I made it back! Ferry service resumed on Monday and I made it off the island on the third ferry of the day. Weather events are the best way to end a vacation (#sarcasm). It was great to see my friends and I love Ocracoke, but not having a way to leave a place is stressful.
 |
| On the ferry, but before the waves crashed over the side of the boat onto my car. Yes, I closed the window before that happened. |
While I did get to post last week's blog close to on time, I didn't really get to share much about some of the fun things I'm doing this month, specifically around thread options. I'm using regular embroidery floss for this month's project (Bernie and Sam's bodies were both made using regular floss), but I've also included four other threads from DMC: Floche, Perle, Etoile and Diamant.
I heard about floche last year from one of my favorite embroiderers, Mary Corbet. Floche is a non-divisible thin thread that's probably best used for fine detail work. You can read Mary's blog about it here. I didn't get to use the floche thread last year since I was using my ort jar thread for my stitch journal and it didn't fit any of my other projects. It's so perfect for this month! It's so lovely to work with. It moves through fabric beautifully and it creates lovely knots and is perfect for bullion knots too. I only have a few colors, so I'm mostly using the green and peach for this project. I need to buy some more and use it for other things. The skein is massive and I haven't quite figured out how to store it now that I've opened two of them. I also used Perle (or Pearl) cotton thread. Perle is another non-divisible thread that I like using for knots and stitches like stem stitch. I'm using number 8, which is a thinner weight thread. Like floche, it works so well for bullion knots.
I also tried some DMC Diamant to give Sam a little sparkle. Finally a metallic thread that doesn't make me want to throw my embroidery into the sea! It's also non-divisible and that makes such a difference. I bought the diamant thread for the Iconic series, but decided to try it out this week. It added a nice sparkle without being annoying and is really easy to work with. I also used DMC Etoile thread (not a new thread for me) for the spider web and used Sticky Solvy for the first time. I'm not a huge fan of stabilizer, but I'm glad I used it for the spider web transfer and I'm using it next week to transfer the next bug.
Here's this week's recap:
 |
| April 8 |
 |
| April 9 |
 |
| April 10 |
 |
| April 11 |
 |
| April 12 |
 |
| April 13 |
 |
| April 14 |
 |
| April 15 |
 |
| Bernie and Sam in the garden. |
Up next: Lydia the Ladybug
Other Stuff I'm Working On/Completed Projects
I finished this month's PopLush club pattern while in Ocracoke. I painted the hoop when I got home. I tried using some glow-in-the-dark thread on the water, but it's not glowing. I may go back and add more later on.
I collected some shells on the beach and am trying to figure out how to incorporate some of them into an embroidery piece. I have an idea, but I have to figure out how to do it.
I also took some Polaroid photos on the island and am going to embroider on some of them. It was pretty hit or miss with what did and didn't come out, but there are some fun and weird images that will make for cool embroidered photos.
Keely is glad I'm back so he can resume patrol duties in the studio. He also wants me to get started on the Iconic series because he thinks it's about him.
Comments
Post a Comment