Playing with string

Long arm cross stitch

Here's some progress on my current lap project. Very soon, I am going to have to set the boundary lines and decide how I am going to finish the edge rows. However for now, it is some nice low-effort fidget work.

Brickwork pouch

The last few bits always take the longest, but here is the brickwork pouch almost complete. I have one more tassel to go!

St Martin Panel

 

Look at what I found! I have picked up the St Martin's panel again and this time I intend to finish it!

Royal Gloves - Finished!

And finally, here are lots of pictures of the finished gloves!
 

Royal gloves - sewing things up

And finally I had this lovely pile of embroidery.  We are going to pretend that both of the hummingbirds are facing the correct direction and proceed accordingly.  Next we are going to sew the embroidery to the pieces of our gloves.  The gloves here are actually mittens, because we are Vikings!

 

I just love my quilter's tools.  Here I am using my block ruler and chalk pencil to get all the lines perfect.



And now I've ironed in my the folds for the embroidery piece.  I used an ultra-lightweigh fusible called Misty Fuse.  The fusible itself is like gossamer and floats on the air.  It's good to tack things down and doesn't add stiffness to the piece.  It's not so great if you have the ceiling fan on.  I wouldn't use it without extra stitching though.  I also have my trusty block ruler to line things up just right.

 

 I pulled enough silk from the ground fabric to use it for stitching down the embroidery. Here are the teeny tiny stitches on the fold.

And here is the embroidery all sewn down to my glove piece.  Can we make it prettier?  Yes!



I used the light yellow silk to lucet up some cording for a matching trim.  Then I used the same silk to stitch down the tiny trim over our seam edge.



And here is one finished cuff ready to be sewn into a finished mitten!

Royal Gloves - Rhino

Sven's heraldry is a rhino, which was an interesting design challenge.  It's difficult to make larger creatures in the Viking aesthetic and have them still look "cool" to the modern eye.  After a large number of drafts I finally was happy with this guy.  The rhino was bigger and had fewer smooth lines than the hummingbird, so I went with a tissue paper template for the stitching pattern.  Here's the template basted onto the gorgeous red silk.


I don't like the tissue paper, so it took enormous self control to leave it on while I stitched.  Here's some stitching progress on my rhino.  The color palette and thread are the same set as the hummingbird.


Finally, I was far enough along to pull off the tissue paper!



Nearly done....


And here is a slightly fuzzy picture of the completed rhino