Hospital project

I needed a project to take to hospital with me. It needed to be straightforward - without charts or elaborate instructions to follow but interesting enough to keep me occupied. I chose Gary Clarke's whitework bag Blossom from Inspirations 90.  I liked the design and the candlewicking technique as well as the finishing touches of corded sides, tassels and covered beads.I thought, however, the embroidered element might not keep me sufficiently occupied, so decided to go with the extended design outlined at the end of his Inspirations article - a block of nine of the designs. I figured this would make a much larger bag using the same principles.

I traced the nine designs on to a piece of ecru linen using pencil and assembled the various hanks of candlewicking thread I had in my stash. The night before I went to hospital I did a little practice on one of the designs to see how it would go.  To my horror, the soft candlewicking thread absorbed the graphite from the pencil marks. Although this would wash out at the end of the project, I couldn't face spending 10 days in hospital embroidering in the resulting dirty grey colour.       I therefore hunted through my stash and pulled out a range of coloured perle threads that did not absorb the graphite and packed those to use.

This proved to be a good tactic. The first I used was a variegated red hank. It covered the pencil well, had great texture and the variegation gave variety.

I then used some finer variegated purple thread over-dyed by the Embroiderers' Guild

and a heavy Perle 3 I think I originally purchased for huck embroidery.

This brilliant variegated combination is Poppy from The Bay Window.

It proved to be a great hospital project - eight of the nine motifs were finished by the time I came home, leaving me with the colonial knots to fill in the background.








The knots took me the best part of a week to complete.

I decided to place one motif on the back. I had used up most of my specialised perle thread by this time, so tried the most varied hank of Anchor stranded multicolour I had - using three strands. There was rather too much navy, I thought, so I removed some of the navy sections from the pieces I cut.

I selected a hand-printed heavy cotton as lining.

The original design has a twisted cord along the side of the bag and a tassel with covered cord on each lower corner. I decided that the larger bag would be better without these - at least in practical terms, if not aesthetic.


I'm pleased with this project. It had sufficient interest but the simplicity necessary when recovering from an operation and it has made an attractive and useful bag.

Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery

This is a piece I began in a class last year. I came across it while organising my storage cupboard recently. It took me a while to remember any details of the class until I realised it was the class I did the day before I went to the UK last year. I had done a few leaves and stems in class then turned my head to packing and departing. No wonder I couldn't remember much!

The class was for the Embroiderers' Guild Certificate Course and taken by Eleni Dickson. She provided a kit and excellent notes - so I soon refreshed my memory and got stitching. I have been hoping to use Brazilian embroidery to work some Australian native plants. I had, however, never learned to use the Edmar threads.

Eleni's hints and instructions were very helpful and I was able to manage the synthetic thread - something I haven't done before.



The piece, though small, used a good, manageable range of stitches, including needle lace, bullion knots, leaf stitch, stacked stem stitch and colonial knots.

I liked the couched and beaded spray.

I have a number of these small Brazilian designs printed on to trigger cloth. I enjoyed doing this one so much I'm tempted to make up the eight or so that I have and put them together on a bag. This one was not on trigger cloth, so may not fit into such a scheme.

Discovering this unfinished piece led to a very enjoyable day finishing it off. It also gave me confidence  to revive my plan to work some Australian designs using Brazilian techniques.

Woolly Teddy

I don't make a lot from Creative Embroidery and Cross Stitch magazine, although I subscribe and like to browse it and check out suppliers and ideas. However, late last year, an issue entitled Inspiring Embroidery and Cross Stitch Vol 20 No 4 had two projects that really appealed. One was a DMC Bargello phone cover that I'd like to adapt to something else one day and the other was Wooly Teddy, designed by Ruth Marshall, on page 36. The magazine has not yet been listed on the publisher's site but I have found a link to it at Erica's.

I had a remnant of wool blanketing that has been just waiting for this project, and while I was gathering my wits and the threads (Mogear 2 ply Mohair - not easy to come by)  friends of our family announced they were expecting their first baby in May of this year.

I made a few changes to the project. First, I decided to trace the pattern outline directly on to the wool blanketing. Working the project, as recommended, through water-soluble Vilene did not appeal. I stitched the outlines first to stay ahead of the fading of the outline and filled in from the picture and diagram.

I had trouble getting all the Mogear threads, so substituted a Gumnut Tulips thread for the hard-to-get dark pink . I also substituted a Madiera gold silk for the Rajmahal.

The Mogear colours I did manage to get came out darker - particularly tea tree, the pale pink - than the magazine photos. That's a plus as far as I am concerned.

The dominant stitch is the colonial knot, which is used to fill in the spaces in the vest, as well as the paw and ear pads. The vest has some bullion knot flowers and yellow lazy daisies that go in first, and the knots go around them. It's very effective and provides quite a bit of freedom to improvise, which was useful because I ran out of both blue and the recommended olive green thread on the vest back.



Rather than chase more of the Mogear blue and green and wait for it to arrive, I raided my wool stash and found a darker green in the olive range in a Bendigo Woollen Mills 2 ply. I liked the effect of the darker green so much I decided to add some of it into the front as well.

The front and back are machine stitched together then over-stitched with colonial knots all around the edge. The pattern uses pale pink, but I thought it was a bit wishy-washy in the photo, and a bit too overall pink on my bear. I tried the cinnamon colour of the face, and also tried blue - very close to the Mogear blue, but a Bendigo Woollen Mills 4 ply in my stash.

I settled on the blue - thought it was bright and sat well with the vest. Because this is for a baby, I also rejected the tiny buttons down the front in favour of stitched buttons in the gold silk thread, and the ribbon around the neck in favour of a dark pink couched bow tie.

When I reached this point, I decided to go around the edge once more with colonial knots, filling in the spaces between so the edge looks solid rather that dotty.


I'm fairly pleased with the result. I'd maybe position the face a little higher next time, and make a few adjustments to vest armholes, but it is a nice little bear.

This project has given me an idea for the woollen blanket I have been thinking about for a couple of years.  I think the flowers and colonial knots technique might adapt to what I have in mind.


Edmund Brien Deveney was born early, on 17 April. I do hope he has much pleasure from Woolly Teddy!