A few hats and some thread
When I last posted about the Big Knit, I had done 2 and a half hats, well by Tuesday night I had done 9 in total. I knew that my husband was working on site Wednesday night and wouldn't be home so I had big plans (I always have plans) to get another 5 hats knitted and also do the embroidery panel for the colouring caddy I still haven't touched (my plans are always unrealistic too). So I settled down on the sofa with Eastenders to knit a few hats before dinner. I made one, then I thought I'd start the embroidery.
The background: I'm embroidering the little girl's name (Evie) across a panel so I'd written it out in a water soluble pen, then I'd tried to do a lattice stitch so had drawn a grid. I then decided I didn't like the lattice stitch and unpicked it, so I was left with the grid in blue on the material. I started doing a long and short stitch in bright pink in one corner with the idea of going through shades of pink to a very pale one in the right hand corner of the last "e". I then discovered I only had a measley 4 shades of pink! Well that wasn't enough, cue a trip to the shop, the purchase of most of the pink DMCs they had and some bobbin cards.
So, back to last night. I decided to wet the piece to get rid of the blue lines which were ruining my vision of the embroidery, so whilst I waited for it to dry, I thought I'd carry on with winding threads onto bobbins. Before I knew it it was 10pm and I had done nothing except that one little hat.
Here his is with his brothers:
And I can't even claim that I now have a lovely neat box of embroidery threads as I've still got a long way to go. I inherited a lot of my embroidery threads from my mum who's been stitching for years, she gave me a load of off cuts and bits from kits she'd finished to use in my card making. Add to this a pack of mixed threads I bought to get me going and specific colours I've bought since and it makes for a mess of skeins of thread mixed with strands of thread:
I've wound the longer threads and the skeins onto bobbins which now look like this (well the blues, greens and pinks do, but not the other colours yet):
Which looks lovely and very easy to find the right colour, but it still means I've got a tangled mess of threads in another box! How do other stitchers out there deal with their threads - the ones you've cut but only used 3 strands of, or the end of skein for example? Maybe I need a special stitching project to use them all up?
2 comments:
Hello Wendy, I just read your comment on our Crazy Quilting International blog, and thought I should take a few moments to respond. Although the blog itself is more of a “showcase” of our work to the blogging world, the group itself, Crazy Quilting International, which is a Yahoo chat group is organized to help beginners through advanced. Under the main umbrella group, we have a Novice group that has loads of information about fabrics, laces, color tutorials, piecing information - all in the form of lessons. There is a great, supportive and very active network of women to help you along the way. Oh, and did I tell you that we’re all very friendly? And we have several members in the UK, too. And besides the Novice group, we have galleries which house all the ongoing round robins, plus another site just for swaps and other special projects. It’s so much fun - and I guarantee you that we can find a use for those threads, LOL!! The link to join is on the CQI blog in the sidebar. I hope to “see” you there! Hugs, Cathy Kizerian
Hi Wendy. I inherited a heap of mixed up threads from both my mother and mother in law. It took quite a while but I wound them all similarly to how you are doing, and wrote on the thread number wherever I could. The smaller or too knotted ones I didnt worry about. When I have left over strands that I have cut I fold them in half, poke it through the little hole in the cardboad, then wind it on top of the full threads. (Does that make sense) It is then easy to see it is a partly used piece.
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