Here’s the tweaked design for my International Temari Appreciation Day ball:

the blue side

I made a few tweaks to the design: added a red band around the equator before I started the kiku stitching, used the rayon thread twisted for the entire design, tightened up the wrap on the ball (more about that later), changed the marking thread to red, and adjusted the number of rows to bring the two sets of points closer together.

I miss the strong yellow of the last ball but I think this one suits my picture of ‘many flying flags’ better.

About the wrapping… when I made all of my temari with socks in the core they tended to be wrapped fairly firmly. When I shifted to using rice hulls I kindof liked getting them a little more squishy. There is a problem with that though. When you are stitching a design that has a strong pressure in a single direction on the ball (N/S) in this case, it will compress the ball in that direction. With a squishier ball the difference can be quite pronounced as you work, enough that the earlier stitching become looser as the design progresses and there is a measurable difference in circumference around the equator as opposed to around the poles. The solution is pretty simple, when you are going to stitch a one direction design that might compress the ball, wrap your ball firmer.

You can still use a moderate tension on the yard wrap for the core but tighten up a bit when you get to the thread so that the final ball does not squish easily in your hand. Also, when you are stitching, be sure to not pull your stitches too tightly, especially the later ones.

Here’s a few more views of the design:

the green side

Now I have no clue what I will stitch for the blog next. I think I will take a break from design work and stitch something out of a book. Any suggestions?

Another one that almost didn’t happen…

sorry for the crummy lighting... thunderstorm today!

• standard thimble base on 4cm form
• Orizuru No9 silk thread in red and white
• 7 sections, 2 paths with period of 2

Stitch one row at a time on each path. Red on path 1, white on path 2. I used the ‘trick’ that Chloe Patricia recently shared to find the starting place for the second path. If you were not comfortable with that you could mark the halfway sections between the 7 main sections.

You may notice that this one is a bit smaller than the thimbles I usually make. Here’s a couple of pics for scale:

with a 'regular' thimble and a cm tape measure

stacked with a 'regular' thimble just for fun

I use a homemade form for my thimbles and my 5cm one is getting shabby. I need to remake one but I have so little time. So, for this thimble I used a different form that I salvaged from a spool of thread. Instead of a spool it was a nice smooth and sturdy tube, surprisingly, of exactly 4cm circumference.

On of the members of the ThimbleRings group on Yahoo was talking about doing bead sized thimbles and she posted a pretty one on the Share Your Thimbles Flickr group so it got me thinking about beads again. The reason I saved this small tube in the first place was for the potential for making beads.

I did not increase the height from my normal 5cm thimble height (again, strapped for time so use the materials I already have cut). To get a nice barrel bead shape I would probably need to double the height from what it is now (about 1cm) and increase the padding amount across the middle. I would probably want a design that uses a path with a shallower angle so that I get better coverage across the face of the thimble too.

I do think the experiment was a success. Despite the small size that does not fit anywhere but the tip of my pinky finger, it was not really any more difficult to stitch. Dorian’s was 31mm in diameter. I am not sure I want to go smaller than my 40mm, but I’ll probably try at some point. She has a very nice proportion to hers.

About the pattern: I know this design has a specific name but I can’t quite remember it… feather? arrow? was it yubane in Japanese? I’ll have to go digging a bit and see if I can find it or ask Chloe Patricia about it. It is basically stitched the same way that bicolored scales is except for one key difference: the path goes around the ring twice crossing back on itself before getting back to the starting place. It is the multiple times around the thimble that makes it this design rather than scales. For scales designs each path only goes around the ring once to end where it started without crossing itself.

The temari for this week is one that I have designed and stitched for the International Temari Appreciation Day logo. The requirements are that it must be an S16 division and use kiku herringbone (uwagake chidori) stitching.

I decided that I would use the ElMolina rayon thread from Presencia again. I wanted to try it out with uwagake stitching and I had the right colors. I was thinking of the wonderful pages in our atlas that show all of the flags for various countries. The majority of them seem to use clear primary colors with white. So I opted to do a white ball and use yellow, green and blue with red as an accent color.

I also wanted something different than a 16 point kiku so I used two 8 point uwagake paths, reversed from each other. One has the top points starting about 3/8″ from the N pole with the bottom points halfway between the equator and the S pole. Then I turned the ball over to work another path with the top points about 3/8″ from the S pole and bottom points halfway between the equator and the N pole.

Since the paths cross each other at the equator, you get large diamond shapes around the ball. The bottom points coming up in between the top points creates an interesting spikey negative space. To keep the top points nicely spaced I pinned a 3/4 inch button to the pole when I stitched the first row.

Some more views:

I am not sure if I will post this particular ball on the Flick’r site for the contest yet. The contest is open until the end of the month so I may see if I can get time to restitch it. I can see several different things I could do to improve both the quality of the stitching and the overall design. If this week is not too hectic I’ll work on that and post the ball to the Flick’r group next week.

There are not too many details to tell about finishing up this design. As I suspected I did not have much room for the filling in pentagons around the star centers. I tried a couple of different things there before deciding on using the dark blue rayon thread that matched the wrap thread and untwisting it to lay it flat. I managed to get in two rows.

When that was done I wasn’t quite happy with the orange stars; they just seemed to need a teenie bit more definition. The book example actually had another row on them of the background matching color but I didn’t have room for even that. The ElMolina rayon thread is divisible with a small bit of effort (7 sections). So I separated out one section and added an outline to the orange stars. That popped them up off the background a bit and finished them off nicely. Strictly speaking this should have been a row on all of the large pentagons before I added the small filler pentagons and I will do it that way if I restitch this design.

I decided not to redo the diagram for the post today. I will redo it eventually and compile the directions into a better format, but today there are other things that are higher on the to-do list. As always, let me know if you need more info sooner rather than later and that will move the task higher up the list. If you missed it, there are three other posts on this design as I stitched it: post 1, post 2, and post 3.

So, what did I learn?

1. The striped pentagons in the first layer should start a little farther out from the halfway point. That would give more room for the filler pentagons later and should enhance the finished look.
2. I wouldn’t get too wild with colors beyond what I did already. The inner row of the striped pentagons needs to offer a strong contrast to the background color that is used to fill in the centers later. It would probably be better to not have the marking lines left in the final design.
3. The ElMolina rayon thread is pretty versatile. It is not an easy thread to work with but with a small amount of effort and patience you get a whole lot of “Wow!”. Laid flat it is sleek and shiny; twisted it has a nice ‘ropey’ look that gives precise definition to multiple rows; separated it allows for stitching fine details. The overall feel of the ball is actually kind of soft and the shine is absolutely incredible. While I don’t think it is a thread that everyone would enjoy, I think it is definitely a ‘win’ for me and I’m looking forward to doing some more designs with it.

While I’ve been finishing this one up I’ve been thinking of design possibilities for the International Temari Appreciation Day (ITAD) logo ball. It has to be an S16 and much be stitched with uwagake chidori, also known as kiku herringbone. I think I have a nice idea now so hopefully I can get it mostly stitched by next week. I think I will use the rayon thread again.

I’m slowly making progress on this temari. I did not quite finish what I had hoped to this week, mostly because I ended up ripping out a bunch. Details, details. (For those who have not been following this project, see the first post and the second post.)

I started this layer expecting to layer the pentagons consistently by stitching them in the same order for each row since that is how the sample in the book was done. After I got the first row done I was not really thrilled with the way that the layering worked out. The overlap of the large pentagons creates 5-point stars in the center of the striped pentagons I stitched in the first layer. Ultimately, the center pentagon part of the 5-point stars becomes a focal point in the design. So, when I looked at the layering that I initially got I thought it was a bit too random for what I wanted in that center. Rip it out! (Sorry I did not take a picture first.)

I restitched it, but this time I carefully wove the pentagons so that the layering would look like a nicely interlocked 5-point star. Also, the threads that cross in the center pentagon area have a counter-clockwise spin to them just like the stitches in the striped pentagons do. Here’s what the first two rows looks like when they are interlocked:

Now, I should point out that I can be particularly picky about this kind of detail. Not everyone cares to mess with this kind of weaving, especially when they can get away with not doing it. The original design in the book did not have this level of detail and it looks just fine. This is one of those places that I am paying picky attention to details that it is doubtful most people looking at the finished design will ever notice. If you do not enjoy messing with details like this… don’t. It will be fine either way.

I wanted this part to look like it had the thread doubled in the needle but didn’t want to stitch that way with this rayon thread. So for the next rows I had to be careful to weave only the rows I was putting on and just layer over the previous ones. Again… me being picky about details. I added two more rows of blue. Now I am in the middle of two rows of orange. I got enough of them done that I can talk about the last step in the design. Here’s what it looks like so far on the ‘finished’ side.

And here’s a view of a 6-way intersection aka the center of a 6-part triangle on the c10 marking.

You can see how the 5-point stars are filling up the center of the striped pentagon layer. In fact, they are filling it up a bit too much. The original design had room for 4 more rows at this point. I’ll be lucky if I can get in more than one.

The last step in this design is to stitch small pentagons around the center of the 5-point stars and inside the striped pentagons from the first layer. You add rows here until the center of the striped pentagons are all filled in. Note about the diagram: I only added the last row of the large penagons in orange, and only a partial section of that to show how it creates the star over the striped pentagons. I don’t have the time today to draw it all in. The new small penatgons are shown in blue in the center of the first pentagon layer.

Originally I was going to do two rows of orange and then two rows of the dark blue. Obviously I don’t have room for that so I am going to start with the dark blue only and see if I like the look. Another possibility is to use the lighter blue. I won’t know which I like better until I give it a try.

Incidentally, all of this stitching has been done with the ElMolina rayon thread right as it comes off of the spool, keeping it nicely twisted together as I stitch. (As opposed to untwisting it to lay it flat like I did for the striped pentagons.) It really has stitched nicely. Because there are long sides to these pentagons I was able to go back to 1 yard lengths of thread in the needle and had no issues keeping it nicely twisted. It does not keep the twist on its own; you do have to retwist it as you stitch.

Hopefully by this time next week I will have this ball finished. Not a moment too soon either. My next project is already decided. I’ll be stitching a ball for the International Temari Appreciation Day logo.