Crafty As L

A few weeks ago, I attended a 3D Wired Embroidery workshop taught by Ella Richards, one of the ladies from Solent Textile Group .   Ella had brought along some gorgeous examples of her work, featuring leaves, insects and fuchsia flowers which were very inspirational.   I had never done any stumpwork before so it was a baptism of fire. The idea was to make a 3D flower in the style of an evening primrose and we were set homework to complete beforehand.   I chose to make a pink and white variation and after tracing the petal and leaf outlines onto white cotton fabric, I painted the fabric using watered-down ink-pad reinkers.   The flower only has four petals but I added another to be my test petal.   The fabric was mounted into an embroidery hoop and made drum tight. The next step was to couch wire around the edge of the petals.   Couching is the term for attaching a thick decorative thread or wire onto fabric using a series of tiny stitches, sewn perpendi...

What a thoroughly wonderful time I had at Alison Holt’s freehand machine embroidery course last week.   It was a splendid three days of learning new techniques – silk painting and machine embroidery – surrounded by other likeminded ladies.   Alison’s tuition was informative, engaging and entertaining and she was always on hand to offer advice and help should one need it. Upon arriving at Alison’s beautiful studio in her back garden, I unpacked my many belongings, sharing a table with Gail and Liz.   We immediately started nattering and didn’t really stop!   The first demo was Alison showing us how to transfer a design onto the silk in readiness for painting. After carefully selecting a suitable picture to copy, I set about tracing the bare bones of the image and then using that tracing to transfer the design to my silk. The lines are defined using gutta, which is a resist and forms a physical barrier to stop the silk paints running into each other.   ...

Happy New Year all and welcome to my first Visible Image DT post of 2025.   Our theme this week is “The Great Outdoors/Wildlife” and this is my non-card project.   After watching an Instagram short showing an embroidered fluffy bee, I decided I wanted to have a bash at one.   The large bee from Bee Happy was the perfect size for my project. I had a piece of grey Belfast linen for the background and stamped the image.   I wasn’t sure how well the image would stamp so I used my large MISTI so that I could repeat stamp if necessary.   I also used Archival ink as it would dry quickly and not smudge later when working on the embroidery. (The little bee was my practice to see how well it would stamp.) Hoops really help your embroidery to have a nice finish as the background fabric doesn’t get warped. The bee is made fluffy by using turkey work embroidery.   I watched a few YouTube videos to work out how to do this.   It’s a series of loops of thread...