I have just finished a pin cushion and I would like to share a few photos with you.  In my previous post I said it had not fun at all to stitch all in a single colour.  This ring has two stitching paths and as you can see in two colours.  

The above photo is a ring with three rows of stitches.  Can you see the tiny triangles are forming?

It is clearer now with seven rows of stitches are done and pink and crimson triangles are there.

It’s almost there:  another two rows of stitches and it will be done.

I find stitching thimbles, or any other ring shaped rings, very therapeutic but all in a single colour is so monotonous that it discourage me to keep going.  I like the way the trinket tray in the previous post looks but I don’t think I want to make another one anytime soon.

prototype I and II

It's already halfway past the month and I finally managed to upload my contribution to Flickr photo sharing. 

When I announced this month's photo sharing earlier, I gave you a small peek of my current project.  It was a needlework tray and pin cushion set as many of you figured it out.  I have stitched two third of the tray and pin cushion and before continue stitching the rest, I thought it would be very prudent to make a prototype to determine the colours I chose would really work fine. 

Not too bad, but not exactly what I thought it would appear.  The darker blue and green are too conspicuous and needed to reduced it to a single round.  Toup and silver look too much alike and no, it won't do.  Perhaps much darker colour might have worked better?

Sorry about the blurry picture, but one less dark blue and green with dark charcoal and dark olive, the pin cushion appears completely differently.  The pin wheel parts and squares appear more prominent and this is not the effect I prefer for this particular project.

So, it's white that I finally chose for the tray with silver metal thread.  My metal threads are smaller in size than the silk I use and since I reversed the proportion of silk and silver for the last part of the stitching, I encountered the small problem of coverage at the edges and it shows as you can see.  I really should have made the third prototype.  The stitching part of the tray is finished and it only require attaching the lining to the inner bottom.  I am not really sure if velvet works better than satin but as I have some velvet in my stash and no satin at all, it's most likely I would use velvet.  I will show you when I finished lining the bottom, in either material, along with the new pin cushion in matching design.  In the meantime, wish you happy stitching.

pin cushion in pink

The design on my latest pin cushion was an experiment and it appeared as I thought it would be, so in that sense it was a success.  However, I find it a little bit too busy.  Maybe in different colours...   Actually it is a prototype of my latest project (aside from new thimble kit).  I thought it would be lovely to have a work tray for needlework with its side finished in the same way as thimbles.  Actually I got around and made one for myself.  That first one taught me I needed to improve how I attache a bottom to the ring.  So I made another tray base, I would say an improved one, last weekend and I have started experimenting in the smaller scales, hence a pin cushion.  The height of the side is 15mm plus bottom, the same as the tray so my experiment can be adapted to the tray easily.  I like the design but it would look nicer when the design is two or three tired with higher sided ring.  I may not pick this one for the tray but I believe I am going to start a new experiment on the design, too, for something else.

Beverly at How Sweet The Sound is hosting Pink Saturday this weekend, too.  She set up a list of links of the participants so that we can visit and see what other people has found for their posts in pink.  I wish you all happy pink Saturday.

maybe a little bit obsessed...

Further to my past post regarding my experiments on dark olive with lighter green, I made two more of the same design but in different colours:

With previous three pin cushions in amethyst and green, and these two, even I have to admit that I am a little obsessed, but I like the design and feel happy stitching. 

*** shop update ***
Actually this is not an update, but an announcement that I am seriously considering changing the currency of my shop.  At the moment the currency exchange rates are relatively stable, however when it fluctuates again I have to but  review the price of my merchandise and I really hate it.  Even though it's not a price hike from my point of view, it actually is for the customers.  Setting the price in Japanese Yen other than U.S. dollars allows me not to revise the price due to currency fluctuation.  I hope you understand.  Thank you.  C.P.

Share Your Thimbles - December 2010

I just can't believe it's already December.  I haven't completed as much projects as I hoped at the beginning of the year, but I am very proud of myself that I have been hosting a thimble photo sharing at Flickr throughout the year and this is the last occasion for you to join the group this year. 

As I told you the other day that it's our one year anniversary and our photo sharing is now into the year two this month.  I am not sure how this is going to affect the group, but I have decided to lift the ban on the technique you can use on your thimbles:  From now on you can use back stitch and weaving as well as embroidery on the surface.  My contribution to this month's photo sharing is orange pin cushion, in the same colours as Japanese maples (which do not produce maple syrup by the way) at the moment.  They won't last long and within a week or so these beautiful leaves will be all gone. 

Here are the general rules:

1. The thimbles (or any other rings) have to be your own work.

2. Although the group name says "thimbles", your work is not necessarily a thimble and you can make your rings in any size you would like, as small as a focal bead for the necklace or as big as a bracelet, or even bigger.

3. As stated above, they have to be your own work however, you can use the ring base from the kit if you choose to do so. It may not seem to be fair, considering I sell the kits, however, they are many other kits available (at least in Japan) and some of you may be able to obtain them, and it is definitely not fair to exclude the people brave enough to share their first work with us from the group.

4. No technique restriction applies.  You can use back stitch and weaving in addition to the forward  stitch, and even embroidery on the surface if you choose to do so.  This is not a contest.  You do not need to use these technique if you are not up to it or you simply do not feel like it.  A simple and elegant bi-coloured scales design is always welcomed.

5. You can use any material, and in any colours, you would like.

6. Please state the size of the mould on which you formed your ring base in the description field of the photo. Please also mention what threads and padding you used, too, so that we could compare notes. In case you bought one of my kits, here are the size and materials: "first thimble" is 50mm in circumference and Tire Silk size 9 & floss silk padding. "small pincushion" is 61mm in circumference and Tire Silk size9 & floss silk padding. "medium pincushion" is 103mm and Tire Silk size 16 & knitting yarn for padding.

7. You can upload as many photo as you like. You can upload several photos of one thimble if you choose to do so.

8. The closing date is 21st of December 2010, Japan time. Please note that we are 9 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) in Japan. You can still upload your photo after the official closing date since I do not close the photo sharing pool, however, I do close the discussion board for entry to the lucky draw.


Now you can start uploading your photos from here.


We are going to have a lucky draw at the end this month, too. One lucky winner will receive the pin cushion of my contribution to this month's photo sharing which shown as above.  To participate in the draw, please leave a message at the discussion board at Flickr under the subject of "Thimbles of December 2010". As stated above, you can upload as many photos as you like however, you can enter the draw only once.  The winner of the draw will be announce here at my blog, not at the Flicker, by the end of the month.

You are going to be busy with the holiday approaching but take sometime for yourself for a few hours and make a small ring and make it a pin cushion, or a tall ring and then you have a beading for necklace.  They are especially good as a stocking filler.  Happy stitching.

Can you tell the difference?

Following the previous post, I experimented on the same designed pin cushion bases.  For those of you who didn't read the previous post, one of the instructors from my embroidery course suggested that I might want to consider inserting a smidgen of emerald green in the stripes when I brought  it (the right one in the photo) to the course Here are the results of my experiment:

This is the original one, in solid dark olive and gold, I put the small patch on the photo so that you can see the olive green thread I used.  I like it as it is, maybe a bit too subdued, but I like the colour combination and it looks good, if I may say so myself.

Then,  I used the celadon for the last round of the center square for the second one.  My instructor suggested emerald green and his suggestion in colour choice is always spot-on, however, I thought emerald is a touch too strong a colour, especially when the design requires the thread has to appear not only the square part but all the strips parts, too. 

I regret that I didn't take step by step photo, but it was really an interesting process.  As you can see (or you may not see),  the strips (and squares) are formed from the centre.  After two rounds of dark olive green, the celadon come, and the whole green part appeared as if it was solid emerald green.  Then three rounds of gold and I realized that the whole ring was in the colour of peacock feathers.  It was like a WOW moment.  Then two rounds of dark olive green and it was totally changed again, with dark olive lying side by side with amethyst and it made amethyst deeper, richer.  Another WOW. I wanted to stop there but I had to add another gold, not only for the sake of experiment, but for the completion of the design as it required another round of stitches.  The celadon is subtle but it makes the design more interesting for sure.

The third one, with emerald green.  I am sorry that the photo is a bit blurry.  I was quite happy with the second one with celadon, but I wanted to see what it would be like with emerald green in it.  I was right to think that emerald green would be too strong for this design and that he hadn't understood how the design was formed and emerald green had to appear all the way in the stripes and square.  He is a embroiderer and I think he wanted to add a bit of emerald green here and there, and not like this, although this is the brightest one and I suppose it's not too bad.

I would like to make another one with celadon and without the last round of gold.  It requires a little tweaking of the design, unless I want to replace the gold with the third round of olive green, and I do not.  Perhaps adding a little more gold may be the answer, I have to think about it.

flower basket -- update IV + another pin cushion

The basket itself is finally finished, and so are branches of plum flowers.  So it leaves me no option but to work on chrysanthemums and peonies leaves.  I am not very happy with these leaves as they are now, to be honest, and that's why I have not been very keen on working on them so far.  I can choose to redo them, of course, but I really don't want to.  My instructor told me that they were not bad, that I have just finished the "ground work" so what I needed to do  was to "beautify" them.  I am not really sure about it, though.  He, however, told me that I had better redo one of the daffodil leaves, the longest one on the top, and I quite agree.

Here is another pin cushion, in the (almost) same design but in different colours and size.  Thank you, Lady of the Lock and Laura B. for your kind words on my previously listed pin cushion in pink.  This one still glitters a lot but it doesn't bother me as much as the previous one does, possibly because I just don't like the combination of that particular shade of pink and gold, is all. 

I brought it to the embroidery class to show it off, and the instructor suggested that I might want to insert a little bit of emerald green in the gold and dark green stripes part, so that it would bring the purple brighter.  His suggestion in colours is always reliable so I am making exactly the same one right now but with a row of emerald green, so that I could compare the effect the brighter green is supposed to provide.

a make a month November 2010

This is my latest pin cushion base ring, in detail.  I have finished stitching the pin flower (windmill) part months ago but never finished the background until two days ago. 

I used gold thread for Japanese embroidery and perhaps it's a little too glittery, don't you think?

Cherry Blossoms

There is a wonderful group programme called Pink Saturday hosted by Beverly where the participants publish a blog post dedicated in pink on every Saturday. It has been a while since I last participated in but when I made this ring as a frame of a small pincushion I decided that it was time to join the group again.

As you can see, this design is an another variation of bi-coloured scales. The first section is shading pink and the second section is dark blue and white stripes. I suppose the darkest pink turned out a tad too strong. I am going to make another one and I will increase the pale pink part and reduce the darker two, perhaps it might work better with paler yet pink.

A make a month 2010 - January - plus number of stitches

Have you noticed a nice blog button? It's a make a month 2010 button. Helen of Angharad has challenged us to stop hoarding the craft supplies and actually make something. She is now hosting a Flickr group and of course I have signed up.

They are medium sized pincushions. I have already made rings months ago, but didn't come around to make cushion parts (the process I do not care very much) but Helen's challenge gave me a reason to finish them. Of course making these small (they are medium sized but still small, as you can suppose) cushions doesn't make any dent in my stash though, it's a start.

Meri asked me something about the previous post of number of stitches. I am sorry I didn't make myself clear and here is an additional explanation:

The number of the stitches you make in one section of course depends on the size of the ring, number of the sections you are having, and the size of the thread you use. What I was trying to say is when you compare with the two identical sized rings stitched with the same thread, the number of the over all stitches varied depending on the number of the sections. The less sections (wider sections), the sharper the angle of the thread, the less over all stitches because an actual coverage of the thread becomes wider at the middle of the ring body

As for the recommended size of perle cotton for thimbles, I am sorry but I have no idea. As a matter of fact I have not ever seen any perle cotton other than size 5. In Japan there are not many choice where embroidery floss is concerned; there are size 25(6-strand floss) and size 5 and that's all. Of course there are Japanese embroidery silk floss, sashiko cotton, kogin cotton, temari thread, and other "stitching" thread (manufacturer called them so, not me) available, but no perle cotton. All I can say is the thread size should match the size of the ring. Size 5 perle cotton is definitely too big for a thimble. On the other hand you can use one strand of size 25 embroidery floss (closely the same size as silk hand sewing size 9) for a napkin ring if you like. It takes long time to finish it but you can make more delicate and intricate design than the one made with bigger thread.

Debi suggested on the number of stitches post to include two pictures to show how there is a greater distance across the thread when the angle is sharper. (Debi, I now understand what you meant) It's a great idea however, sadly, as you have all witnessed, my drawing using Paint is not up to the task. Perhaps I can get better result by hand drawing and scanning afterward. With these two pictures, it will make more sense easily. Thank you, Debi

Sidhepro mentioned the other day when she uploaded her "share your thimbles" photo, that her edges were not up to her expectation, that her down stroke was better than upstroke and so the bottom edge ended up the better stitch alignment. How you insert your needle decides how your stitch looks (and so does how you pull the thread, too) so if you are happy with your down stroke, or upstroke for that matter, more than the other, why don't you hold your ring upside down when you are doing less favored edge? Hold it upside down, insert the needle tip, turn it to the correct side up, then pull the thread. However, I do not like to do so, because it makes threads prone to all tangled up, especially you use more than four, but it's my personal opinion. Many people do this way, so why don't you, too?

I am very slow to respond to comments left but I read all. When I didn't make myself really clear in my "how I do" or you have a question, or just say hello, please don't hesitate to leave a comment. I love it when people respond to me :)

Last Post in 2009

Time flies and today is the last day of 2009. The New Years Holidays are bigger yet holidays in Japan than Christmas, because Japan is not a Christian country and separation of politics and religions, Christmas is NOT even a bank holiday here. So I do not have much time today but I would just like thank you all for reading my posts this year, am really glad that I could be able to know so many lovely people through blogworld, am very happy that I could be of help for those of you who are interested in making thimbles, and there are so many that I would like to thank about but my family is waiting so I will stop now. By the way, I am having another photo sharing starting tomorrow, details to follow.
Happy New Year. Chloe Patricia

Share Your Thimbles - December 2009 - closed

Here is another medium pin cushion I made however, it's nothing to do with the thimble pool, just wanted to share it with you, is all. You are familiar with the design but this time I used gold thread. As a matter of fact this is the first time I used gold where weaving is involved and I am quite happy with the result.

I have just closed the Flickr thimble pool. You can not upload from now on until I open it next year but you can admire the works from here. There are total 13 entries, from a thimble to bracelet, by 4 people. However, when I visited the Flickr I found the earlier uploads were missing and there are only 12 pictures there now. Is this because I disabled the upload do you think? Does anyone have any idea why?

To be honest I am a bit disappointed because I know for a fact that there are more than 4 people who makes thimbles/rings among my readers, but then I cannot complain as this is the first pool and it's December with winter holidays and school break and all. I am going to host another Flickr pool after New Year holiday and I would like to expect more entries then.

Now, as I said there are 13 uploads with respective comments on the post for draw. Actually there are 16 comments including 3 non-entry comments. I numbered third comment by Debi as 1 and fifth one by Debi as 2 until the last one by Debi (again) as 13 and the lucky winner is number 5, Meri who uploaded her first thimble for us. Meri, will you please send me an e-mail about which pin cushion you would like and give me your name and address. You can send me an e-mail from my profile page.

As I said before I am going to host another Flickr pool next year so please continue making thimbles/rings. Don't disappoint me, please.

Share Your Thimbles December 2009 - part II

Hello everyone, this is to follow the previous post announcing the thimble sharing pool but I would like firstly to show you my newest pin cushion (medium). Looks rather good, if I say so myself.

Now, I would like to thank Meri in Portugal who responded firstly to my call, Pat for becoming the first member, Debi for uploading the first thimble, and Gloria for her kind word. We are now a group of four including myself and I would like to make some points clear:

Firstly, you can use any kind of thread you like. It does not have to be silk. You can use anything you like or you have in your stash. You can choose two different kind of thread for each colour although it may cause you some problems if the size is visibly different. The reason I asked you to state what you use when uploading is so that we can share the idea of what works well.

Secondly, the design is two coloured scales only. No shading in colour or stripes. Basically you can only use two solid colours. The variegated thread is okay if you like the effect though. The reason why I limit the design to two coloured scales is to encourage everyone to join the pool. If I allow the more complicated design and it's most likely the more experienced people will upload their works firstly, then the other people, who are less experienced or who are making their very first thimbles will not feel very comfortable to share their works. I intend to continue hosting the programme and I may open to more complicated designs like my pin cushion above in the future. Until then, it's two coloured scales.

Thirdly, you only have to leave a comment when you would like to enter the draw. One entry by one comment for one upload. Even if you uploaded multiple thimbles and left only one comment, then it's one entry.

Lastly, the closing date is 21st of December. Please note that I live in Japan and it's 9 hours ahead of GMT here. I am sorry but I cannot give you the exact time when I will close the pool. Most likely in the evening is all I can say.

I hope I made everything clear and wait for your participation.
Happy stitching.

somthing small and cute

I have finally got around to make enough small pin cushions and I will list them at my Etsy shop over the weekend for early winter holiday shopping. I am deeply ashamed of myself of being a very poor shopkeeper, I have so neglected my shop that there are only two bracelets and a box of silk thread left now.

Aside from my thimbles and pin cushions, I am working on a needle book however, so far no success at all. I wonder if I could perfect it in time for winter holiday season. I will try a few times more and see how it goes.

long time no see ...

It has been about six weeks since I last updated my blog and I would like to thank you all who has still visited me although there was nothing new for awhile.

Here is my latest creation. I made this slightly bigger than my usual thimbles thinking to turn it to a pin cushion. I also neglected my Etsy shop, too, and hopefully soon I will restock it with new thimbles and pin cushions including this one.

Now, I promised you that I would explain about the thimble design and segments a long time ago. I haven't forgot it, I wrote a draft, then rewrite it, discarded it, then made a new draft, revised it, then discarded it again and repeated the same process a few times and have finally concluded that no matter what I say, it will not make any sense if my readers never made one for themselves. So I am now drafting "how to make a thimble for the first time" instead and will soon post it here.

In the meantime, I have a question for you. I use the word "segments" to describe the sections divided on the marking paper and wonder if it is a bit too big a word. I come up with "part" and "section" and I would appreciate it if you could suggest the appropriate word for me since English is not my first language.

metal thread 2

Here is another pin cushion-to-be with gold thread. The design is modified Blue Waves, 1:4 for fins.

1:4 for one part of gold and four part of stripy part, you see? One round in gold and four rounds in stripy part instead of alternating rounds. The problem with this design using metal thread is the metal thread being far smaller than silk thread. It makes segmentalizing quite...interesting. I intended to end the stripe part with gold however I had to add a single round in ivory silk. There is still gaps visible but adding another ivory would make the result different from what I intended and there would be no more space to add a gold there after another ivory. So this is it. I may try this design again sometime to see if I could learn from the experience.

metal thread

One of my instructors at the Japanese embroidery course has suggested me to use gold thread instead of my usual substitute of pale yellow for framing diamonds design. The gold thread I use is a real gold one; thin gold leaf strip wrapped around the silk core thread, and not the fake polyester one. That means it is so delicate that the gold is really easily coming off.

This one, and the one below, are not in my usual thimble size. It came to my attention (belatedly) that there are people who likes the bigger pin cushions than the one I think is big. I do not do dressmaking or quilting or any other heavy sewing and do not require a big pincushion, and naturally my idea of big does not coincide the one for the heavy users. Therefore I am going to renaming the size of my pin cushions. These two you see here are "extra small" ones (although they still require cushion part), slightly bigger than the thimbles. My former big pin cushions, which are still on my Etsy shelves but soon to be expired, will be "small" and napkin ring size will be "medium". I am still wondering what "big" should be, though.

Now, back to the metal thread. For this gray one I used silver thread. The picture does not do justice for it's rather sparkling, though I am not sure if I really like the effect. Perhaps it needs more colour, is all. I also need to determin if it's wise to use metal thead for pin cushions. For collectibles, no problems at all, but as a working tool, metal thread may be too delicate...

Pink Festoon Pincushion

My fellow thimble maker gave me PDF file the other day and asked me to help her understand the diagram of the design. It was a beautiful design named Flower Diamonds, although it's not for a beginner, it shouldn't be too difficult to reproduce. It requires 21 segments so my usual thimble is out because it's too small to appreciate the beauty of gradation of colours, so a pincushion I decided on, then.

I was supposed to be finishing another set of napkin rings (still am working on them) however, I have been kind of fed up with them. They are beautiful all right, but since they are napkin rings, they are big and I need to make a certain number of them i.e. a set of six. Big six rings shouldn't be too bad if they vary in colours and/or designs. Sadly they do not. I will show them in my next post and you would understand.

Anyway, I was just too happy to have some distraction from my monotonous and time consuming napkin rings. The problem was that the instruction and diagram were not very user friendly. It took me a while to understand what the author meant and even after I started stitching I still had my doubt. Then, after 3rd row, I realized I had indeed misunderstood the diagram. If it was anything other than the thimble, I would have undone and started over however, it's not advisable to undo thimbles because it weakens the base. So I had two options; either abandon or continue. I had a vague idea what it would be like and wanted to see if it would turn out as expected. It did and here is my latest pincushion with pink festoon :)

Another Pincushions

I like purple and green and have decided that I will keep these two for my own use. As a matter of fact, the pincushions in my last post were prototypes. Although I love the rainbow one, it is not fat enough and I love the colour of the diamond designed one, its segments are two narrow to form a nice diamond pattern. I also have one that is too fat at the middle and another one that I would rather not comment on here. These are all prototypes, I like the sound of it, prototypes, it sounds like something I experimented on whereas in fact they all just turned out as they were :)

At the moment I have four prototypes and three finished ones plus the one shown below:

When finished this one, I will post the picture here, although I am afraid this one might turn out to be another prototype because it's a bit too fat, too. At the moment this one is 2mm larger in diameter than the purple and green one. I am trying to adjust the size by manipulate the tension of the threads but it might not work. The reason why I have great difficulties in regulating the finished size is cotton wadding I use. I use three layers of cotton wadding instead of floss silk. I wonder if I should switch back to floss silk.

This weekend I will put the (good) pincushions on the shelf of my Etsy shop so please come visit. I am also contemplating to open a new shop at Art Fire, which is another on line hand made venue, however, I am (again) having a problem uploading pictures. I was told that my PC is having a difficulty to recognize Java something and they suggested to use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. I tried Firefox but still got a problem.... The grand opening at Art Fire is no where in sight in near future.

I do not forget that I promised to show you how I make stitches on the thimbles. Please be patient with me :)

A Rainbow Pincushion

I am currently making bigger pincushions using the same method I employ to make thimbles and this is what I have always wanted to make; rainbow scales. Well, actually I used only six colours so it's not precisely a rainbow, but we won't go there to point it out, will we? I have been making thimbles for almost a year and half but never made six coloured scales because the thimbles I usually make are too small to accommodate so many colours.

I have made four so far and am thinking to list them at my Etsy shop however I am hesitating to price them. I am quite happy to have an opportunity to sell my creations but I hate that I have to price them to do so. I am confident that my creations are worth the price tag I put on most of the time but sometimes I wonder if I am being presumptuous.

More importantly my thimbles do not have practical uses for most of the people and I start to wonder, again, if I didn't price them correctly for frivolous things, especially when I haven't made enough sales and I haven't recently and been wondering how to price these pincushions "correctly". I really hate this.

I intended to show you how to make stitches so that you could make your own since you know how to make a solid base, however, I encountered grave difficulties when trying to upload photos. I suppose Blogger does not like the size of the photos I tried to upload although it should allow me to upload maximum 8MB while mine is far too smaller. I do not know how to minimize the pixels of the jpeg images so I will have to take another photos. The problem (another problem) is that my camera does not allow me to take smaller pictures. I bought a new one last December because the battery of the old one was not able to keep charged and I do not get along with the new one very well so far. Once I reconciled with my camera, I promise I will do another "how I do".