Setting up new projects, part 1

Oh, I have soooo much to tell you! I love sharing my work processes and this project was especially clear and easy to delineate. My goal was simple–make a couple of handwork projects so that I would always have something to grab and take with me when I needed one. But that doesn’t limit me much, so I needed to set some tighter parameters.

Fabric–I wanted to work with wool. Pulled a lot of pieces out and particularly liked the blues and lime green.

But the wool I have is a blend and doesn’t felt as tightly as I’d like, so it needs a stabilizer. I wanted a soft project. I kept digging and came up with some treasures…damask napkins that I put in a dye bath at some point in the past. Lovely, with lime greens and blues. And I found a plaid fabric that I’ll plan on using with them, probably for mounting as a background. I actually have tons of fabrics in this color family, so finding coordinates is easy!

Now on to technique.

Embroidery–yep! I have whole drawers full of embroidery threads, so more limiting was needed to make this a take-along project. When I last dyed floss, I ended up with multiple skeins that had similar colors. I call them my Caribbean skeins and they look great with the damask. That was my color scheme!

Easy peasy now. I have my fabric, I have my technique, I have my threads. All that’s left is design.

I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow!