Hello friends!
What a satisfying feeling to finish a big project. That there is my blouse which I started back in July. I love it to bits and want to share the details, and the “mistakes” with you.
The design is actually from the July Wednesday Tribe pattern, which may I add, came LAST in the favourite design poll I did a month ago… I mean… puhlease! 🙄
Well this ugly duckling has certainly turned into a swan.
I had a plain white linen blouse with big wide sleeves which I decided would be perfect to stitch on.
Transferring the pattern was easy for two reasons:
The fabric was quite sheer and easy to see the pattern through.
The sleeves were super wide so sliding a printed page between the sleeve sides was a breeze.
I traced it using a heat erasable pen.
I knew I wanted it to be colourful but didn’t decide on all the colours at once. I did it as I went along in the following order as numbered below. Read each number description and look at the design to clearly see the separate colour groupings.
How I decided the colours:
The big central flower was going to be in blues because I knew I would mostly wear this with blue jeans and wanted one colour to be more dominant. Plus I have lots of blue earrings! 😆
The stems were an easy decision, I usually do them in brown or green.
The leaves, another easy decision… green. No brainer.
The flowers were split into three groups and assigned a colour theme:
- centre flowers top and bottom: orange
- two side flowers: pink and purple
- little scattered, unattached flowers: redfinally yellow, orange, light blue and red were given the job of decorating the little French knot details. How these were distributed didn’t matter all that much because the whole design was already quite colourful and the little French knots were just there to add more pops of colour.
Following the above groupings I was able to use a lot of colours and not create chaos on the design. The colours are distributed evenly and symmetrically which matches the design itself.
The unpopular one…🫤👇
This green, orange and yellow number here was the original design when the July pattern launched for The Wednesday Tribe. I reaaaalllllly loved this colour but I don’t think it was overly well received. Which is completely normal and of course fine.
Totally fine.
No grudges.
Why would I care?
It’s no big deal.
Not even a little bit of a deal.
😐
Here are two more colour versions. These two beauties were stitched by Sharon and Clarinda from the tribe in their own chosen colours. Love these!
Getting back to the sleeves. I messed up two things along the way. I fixed one, and decided to ignore the other. 😂
Firstly, the fabric actually turned out to be a very fine linen. Like… delicate kind of fine. I’m by nature a tight stitcher, so I tend to pull my threads firmly into place. I noticed that on one little flower (one of the red ones) after I stitched the brown centre, that I made a hole in the fabric!
I should have taken a photo, sorry, but if you can just imagine a small stitched circle, and imagine me pulling so tightly on the stitches that the fabric rips around the edges!
(Maybe I was having an argument in my head with someone at the time and muttering under my breath 🤔.)
I did manage to fix it by cutting out a small piece of white linen and tacking it on the reverse to cover the hole. Then I simply embroidered over the whole thing. The patch worked. Here’s a photo of the patch on the reverse of the fabric.
There’s a hole in the fabric under that patch.
And the other “mistake”?
Wellllll…. to me this is not a mistake. Although technically it is classed as one. But I want to share it because I see so many of my students make mistakes like this and they start unpicking! Noooooo!
Stop it!
Leave it!
Here are mine and why I left them.
Left: All the little stamens were supposed to be brown back stitch, brown French knot in the centre and then yellow French knots around. Somehow a few of them ended up with blue French knots in the middle and the rest in brown. Why? How? No idea.
Right: Same deal. All the red flowers were meant to have brown centres and orange French knots in a ring. But ONE flower ended up with navy blue French knots… Why? How? No idea.
Honestly on a design with this many colours and flowers, little inconsistencies like this are not worth unpicking. No one would even notice… except…
… my best friend Kylie. She is a mathematician and scientist and she has eagle eyes. I bet she would notice. I only just thought of it now. OK I’m going to wear this blouse next time I see her and I will report back if she noticed anything.
OK I’ve gone on about this blouse long enough. But just one last thing I want to mention.
When you decide to embroider a garment you have to first think about how you wear it before you start transferring the pattern. With this blouse I like to wear the sleeves long and also pulled up to my elbows. So the design had to fit and look good in both configurations.
And it does 🥳
“Astrid” pattern
I think this one’s a winner!
Even though it came last in the voting for favourite design. But that’s fine. Honestly I’m ok.
(😩😩😩)
Close up
Let’s do another motif!
This week I added two more leaves to the slowly growing design. As you’ll see in the video I really am making it up as I go along, haha! But it’s also part of the whole approach; no fussing about, no stress, no overthinking or planning. Let’s just see where this goes as we add a new motif every week.
The first leaf I did was made up of long lazy daisies, fly stitch and French knots. It was unplanned but it was fun adding one thing after another. The second leaf is done only in the wheatear stitch and if you’ve never tried it before you simply must try it! It’s like a combination of chain stitch and fly stitch and so satisfying.
If this is your first time seeing this, we’re up to week 3 of an ongoing project. You can see the start in issue 79.
Maker Of The Week
- ANNA MCCARTHY -
I already love wool embroidery on wool felt, so when I saw Anna’s project I knew I had to share it with you all here. The colours seem so apt for the soft wool on wool. There is a gentleness in the purple and green hues, and the textures so delightful that I can almost hear the sound of the wool moving through the layer of felt.
This is the June design from The Wednesday Tribe and Anna chose all her own colours for this project.
From The Tribe
The October design for The Wednesday Tribe featured three fish swimming amongst three flowers. This months focus is on filling curvy shapes using the stem stitch. The two blue flowers in the photo here are filled with it.
The stem stitch is largely under-utilised as a filling stitch in my own collection of patterns. I have used it seldomly in the past but don’t know why. It’s such a malleable stitch and will fill virtually any shape without encountering issues around curves, corners or tight spots. I loved using it for the filled shapes in this months design, and am now inspired to use it way more often across other patterns.
It might just cure my obsession with satin stitching everything that crosses my path 😂
One interesting thing I found from this months design is how the stem stitch when used as a filling stitch looks when done in crewel wool. I compared the two versions side by side and the wool one results is a very solid and fluffy surface without the individual stitches visible.
Hard to describe, but I’ll show you next week the side by side comparison.
If you’re curious about The Wednesday Tribe you can read all about it here…
Wednesday Tribe Members Reminder!
We’re meeting for our live Zoom session next week. The links were sent to your email last week. See you there!
Till Next Week!
We got to the end of the newsletter together! 🥳🥂
Last week I told you I was going for a walk in the nature reserve and that I would take a photo of that tree that flowers and drops its flowers into the stream below. But last night we had a monumental thunder and rain storm and what a mess mother nature made! I went down there this morning and it looked like it needed a good sweep, vacuum and tidy up! So I’ll take a photo on a prettier day.
Instead, I’ll just stick yet another pic of me in my new blouse 😂 I know, I know, you’ve had enough!
Oh and if you’re joining me this weekend in Nowra for the two workshops, I will wear this blouse on one of the days.
Big hugs xxx
Kasia 💕
P.S. the necklace is made of natural amber and was a gift from my aunt Malgosia.
