Share Your Thimbles - December 2009

Following the previous posts about how to make thimbles, it's a great pleasure for me to announce that I have launched the first ever Share Your Thimble photo pool at Flickr. This is the scheme where everyone can upload their thimbles for any one's views; this is open to public, both participants and viewers. You can jump to Share Your Thimbles from here although at the moment there are only one picture there.

This is to promote traditional Japanese silk stitched thimbles and to encourage everyone to start making their own. There is only two rules; firstly it has to be a thimble you yourself made which can be uploaded. I don't think anyone would steal someone else's work but just in case. Secondly you will state the circumference of the mould you used, the material you used for the padding, and the kind of thread you used in the description field as you can see in my picture. Other than that, you can upload as many as you would like.

Here is how it works in case you are not familiar with Flickr; as a matter of fact I was not and I still am not, though. As far as I understand, firstly you have to create your own account. Since I had already had Yahoo account, I didn't need to enter much details and I don't think if you do not have Yahoo! ID to start with, it won't require much. Then, upload your photos and when you open the uploaded photo, there is a "send to group" button between the title and the picture.

As this is the first pool, I would like to limit the design to bi-coloured scales only. As I told you before this design is the easiest and at the same time the most difficult one so it's a challenge for everyone, from the very first time beginners to the very skilled thimble makers. To encourage your participation, I am offering a give away. When I close the pool on 21st of December, I will draw one lucky person who can choose one small pin cushion from my Etsy shop, on the condition that s/he will not sell it away. At the moment there are 17 there and even if, and it's a big if, I made big sales, I would make sure that lucky person could chose from at least from a dozen. To enter the draw, please leave a comment here, to this post, that you have uploaded your thimble. One entry per one upload, so if you uploaded two photos, then you have to leave two comments for two entries. Please note, this is not a competition, but a simple draw.

Closing date is 21st of December, three weeks from now. I know for a fact that some of the you are thimble makers and some of you are thinking of making one. I would be greatly disappointed if you won't participate in. This is open to anyone, so please tell your friends and invite them for me.

bi-coloured scales design thimbmle - this is how I do -

As promised a long long time ago, here is a tutorial of making bi-coloured scales design thimble. Before I proceed, I would like to thank Neabear, coral-seas, SunshineCraft, Debi, and Mary Corbet for responding my enquiry earlier regarding segments and sections. I also consulted with other sources and they all agreed that there is no big difference either I call them segments or sections. Considering that I have already used the word segments in the previous posts and I do not wish to change all the words, I will stick to "segments" for the time being until I may decide otherwise in the future.

Now, since this bi-coloured design is what most of the people makes firstly before trying other designs, it is considered the easiest to make (or perhaps it's the other way around, it's easiest and people makes them first) however, it's quite a tough design to make. First of all, as you use only two colour without fancy design, it clearly shows your skill. Secondly segments are relatively wide so your padding may be caught with your stitching threads. Still it involves only two threads with no changing colour in one segment, I chose this one for my first design tutorial.

As I told you before scales design is collective triangles in Japanese culture, signifying serpents or dragons scales. Dragons in Eastern Asian culture, contrary to the Western world, are nature's spirit or gods wielding a great power over the weather and water such as ocean and river. You see, dragons don't breath fire in Eastern Asia. I will not going further here but you can find books about Eastern dragons in the anthropology section at your local library. Back to the thimbles. This design is simple yet elegant, suitable to your very first thimble.

Here is a diagram. Rectangles with crossings in red and blue with numbers and arrows. But this tells you how to make your thimble.

I would like you to consider diagrams are instructions on your marking papers. Those eight rectangles are segments as you see below and I numbered with A's and B's alternatively both at top and bottom. As your marking paper is wrapped around the thimble base, A1 and A1', and B8 and B8' are the same point.

Then the arrow beneath A1 is to signify your first starting point is A1 and the direction you take is right, means regular forward stitching. You are going to make your initial stitch at A1 and then forward to A2 then A3, zig-zaging until you would get to A1' which is same as A1 where you make your first stitch of the second row right next to the initial stitch.

Then you thread another colour and starting from B1 to B8', then B1 again with the first stitch of the second row as the below diagram show you. After both of your first rows are done with first stitches of the second rows, you get back to the colour A and start the second row, ending the row with the first stitch of the third row.

In order to make it clear I change the colour of the second row of colour A. For some unknown reasons I cannot upload any picture file bigger than 500 pixels wide, so it does not clearly appear as I wished.

Once you finished your second row of the colour A, it should be like below,

Then thread the colour B, and make stitches all around.

Continue stitching colour A and colour B alternatively until all the segments are filled with stitches, thus the body of the thimble is covered, too.

When using a lip balm casing for a mold as I do, I recommend to have 8 or 10 segments. Any more, the finished triangles are too steep and do not look like scales (as Japanese people consider the way they should be) and any less, you might have a problem covering edges and body at the same time. It may not make sense to you right now, but take my word for it, you do not want to have this particular problem now. Be aware that your segments are always in even numbers for this design. You cannot make scales with odd numbered segments while some designs, like blue waves, can be made with both odd and even numbered segments. Let me know when I didn't make it very clear and I will try to explain more clearly. Those of you who are wondering how to make stitches and thimble bases, you pop in here for making bases, here and here for stitching, and here for suggestions of silk alternatives.

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.

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?