Thimble temari finished

Well, I decided to finish it…

It had to sit lonely on my sewing table for a bit. First I let it sit until I could bring myself to finish off the thimble portion around the equator rather than ripping it out. I liked it well enough when that part was done but still was unhappy with how heavy that section was. I had no clue what to do in the pole areas to bring it all to a cohesive design.

The problem is that doing a thimble ring at the equator gives such a strong horizontal line to the ball. Most of the stitching elements we use at the poles (kikus, spindles, starbursts) are more vertical and so don’t blend well with the distinctive equator area. I wanted something to better blend with the horizontal element so it didn’t seem so removed from the design.

So I let it sit for a few days before I picked it up to play with it. After a few tries (and very careful ripping out on the white ball) I mapped out a star polygon on 8 points. You can just see the side of it (blue) in the picture above. Because the points were so widely spaced, it ended up having a very horizontal character and complimented the thimble ring nicely. Cool!

Then I did a smaller one at the pole and got another surprise: this one transitioned from the horizontal character to a slightly more vertical one because the radius was smaller. Ah ha! Finally the design was flowing nicely from the poles to the equator without a jarring shift from vertical to horizontal.

Now I am really happy with it and not so down on thimble stitching on temari. I still think that thimbles (and other cylindrical objects) are the best suited for thimble stitching (surprise!) but occasionally I can see a specialty use for it in temari. I don’t think I will design this way again for quite awhile.