Personally, I don’t enjoy stitching two similar embroidery projects simultaneously. Sometimes I do this, so that I can troubleshoot or so I can try different materials with the same design.
There are, in fact, two versions of my current Jacobean piece underway.
On the very delightful-for-me side, I’m not embroidering the second one. Anna (my niece) is.
I suspect Anna will show me up. She has a doggéd determination to work through problems and to get things “just right,” and I’ve admittedly lost that kind of obsessive tenacity for meticulous detail with my embroidery over the years.
Part of it has to do with the fact that she’s a newbie and she hasn’t developed the confidence that normally goes with years of experience in any kind of craft.
This is her first embroidery project of this type. She’s done a lot of what I’d call “casual” embroidery. Flour sack towels. Some of my snowflake Christmas ornaments. She’s also done a bit of cross stitch and she sews clothes and such. So she’s familiar with a needle, but she’s never done a more complex surface embroidery piece for display, from start to finish, making her own decisions as she goes along.
I’m happy to say she’s enjoying the adventure so far. And she’s pretty darned good at figuring things out. Stitch choices, color placement – that’s all up to her.
It’s a good experiment for both of us, because I get to see quite clearly how effectively the design can be interpreted by others who tackle it. And she gets to enjoy what I call the “puzzle pleasure” of figuring things out, making her own choices, and getting that little thrill when seeing that it worked.
Anna’s project is slightly different from mine. The design is a variation. The materials are different.
She’s working on a 30 count natural colored linen (called “Sunflower Seed”), using cotton embroidery threads.
Mostly, she’s working with two strands of DMC cotton, although the couched lattice work here is one strand.
The stitches she’s used so far: chain stitch on the stem, stem stitch filling, padded satin with lattice worked on top of it, and beaded chain stitch.
The color scheme is the same, more or less. After pulling all the silks for the original Jacobean design, we pulled matching cottons. We also pulled a few variegated cottons – I think there are some House of Embroidery perle cottons in the group, too.
We’re sharing the beads.
It will be interesting to see how different the two designs look, with the different ground fabric and the different thread types, even though the colors are more or less the same.
When I pull threads and other supplies for a project, I go into Overkill Mode on the color and thread types, so that I have a lot to choose from. This doesn’t mean I’ll use them all.
As I stitch, I make note of the ones that I do use. Then, at the end of the project, I weed out the colors, thread types, beads, and so forth that I didn’t use, and I come up with a final list of supplies for the project. This is why I don’t publish here on the blog the colors that I’ve pulled just yet. I’m not exactly sure what’s going to make the cut!
I’ve discovered that Anna especially likes adding beads. Deep down, there’s a crow in there! She likes sparklies probably more than I do.
Anna: “I think I’m going to work this whole thing in beads.”
(Ok. Well. There is a little direction going on.)
Me: “Use the beads as accents to the embroidery. It’s an embroidery project, not a bead project. Besides, imagine that design in solid bead embroidery. It might be a bit overmuch, don’t you think?”
Anna: “Ok.”
… (Silent stitching)
… (More silent stitching)
Anna: “I think I’ll go ahead and work all the bead accents first.”
Me: “That’s a little problematic. How do you know what they’re accenting?”
Anna: “Well, I’ll just make the beads the focus and work the embroidery around the beads.”
Me: “I see. How about instead, you make the beads the accents, and you embroider first and add beads later?”
Anna: “I really like adding the beads.”
Me: “Good. You’ll have something to look forward to!”
… (Silent stitching)
… (More silent stitching)
Anna: “Will it make that much of a difference if I do all the beads first?”
Me: “Just wait until your embroidery threads catch on every bead you’ve sewn to the surface of that thing.”
…
Anna: “I never thought of that.”
Me: “Well. Now you have. Do what you want.”
… (Silent stitching)
… (More silent stitching)
Anna: “I think I’ll do the embroidery first.”
Me: “Hey! What a great idea!”
That’s how our conversations go.
More or less, she does what she wants. I actually don’t care what approach she takes, because she will figure it all out on her own, and it’ll only take this one project to give her the confidence to do anything she wants with needle and thread.
So that’s what’s up in my studio, during stitching sessions. It’s fun to have both projects going, and to have someone to discuss the ins and outs of what works and what doesn’t and why.
I’ll keep you updated on our progress! We really only have stitching sessions a couple times a week right now, and I’m looking forward to seeing what develops in the next one!
Hope your week is off to a great start!
