Drawn Threadwork made my May
This month I taught a class on Drawn Threadwork. Related to the class I ended up making a couple of towels as examples, to work beside my students, and to drum up additional interest in the class.
First towel completed (May 19) – 15 hours
I love Drawn Thread embroidery because of its speed; this 17 inch by 30 inch towel took under 15 hours to complete when many of my embroidery projects can take over 100 hours. The four lines of drawn threadwork include Hound’s Tooth, Interlacing (Variation), Zig-Zag, and Interlacing (Basic).
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Second towel completed (May 26)
The lines are as follows(top to edge of fabric) – Hound’s tooth bottom; Hound’s tooth top; drawn thread 2 lines; drawn thread 4 lines; Double ladder interlace (6 gather for each ladder); drawn thread 4 lines; drawn thread 2 lines; Zig zag; Hound’s tooth top.
All white fabric untouched are 6 lines wide. All gathers are 8-thread gathers unless stated otherwise.
And enough of that for a while. Hopefully my students enjoyed the class as much as I did prepping for it.
Dancing needles flashing in and out of cloth has been absorbing my art time the past few months. I taught a class on smocking and one on net darning in November and that took a lot of prep work. But I have devoted some time to “me” projects as well.
I bounced around a lot, as you can see in the second photo. The leaves were nearly completely speckled, but the big bumps on each of the flower petals still needed work.
Eventually I got all the outline and speckling done. The last major step of the embroidery part of the project is to run thick yarn through the edges of all the flower petals, raising them even higher next to the matted down speckling. I did though through the back of the project.
With the embroidery complete, I needed to back the padded work pillow. I added yarn around the edge to hide where I joined the backing fabric to the embroidery ground.
ROSE GARDEN
I am debating just pulling it because of the black spot risk to the red roses.
Digging the bed up took a long, long time. The previous owner had laid down a landscaping tarp, let it grow over with grass again, and laid down another landscaping tarp and let it grow over with grass a third time. A shovel wouldn’t break the surface. I ended up having to completely herbicide the whole thing, then rip the weeds out, then remove one layer of tarp, then rip the root out then remove the other tarp.
In one area I ran into a pipe. I continue to dig down for a while in the hard clay dirt, but finally succeeded in getting the monster out. Final pit was close to eight inches deep and I have no clue while the pipe was to. You can see it laid out lengthwise in the pit I had to dig for it.
I am finally down to dirt and my present task is digging up the well-compacted clay. I was working on that this weekend with my new tiller-cultivator – my first time using the machine! And my left shoulder “gave”. A week later, I am nearly recovered, but this task is going to take the rest of the year. I don’t think I will get anything into the ground before winter.
Except for the tomato-mint containers which I planted in June. I had three small tomatoes from the Juliet tomatoes and more are coming. Everything is having problems because of the recent drought. One of my two mint is struggling on the point of death, while the other is going great guns but the tomato it shares a container with is only beginning to think about maybe making one tomato.
The raised bed by the basement door had a very determined holly bush in it. Every time I cut it back, within a month it was blocking the keyhole again. I couldn’t get out the stump because of angles. In the end a friend helped me yank it away from the cement block and cut out most of it. Here’s hoping it stays dead after a winter. I am thinking of replacing it with Spring Iris and Summer/Autumn Mums.