Oh boy, oh boy! We’re rapidly nearing the end of A Stitcher’s Christmas for 2018!

While I find this pretty exciting, I also find it a little alarming that Christmas is less than a week away. I’m not exactly sure how that happened!

Today’s give-away, courtesy of Lamora at Access Commodities, features some gorgeous new specialty threads that have come to the needlework market in the past year. Created as part of the ongoing revitalization of interest in 17th century embroidery techniques – thanks especially to the research, online classes, and projects of Tricia Nguyen over at Thistle Threads – these threads are perfect for stitchers interested in metal thread embroidery, silk work, stumpwork, and mixed media textiles.

It’s pretty exhilarating when new threads appear in the needlework market, so I’m thrilled to be able to offer some of these new beauties in today’s give-away!

This installment of A Stitcher’s Christmas includes three colors of silk serpentine gimp – a wavy, silk-wrapped, stiffish thread with a bendable core so that it can be manipulated – along with three spools of Soie 100/3 in corresponding shades, to invisibly couch the serpentine gimp. It also includes four colors of silk wrapped purl, which is a metal thread coiled into a fine spring and wrapped with silk thread, and the four corresponding colors of Soie 100/3 for couching. There are two sizes of silk wrapped purl in the package – three are the finer size 4, and one is the heavier size 8.

All of these threads have super potential for bringing dimension, interest, texture and life to contemporary needlework projects!

You can read about silk purls, and see them up close, on the Thistle Threads blog, in the following articles:

How Silk Wrapped Purls are Made
New Sizes of Silk Wrapped Purls & Silk Check
How Are Silk Purls Used?

Earlier this year, I began a project (not finished yet, but slowly chipping away at it!) that initially involved serpentine gimp in one of the thread choices. It’s this goldwork frame project, and you can read a little bit about the serpentine gimp in that article. I ended up using a different thread called facette gimp, which is slightly heavier than the serpentine gimp, but the concept the same, and you can read about that here.

Both the purls and the gimps are such pretty threads – and you’re only limited in your use of them in contemporary embroidery projects by your imagination!

This coming year, I plan to play with these threads a bit more, so you’re bound to see them show up again here on Needle ‘n Thread pretty soon. I can’t wait to explore them with you!

You can explore the threads and their color ranges in the shop on Thistle Threads, which is one of the few places you’ll find the whole range of these specialty threads available now. You’ll also find some fantastic online courses available, especially for those interested in historic embroidery.

Give-Away Guidelines

To join in today’s give-away, please follow these guidelines:

1. Leave a comment below, in the comment form following this article. You can follow this link directly to the comment form, if you are unsure of where to go. Please do not comment as a reply to someone else’s comment.

2. On the comment form, please fill out the name line with a recognizable name (no anonymous comments) and the email address line (which is not published). Please make certain your email address is entered correctly. Leave the website line on the form blank, unless you own your own website.

3. In the comment box, answer the following:

Tell us about your current needlework project. What are you stitching on? What techniques? Who designed it? What do you like about it? Share all the juicy details of whatever you’re working on.

Please do not leave your email address, mailing address, or phone number in the actual comment box. The comment box is also not the place to advertise your own needlework business, so please do not leave links to other websites in the comment box.

4. Please leave your comment by Monday, December 24th, 5:00 am central time (Kansas, USA). I’ll randomly draw the winner that morning and notify by email.

5. Please leave only one comment on the give-away. Multiple comments will be deleted. You can enter all the give-aways in the series, but please enter them only once each.

Coming Up…

The last installment of A Stitcher’s Christmas is this Friday, where we shall all collective sigh over an exquisite pair of scissors… See you then!

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