Unpicked all the stitches I made at the last embroidery club session, because I really didn’t like working with this fabric. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to use the fabric for anything, but I want to reuse the thread for a new attempt.

Today was a getting things done day. Three loads of laundry, two hours of cleaning, baking hazelnut cakes, setting a bread dough, and sorting through half the drawers in one of the closets in my bedroom, finishing the embroidered name sign. None of which makes for good photos, apart from the name sign. (The hazelnut cakes taste great but look kind of bland.)

The plan is to get all the must-dos checked off the list today, and then I can go out for a photo walk tomorrow without any time pressure.

Started on the metro tile wall embroidery.

I had a piece of Aida cloth in my stash at home, which I thought would work for this. Now I’m regretting the choice. It’s a bit of a pain to work with – not very stable, and tricky for longer stitches that tend to glide in between the warp and the weft. A stiff, stable canvas would have been much easier.

The stitches don’t cover the fabric entirely. That also bothered me at first, but I mind it less now. I don’t need a faithful reproduction of the wall, just an impression of it. I could fill in the gaps with some dark gray wool yarn to imply the grout between the tiles. Or it could just be as it is.

The embroidery club has agreed on the theme of “Stockholm metro” for this term. I was dithering about whether to join the project or not – figurative embroidery, trying to depict something, isn’t my favourite kind. But the more I think of the ceramic wall art at Stockholm Central station, the more I want to try and translate it into a textile version.

I bought embroidery thread for it today. I like working with wool yarn, but this really calls for the glossy shine of cotton. Or silk, I guess, but covering the fabric with silk thread would be rather expensive.

The embroidery club is planning for an exhibition, and we were encouraged to make name signs as part of preparing for it.

Sweden (and maybe some of the other Nordic countries) has a concept of studieförbund which are a kind of national umbrella organizations for study circles and educational groups. There are eight of them according to Wikipedia. Many were established over a century ago as a means to educate those who didn’t have access to higher education. These days they organize classes and workshops mostly in the domains of arts, crafts, humanities and social sciences.

In addition to “top-down” courses they also provide support for self-organizing study groups such as our embroidery club. We get access to rooms, including a kitchen and toilets, for no charge. We are also invited to participate in the parent organization’s events, and the exhibition is one of them. Within the framework of Stockholm Culture Night, Sensus Studieförbund will hold workshops, exhibitions and other activities. We and two other similar embroidery clubs were invited to arrange a small one-room exhibition and a workshop on the theme of “free embroidery” – to inspire more people to start embroidering.

The name signs aren’t going to be the focus of the exhibition (that will just be whatever past works everyone decides to bring) but just a fun way to make it more personal for the visitors.

This design was supposed to be five rectangles. Three large rectangles overlapping at the corners, with the overlaps forming two smaller rectangles of negative space. Just like the first iteration, and the second one. I got so engrossed in the latticework of the second large rectangle that I completely lost sight of the big picture, and forgot to leave that one corner empty. Only when I took a step back after completing the third one did I see what I had done.

Can I unpick that corner and still keep the rest of the second rectangle intact?

Another interpretation of the same design as I did a month ago. Sharing the same principles, somewhat: aiming for the rectangles to be dominant without resorting to full applique, but this time allowing myself to use tulle. Lines for the ovals. Something opaque for the small filled-in oval.

It’s funny how differently we value things. The others in my embroidery group were gushing over the embroidered tulle, admiring its cleverness and unique look, while for me that was the lowest-effort part of the piece. It was like mindless doodling with yarn and thread: start at a corner, follow the structure of the fabric, “bounce” when you hit an edge, stop before there is too much of it. Almost mechanical. I literally chose it the other week because I was tired and couldn’t be bothered to be creative. I myself was much more proud of my very even feather stitch, and the woven oval as a nifty way of making something very covering without applique, and those got no notice.

With the Rudebrant embroidery no longer at the front of the queue, I went back to my paused project of embellishing the brown cardigan. There were some conflicts of interest when I brought it out this morning, but Nysse agreed to be shuffled to the end that was already finished, so I could work on the incomplete parts.

The cardigan now has a simple design of red and green circles in a broad belt around the waist.

The embroidery isn’t there for adornment so much as it is for distraction and catching the eye – pulling attention away from the width of the hips, distracting from the awkward length, focusing on the waist instead. And it does a bang-up job of that. It’s amazing what a different immediate impression the cardigan leaves now. The value for effort ratio is awesome. I wish I had taken before and after photos of me wearing it.

Embroidering on very stretchy knitted fabric was a fun challenge. You can of course use a piece of stabilizer and then embroider on that as if the knit wasn’t a knit – like any industrial embroidered design on a t-shirt, for example. That’s what most sources seem to advise. I had no interest in smothering the fabric and pretending this isn’t a knit, especially with such a large design. I wanted stitching that would seem as if it belonged there.

The yarn is wool yarn in roughly the same weight that I used for the knitting. Stem stitch helped make it reasonably stretchy. I stitched in and between the knit stitches, making sure to not split the yarn, to further make the embroidery feel like a natural part of the cardigan.

I spent a fair amount of effort fastening the ends – I hope this holds up in washing.

The Rudebrant-inspired piece of embroidery is done. It came out roughly like I had imagined it. But I can also picture other ways I could have made it, and now I’m thinking of making another version of the same design.

It felt freeing to make something low-stakes like this. It won’t be framed and hung on a wall; it is not “for” anything. The only reason it exists is that I enjoyed making it.