Silk Hand Sewing Threads

I had bidden these beauties on-line last week and they finally arrived today! They are silk threads for hand sewing and I use them for my thimble (and other rings) making. They are not new ones but dead stock items and I didn't got them neatly in the boxes as shown below picture.

As a matter of fact, they all were a bit dusty and in a sorry state, so to speak, being just dumped in a also dusty cardboard box. I wiped all card spools, one by one, with a damp cloth and spread them out on a table to air them. Then I put them in my own boxes with dividers which I made from a new cardboard. I should have taken a picture of them when I first opened the box so that you could see "before" and "after".

Storing in these boxes as they are is a temporary solution. They are the boxes the Sacher Torte came in and they are beautiful enough that I could not throw them a way but rough around the edges literally and I have forever been planning to do make over. Since I have found what I want to put inside, I have now no excuse not to prioritize it on my very long "to do" list. Hopefully soon, they will be reborn as fabric covered boxes with much neat divider than the one they are currently equipped.

World of Pink - roses

Peonies are long gone, but there are still pink roses...

I have finally figured out how to reduce the pixels without hacking the pictures. So, here whole roses instead of a itsy-bitty part of them.

However, I still like something like this, too, a kind of magical, I think.

Soon, it will be time for hydrangea ...

Blue Wave with Fins

Here is a set of napkin rings I kept bitching about. The original blue wave design (the second one from the left) was not so bad but the rest of the five rings all required weaving and it was just too much.

They all are basically the same design with modifications by weaving, actually they are heavy on the weaving, too heavy as a matter of fact. In addition to the weaving, I opted to bi-coloured so they won't disturb the colour scheme on the table . I am very happy with the result but making process was rather tedious and monotonous. I am going to post these at Etsy with more pictures within a few days so please pop in to have a closer look.

Initial Stitch - this is how I do

It has brought to my attention that the post about stitching thimbles needs some additional information; how to tidy up the initial stitch.

Anyone who has tried this kind of thimble making knows how difficult to make a neat initial stitch. If yours did not turn out to your satisfaction, here is a tip to modify it:

As you see above picture, there is a small bump at the base of the stitch. By pulling the tail of the thread (not shown here) you can reduce it a bit however, it may not work very well. When you need that particular colour in a single row, that bump will show.

Firstly, gently ease the stitch using the tip of the needle until it becomes a loop like the picture above. When pulling the the stitch to make a loop, make sure the thread on the needle is feeding it. Then pull the loop even bigger by picking the thread coming from the edge of the base.

The focus is not very good but the bump in this picture is now smaller than before.

Next, pull the thread on the needle very gently so that the loop becomes a stitch once again. You see, it's much nicer now.

Here I finished off the round and there isn't any bump or lump or anything, really neat if I may so myself :)

Or, you can start without an initial stitch, as I discribed in the previous post, and finished the row with the stitch which should have been the first stitch.

Please let me know if you need further explanation/assistance for your thimble. I am happy to help.

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 :)