Spring Girl Embroidery and 1st Attempt at Sashiko Embroidery

Good morning, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. My weekend was full of stress-induced house cleaning and then relaxing with some embroidery.

Stress-induced cleaning, you ask? Well, my supervisor informed me on Friday, 10 minutes to five o'clock that we would be getting a new person in our office. Not someone we hired or approved, but that would be transferring departments to ours even though she hasn't been in our field since the 80s. So I am happy, no, not really. If anything it makes me stressed out because now in addition to everything else at work, I have to play babysitter until our new person can figure out what we need from her.

Who knows, maybe I'm stressing for no reason. I'll keep my fingers crossed that she'll work out. 

So with stress comes cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, laundry.....not that I wouldn't do those normally, but I hadn't planned on doing all that, but my brain needed to keep busy instead of worrying.....just leave the worry for my brain when I try to go to sleep at night! LOL

After all that cleaning, I sat down to continue working on Tamar Nahir-Yanai's Spring Girl kit.

Start/Finish: 5/11-13/2017
Threads: included DMC and an additional purple color

What I found amusing about this Spring Girl kit is that the illustration on the package didn't match the stamped fabric inside. The individual flowers weren't supposed to be part of the design so I had to go through my thread stash and find a color that would work with the others. I ended up choosing a purple color.

If I'm not mistaken, Hobby Lobby only has one more embroidery design of hers that I haven't stitched yet. I'll probably pick it up in the future. I was hoping they would carry the Winter Fairy design, but I haven't seen it......it could be that they only had it on the shelves during Christmas. I thought maybe I could just order it through her Etsy shop, but since that design is carried through DMC, she can't sell it in her shop to customers in the US. Sadness! I'll have to see if I can find it on DMC's website, etc.

Start/Finish: 5/14-15/2017

After finishing the Spring Girl, I pulled out a sashiko kit that I bought a few months ago. Having seen some lovely sashiko videos and stitching online, I really wanted to try it out. I ended up buying a kit, needles, and a needle pusher ring through Etsy.

No surprise that I chose a bunny design, right? Right! LOL I looked through a bunch of kits on Etsy and really liked this kit. You could get it in white or in what they called 'retro' colors. I went with the retro color version because why not. It is fun, funky, and the colors really pop against the indigo fabric.

So my initial thoughts on sashiko:

1. You wouldn't think the running stitches would be so relaxing, but oddly, they are relaxing. I stitched up this design while watching the first two seasons of When Calls the Heart.

2. I like the ease of stitching, but I didn't care for the dye used on the fabric. It is suppose to wash away when you wash the fabric, but that also means that if you mess up a stitch and pull it out, the stitch line is fainter than before so it hard to tell where to put your needle.

3. I hadn't realized how hard and awkward it is to stitch without a hoop. It took me a while to get used to stitching without a hoop. I'm still not entirely comfortable, but you can't stitch sashiko designs with a hoop as you are constantly moving the fabric back and forth through your needle.

4. I need lots of practice. My stitching wasn't the best. It was hard to keep a good tension in parts of the design and you can tell the stitches are loose in sections. I am hoping to tack the design to a bit of canvas so hopefully that will stretch out the stitches a bit.

5. I have no idea how to stitch without using knots on the back. The kit and the Etsy seller sent a beginner guide to sashiko, but I still haven't figured out how to do the reverse backstitch method of starting.......so my fabric has knots, which isn't a problem since I plan on stretching it, but if I was framing the design or making it into a flat finish, those knots would be noticeable from the front.

6. The fabric in the Olympus kit is thin and stretchy. I wonder if all Olympus fabrics are the same?!

All in all, I quite like it. Definitely a form of stitching that doesn't require much thought. I like that it is relaxing and that you can stitch and watch a TV program without worrying about stitch counts, etc.

I'll have to see if I can find some more kits on Etsy to try. And take time to practice that reverse backstitch start.

My next stitching project is CCN's London design. I started a little bit of the Big Ben portion last night. I should be getting my thread for the Potions design in the mail today so I can finish that design this week :)

Anywho, I hope you guys have a wonderful work week. Wish me luck with a new assistant.

Until next time ^____^