Now for needle lace

Embroidery Chapter 4 is the last embroidery chapter in Volume 1, and is full of useful information about transferring embroidery designs to your fabric, but no project, so I've moved onto Needle-made Lace Chapter 1.  I consider needle made lace to be an embroidery technique, but Golden Hands treats it as a separate skill.  I have always liked this type of embroidery, but haven't had a go at it as it looks hard!

This chapter explains that needle lace is basically made by building up buttonhole stitch into patterns along the edge of fabric, or in a cut-out space in the fabric.  The Golden Hands sample in this chapter is a an edging made up of small triangular shapes:

My sample is unfortunately nothing like this picture.  The sides of my triangles are not as steep, and he shapes are shorter and fatter than they should be (a bit like me, really).  I used a fine crochet cotton, and I think if I used a thicker thread the triangles would have turned out better:

Embroidery continues

Embroidery Chapter 3

This embroidery chapter extends skills in simple line stitches - back stitch, stem stitch and the embellishment of running stitch with whipping and lacing.  Golden Hands suggests building up these stitches on a border, such as on a cuff:

Golden Hands loves to adorn clothing, but I decided to stick to my small mats:

The stitches I used were long and short running stitch, whipped running stitch, laced running stitch and interlacing between two lines of running stitch. 

I remember having to learn these very stitches when I was In Year 5 and embroidering the bottom of a gathered skirt.  I did the embroidery without too much trouble, but when my mother was helping me to take up the hem, in a rush, as it had to be finished for the school Open day the next day. We had a big fight about the length and she left me to do it on my own, and I did a very wobbly job of it, so I was very worried that it would look out of place among the much more expertly sewn skirts of my classmates.  It didn't look too bad though, in a display with about 30 other similar skirts.  And, on reflection, my dressmaking skills haven't improved much!

Embroidery begins!

Now that I have finished, thankfully, the crochet chapters, I can now start on a craft much more to my liking - embroidery!  I love embroidery and couldn't wait to get started.

Embroidery Chapter 1 gives the usual Golden Hands excellent introduction to a new technique, covering threads, needles, fabric and frames.

Chapter 2 starts out with some very simple, but effective, running stitch patterns.  Below is the Golden Hands sample:

And below is my effort:

I embroidered the running stitch on a small piece of evenweave fabric that I purchased at Lincraft and used stranded cotton ( 3 strands).

Then I played with making different patterns with the running stitches:

Fun, quick and easy - I'll make a set of small mats with this embroidery.