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.

My sketch for this project had rough, thick lines for the oval shapes, and I wanted to recreate those in embroidery. Paper string, maybe, or a thin ribbon, couched. That’s where I paused at the last embroidery club meeting.

In the intervening two weeks, I had completely forgotten this plan, and was only reminded of it when I took out and unfolded the fabric. I did not remember it at all when packing my backpack this morning. Grabbed the embroidery project bag and that was that. No paper string.

Not willing to compromise with my vision, and also not interested in making up some random time-filler task for today, I improvised. Went on a material hunt through the community centre. Found a crumpled-up paper bag. Cut off a thin strip, coloured it mostly-black with an ordinary pen, and twisted it into my own black paper string. Not as durable as the store-bought stuff, but it doesn’t need to hold up to anything, so it’s all good.

The embroidery club isn’t just a group of embroidering together, with chatting and fika.

We have themed projects, we learn new stitches together, we arrange workshops.

We also share inspiration and ideas. People bring books, old or new, for others to browse. Embroidery books, of course, but also for example books on sewing with African printed fabrics. We share tips about ongoing and coming exhibitions and events. We show off older works.

I have been thinking of sewing a loose pocket or a small everyday handbag, and mentioned it two weeks ago. Another member said she’d made several. Yesterday she brought a bunch of them along and showed them to the rest of us. The design with a single band of fabric binding the sides together and also making up the shoulder strap seems like a good one.

Finished the rectangle shapes during today’s embroidery club meeting. I’m glad I didn’t use appliqué to make them. Stitching gave me a lot more to play with: stitch length, direction, density.

The embroidery I started on Thursday.

When my embroidery design has a solid-colour block with a relatively simple shape, my thoughts always go first to appliqué. I’m trying to break that habit and use stitches to fill the area instead. I get a more interesting surface this way, and I can challenge myself to learn new types of stitches.

This one is called “oriental stitch” in the few books where I’ve seen it, although most other sources use that name to mean something completely different.

The embroidery club has agreed on a theme for the autumn term – make something inspired by the books of Renée Rudebrant. I had been planning to not let myself be sucked into any kinds of themes again, but I do like Renée’s books, and her embroidery style, so I gave in. Put my cardigan decoration project aside and switched tracks. I still have a bunch of sketches from the workshop series with Renée Rudebrant that I attended a year ago. Back when I was in the middle of those workshops, I wished I had time to realize more of those sketches. Here’s my chance, I guess.

This design one was from the “shapes” exercise – one of the designs I really liked, but nevertheless discarded because it didn’t quite fulfil the requirements. Now there are no requirements (or, just a single, very loose one) and I can play with this again.

Our usual room at the community centre was locked for some reason, and no staff were around at this time of the day to let us in. We made do with a smaller room, which didn’t feel as cramped as it could have, since we were fewer than usual.

We’ve got everybody’s works in progress to fit on the table. Boxes or bags with threads and yarns and notions. Snacks, teas, water bottles. Phones and glasses. Embroidery-related books that someone has bought to show to the others.

Some of us make small projects with small stitches. My recent projects have been on the larger side, and I do like to spread my stuff out so that I can work comfortably.

The embroidery club started up today. I had considered continuing with some of the ideas from an embroidery course I did a year ago, or maybe with one of the printed fabrics from the workshop this spring, but I haven’t had time to look at what I have or what I want to do. Instead I picked something where I could just get going.

This brown cardigan is great but also not. It fits me well, the yarn is soft and warm, the colour is nice, the knitting is tidy. But: I made it an awkward length that I’m not happy with. It is unflattering on me, and I find it more and more difficult to ignore that. I already have a relatively long torso and shortish lower body; a too-long cardigan emphasises that even more. And the bottom hem hits right where I am broadest, which makes me look even more unproportional.

The way it’s constructed, I can’t just unravel the bottom and make it shorter. The next best thing is to redesign it to make it look shorter, by breaking up the long vertical with something horizontal, and to draw the attention away from the hips to the waist. Hence, a discretely colourful waistband.