for the purpose. That means that it is thinner and lumpier than I wanted it to be. So this is a pretty pillow, but not as functional as I wanted it to be.

I also wish that I had sat down and figured out how to do the thistle before I began. I did draw out what I wanted to do, but I had my doubts from the beginning. If I had trusted my instincts, I probably would have just made this border longer, and it wouldn't have the blank corners now.

All in all, for 2 months' work, it isn't bad. And I'm glad that I was able to give the lady who first introduced me to this hobby a token of my appreciation.

Wow, who said she would be back in a week and then bailed?

It's me!

I'm sorry for flaking out. I totally want to get through my first two projects so that I can start keeping up with my current one, but things have been busy. I've been out of town a couple of weekends, and work has started getting really busy too.

That last part is particularly good, though. After three years, I am finally getting a promotion. Right now it's just more work, but hopefully there will be more money and an office involved in the near future.

In any case, I will commit to updating this over the weekend. Sorry for the delay.

This is Now a Blog About a Thing!

...and that think is embroidery.

Late last year, I started doing embroidery - or at least started doing it for real. I had done a few pre-printed projects in my day - some coasters when I still lived with my parents, and a few pillowcases which my husband and I use occasionally. I was unhappy with the limited selection of patterns at the craft stores, and didn't want to spend the money on books of iron-on patterns.

So I thought, "Why not do this on my own?" I am very glad that I made that decision. The satisfaction I get from working on projects that are entirely my own creation has been a really nice addition to a life where previously a well cooked meal or a clever use of Microsoft Excel was the highlight. It's also given me an excuse to make nice gifts for my family, rather than just slipping a five into a greeting card. I thought it would be nice to document my progress, and since I already had this blogger account, I figured this would be an appropriate outlet. Even if I don't have any followers, it would be great to have a record of my progress that I can look back on later.

So, let's start at the beginning. I had a rudimentary understanding of how to embroider when I made the decision to strike out on my own, but I didn't really feel like I had the artistic flair. When I was in college, I tried to start a webcomic...with somewhat disastrous results. I didn't know how to draw, so the process not only took too long, but the results were not quite right, for reasons which alluded me. I was not eager to repeat that humbling experience with this new artistic endeavor. So, I got help early this time.


So I purchased this book, Colorful Stitchery by Kristin Nicholas (For sale at Amazon.com). I picked this out of the wide variety of craft books on sale because it was well reviewed, looked more modern than other books, and was reasonably priced. I would definitely recommend this book to other people that want a good primer. Ms. Nicholas goes into basic color theory, shows step by step instructions for several basic stitches, and provides the patters for the projects that illustrate the book.

There are a lot of very good qualities in this book, but I want to emphasize that price was a factor, just to give a little more insight into myself. I had been looking for a hobby for a while when I finally decided on embroidery. I have a set of charcoal pencils and a very toothly pad of paper. I have markers, and pencils, and crayons in all of the colors of the rainbow. There is a jar of calligraphy ink in my desk drawer, which will surely spill someday. When I decided to start a new hobby, I knew that there was a good chance that it would be something that I left behind eventually, so I didn't want to sink too much into it right away.

I was also very thrifty when I started buying materials for my first projects. These were definitely going to be practice - not something that I was going to give away, or even necessarily keep around the apartment. So I went with some off-white felt, and maybe 5 skeins of embroider floss. I can't remember what the total bill was at the time, but I don't think it was more than $10.

Here is a picture of the first things I designed myself - a pair of bookmarks (pictured with The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson). I drew the basic pattern onto the cloth with washable markers, then stitched over it. I had already cut out the strips, so I didn't use a hoop, which presented surprisingly few problems.

I learned quite a bit when making these. One, it is very difficult to cut out square shapes with just a pair of scissors. I would like to make more bookmarks later, so this is something of a problem. I think that I might invest in one of those pizza-cutter-for-cloth things and a plastic mat the next time. I also learned that using all six strands of thread gives a project a chunky, crayon like feel, where using only a few threads gives a sharper, more pen-like feel. I also learned that I am not terribly good at eyeballing things, as is obvious in the geometric pattern.

After the bookmarks, I made my first pillow. All of those little dark spots in the picture are pills. Note to self: felt is fine for applications that will get little friction, like the bookmarks. But something that is constantly going to be rubbing against the couch and a person's back will fall apart very quickly. In addition to learning about the limitations of the fabric, I found out that a 10" square pillow is not nearly big enough. this picture doesn't really show the scale, but believe me, this is not something that I am ever going to cuddle up with. Again, that is why I did my first projects on the least expensive material I could find.

So, now you know how I started off. Next week, I'll go over my first big project, and a little more about why I thought that this kind of hobby might suit me.

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