I was all ready to work on the Stitch A Day Challenge that I saw last year, sponsored by DMC and Gulash Threads. The challenge looked like this:
So far, DMC and Gulash Threads don't seem to be doing the Stitch A Day Challenge for 2018. (Insert Sad Face). I'm going ahead with last year's challenge.
Naturally I remembered Pink Only was the first thing to do. So I bought all that Pink Thread yesterday (tossing in a few other colors, by chance).
This turned out to be a good thing. As I was looking through my kits that I could do, I found this lovely lap quilt I had forgotten about.
Problematically, though the kit provides all the thread you need, it comes in a rather monstrous tangle.
You need to sort it into colors--and those two golds looked identical to me until I saw them in a nice spot of sunshine, then I could see one was lighter.
Look at the Pinks. Fairly distinctive, but it is a bit of a guess looking at the chart and the thread and determining which Is Pale Pink, which is Light Pink, which is Pink, which is Dark Pink. Luckily, the chart also gives what I'm hoping is the DMC thread number.
Since in this case I now have a fair few Pink shades I can match them pretty well by holding them up next to a bit of thread in its nicely labeled wrapper.
My plan is to keep sorting the colors onto the little thread holders provided, then do an inventory of my thread collection, and get it all nicely labeled.
My thread collection consists of thread I've purchased over the years, and mom's stash. I have quite a bit, but as you can see it is in no order. On the plus side, I probably do have a few of the specific thread types the Stitch a day challenge asks for, such as a Neon color, and a variegated one.
I'll need to sort into colors, then note the DMC numbers and go from there.
Speaking of colors, DMC offered a set of new colors in a huge gold box around the holidays last year. It sold out immediately, but I watched for the restock and pre-ordered. Really soft lovely colors. There is room in the box for at least another whole row of thread. All my pinks could be in there...
In preparation for this month, I pulled together all of the tools and kits I have acquired over time.
I love my little embroidery scissors so much. I've tracked some of them down after seeing them on various crochet and embroidery sites.
I feel like I could use more intriguing hoops, but this is what I currently have. They sure don't use the metal ones anymore.
I'm ready with tracing paper.
I've been admiring all of the embroidery I'm seeing on pretty colored fabrics. How cool that I stumbled upon adorable little "fat quarters" at Joann's right along the wall below the cotton fabric (which is apparently a nice fabric to embroider on).
My love of pens and pencils extends to various pens to put the patterns to fabric. Who wouldn't want to try the "disappearing ink" one?
I find I like the pictures in kits, but the towel material they use is very flimsy. They will be pretty, but impractical. I have many little pattern transfers from "Aunt Martha" and "Sublime Stitching" that can be used on "flour sack" blank towels from Walmart:
And I recently found these nice towels from DMC that will look pretty with flowers or robots along the bottom.
Needles needles needles. Needles in a needlestack! It has been so long that I worked on my embroidery that I couldn't look at my odd collection of needles (some from mom of course) and figure out which to use for embroidery. It just lists that there's an embroidery needle in the pack
somewhere.
I had looked up information about embroidery needles to refresh my memory
:
The wonderful Mary Corbet has this helpful article.
https://www.needlenthread.com/2014/11/hand-embroidery-needles-how-to-choose-them-use-them.html
The John James Needle Company has this one I liked as well.
https://www.jjneedles.com/needles-guide
Still while I was at Joann's I thought I'd get a nice fresh pack of needles that I knew were for embroidery. But all I could remember was they had big eyes and sharp points. That was also true of a few other needles. I looked for the word "embroidery" on a pack and got two, one just because the needles were gold and I'm a fish.
If I ever sharpen up about needles, somewhere along the way I found this needle holder which looks useful for storing and identifying them.
I was hoping one of the kits I have would have an array of stitches that I could do on said kit for my Stitch A Day but most use three types at most.
I suppose this is where "samplers" come in. Early on when I first was trying to learn embroidery, I tried an alphabet one. I found many of the stitches confusing, and the overall project boring. I have sort of a horror of "samplers" now. Maybe there's one out there with dragons or something I'd like better than the alphabet.
It seems like I have a lot of stuff, but I've been accumulating it for over ten years, and it all fits into a small bin, so it certainly isn't taking up too much space :)
I'm ready, right? If I manage to do some or all of the challenge stitches and colors, I'll put them in a post at month's end. Wish me luck.
Happy stitching.
