Posts from — February 2010

Minty Chocolate!

This is the latest. I had a great time stitching this one and it kept me sane yesterday when I had all sorts of comings and goings at the house. (Long story…) I love the way the colors turned out; it inspired me to name it.

Mold size: 50mm

Core: 3/8 inch quilling paper wrapped about 8 times around

Padding: wrapped sewing thread

Thread: Orizuru No 9 medium green and chocolate brown color

Pattern: modified bi-colored scales on 10 sections. Alternate two rows of each color.

Have a great Thimble Thursday!

This is the temari that was talking so loudly to me the other day. Isn’t he a handsome fellow now that he is all stitched?

This is basically a transfer of the design from the recent green and yellow one I did on 32 centers to a C8/14 centers marking. Both are stitched with hhg aka a single continuous path. I think I like this new little guy better than the original version. I am finding that I really like stitching designs with continuous paths. There is something quite relaxing about it.

Stitching was fun because of the way the stitching path goes, and not so fun because the mari was as hard as a rock. I wonder what I put in the center of this one or what I was thinking about when I wrapped it. I definitely did not have the even hand for wrapping that I do these days. The design thread was DMC floche and the marking thread was Kreinik #8 braid. It was one of the vintage colors so is not a sparkly as some are but it suited this temari nicely.

Here’s a pic of the two designs side by side with a ruler for scale. DH tells me that I need to include objects for scale once in awhile so that my readers will know how big things really are. He was mostly referring to my thimbles but really it is true for other things too.

big = 30cm circumference, small = 17.5cm circumference

Ooops. The color in the pictures is off. Neither one is quite right but the one at the top of the post is the closest. The mari wrap is a yellowish green (more green than it appears). The design threads are royal blue and purple.

You might remember this temari from my indecision post earlier. Thanks to comments and DH’s two cents I decided not to rip.

I added a woven obi, just over two and under two. The weaving adds a cool tactile texture as well as a visual one. In fact this ball is pretty fun to hold in your hands because of the Artic Rays fuzzy thread that I added in the last row of the kiku and the weaving. It is an interesting feel.

As I did the weaving I tried to spread out the spindle threads a bit so that the individual spindles are not so distinct. It would have worked a bit better if my spacing was more consistent. Gotta watch that.

I have a lovely little bi-colored scales thimble again this week.

Stitched with Orizuru No9 thread, 50mm base

I think I did a better job with ending my thread and restarting a new one this time. I adjusted my technique a little bit. I am not sure that it would make sense for things where you are changing colors but it worked well for these solid color sections. I’ll write a note about it at some point when I get time to draw some diagrams.

section with threads ending and beginning, not invisible, but improved

I am much happier with the area around the seam of the fabric now that I am lining that up with a section mark. I did that on this one again and am really delighted with the result.

There was an injury and a casualty while working on the thimble this week.

The injury: proof that you probably ought to use a thimble when you are making thimbles…

sorry the picture is blurry, iPhone is not great for closeups

And the casualty:

I have never broken a needle like this before (except sewing machine needles). I’ve bent needles, dulled them, broken them at the eye and split the eye but never have I had one just break in half. Weird.

I am quite happy with my skills at the basic techniques for the bi-colored scales design. So, I think I am going to play with color a bit and explore some simple design possibilities next.

I found a little temari (less than 2 inches across) in my drawer when I was cleaning out recently. It was one I had just quickie marked with a 14 center marking when one of the chat groups was trying to figure that out. It spoke to me…

That’s right. I could hear the little voice in my head, “You know you want to stitch on me. Don’t you think I would be pretty stitched up in a version of the last continuous path design you did? Maybe you could add a little sparkle? I’m so cute and small…”

(Don’t tell anyone I’m hearing voices ok? They’ll think I’m crazy.)

So, I went digging for thread to stitch with. The colors I found just didn’t work on the wrap the little guy had so to his surprise I ripped out the marking (promising to put it back later) and added a new thread wrap. Then to be true to his wishes, I used a Kreinik braid to do the marking.

So, the marking is 14 centers which just happens to be a multipole based on a C8 rather than a C10. I marked the C8, did one pass of the multiple of 3 technique and voila! A lovely 14 center marking. There are 8 hexagons and 6 smaller squares. It is analogous to the 32 center marking on the C10. You could also get to it by using the multipole method of triangle side divided by 3.

Now I get to stitch on it!