Embroidery club. Theme of the day: marking/signing your work. We’re not done (this is square 6 out of 9) but it is the last time we meet up for this year, so it feels appropriate, somehow.

Plus Christmas fika.

The embroidery club explored blanket stitch. For the first time during these exercises, I ran out of space before I ran out of things to try. Mostly because the organic, lacy blanket stitch (very much inspired by the works of Miriam Gielen) was so much fun that it grew and took up more space than its fair share.

Experimenting with Bayeux stitch, named after the Bayeux tapestry which makes heavy use of it. We were only four people at the embroidery club today, which is about half the ordinary strength, so it was quieter than usual but still very nice. It’s always very interesting to look at the others’ interpretations of the same stitch, with their different fabric and yarn choices, different colours, stitch length, general technique etc.

It was my turn to choose a stitch for us to explore together, and I picked the stem stitch. I chose it mostly because I wanted to share a trick that I learned in a workshop some years ago, of using a combination of whip stitch and stem stitch for attaching appliqué pieces, instead of blanket stitch, for both better tension control and a more distinct line. It turned out to be new for everyone else in the group.

I only use a few basic stitches, and the same handful of colours, and still every new embroidered blob looks different.

The hours I spend at the embroidery club are so focused on the stitches we’re exploring together that I make no progress on my other projects there. Since I started attaching the finished blobs to the skirt, the skirt is currently out of action. I need to get a move on and get the blobs done so that I can wear it again. It’s one of my 4 good winter skirts, so I need it!

I’ve embroidered all the pieces I was going to embroider, so today I started assembling the whole project by stitching the appliqué pieces to the skirt, both the embroidered wool and the patterned silk that was the starting point of the design.

The more I looked at the big picture, though, the more I started having second thoughts. Not about the embroidered appliqué pieces, that I had previously hesitated about. No, those actually go together well, in my opinion. It’s the silk pieces that I now don’t like. Compared to the rest, they look garish and loud.

I went on and started attaching the pieces, but the more I did, the less I liked it. I didn’t even get to the end of the seam around the first silk piece before I decided to kick them out of this project. I’ve got enough of the wool fabrics to make replacement pieces for the ones that were silk in my original design. It’s going to be better that way.

Exploring chain stitch and its variations at the Thursday embroidery club. It’s more versatile than I had known.

Embroidery club. We explored the herringbone stitch.

I wish I had taken photos of some of the others’ samples. We didn’t know in advance what stitch we’d be working with, so everyone used whatever materials they had, and the choice of fabric and thread made a huge difference. Herringbone stitch is often used to fill in an area, but that didn’t happen at all with my thin thread on light fabric. My stitches hover ethereally over the fabric, like lace, instead of covering it. Some of the others had much thicker thread and their herringbones made a completely different impression.

Continuing on my extra-everything skirt decorations. For this blue piece I’m echoing the printed silk fabric in embroidered wool. Mostly satin stitch, with borders in back stitch. I have no violet yarn in the right colour and quality, but I felt the design wouldn’t be complete without the violet, so those are small applique pieces.

Embroidered embellishments for a wool skirt.

I was originally aiming to let the embroidery on each curved piece follow its shape and contours. For the larger pieces, I thought latticework would be a better way to fill the surface. And now, when I was starting this latest large blue one, I couldn’t let go of the idea of echoing some of the dotted pattern from the silk fabric. So my originally quite contained design is now sprawling all over the place. Extra everything.

I hope, but I’m not entirely sure, that it’ll work out when I assemble it all. Hopefully the colours and the similar shapes are enough to keep it all together – or maybe it’ll be a messy jumble of disparate parts. Maybe it’s time to try it out, even though not all the parts are finished.

The good thing is that it’s all entirely modular, and I should be able to easily get more of the fabrics, if needed. If I don’t like it, I can discard any parts that don’t work – use them for something else – and make new ones with a different design.