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.

Gold Is Addictive

After a few of previous attempts, I have have concluded that it's best to keep it simple when using metal thread. So here are simple Blue Waves in solid colours. Dazzling, aren't they?

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...