Tuesday, 11 February 2014

Kreinik pieces - finished!

I have been feverishly sewing for the past few weeks and in anticipation of the Stitches Trade Show, I have finished my work inspired by and executed using wonderful Kreinik threads.


I used mainly Fine Braids for this piece.  It is a piece of silk paper using Oliver Twists silk tops, then a mask sprayed with off-white acrylic paint and then some hand stitching in the leaves.  I used Very Fine Braid col 018, for the running stitch, Medium Braid 015L (Bright Green), Very Fine Braid (Bright Blue) 014HL, Fine Braid 3223 (very pale lilac), Very Fine Braid 3214 (icy blue), Very Fine Braid 3506(another bright blue), Fine Braid 032 (white iridescent) for the leaves.  I outlined the piece in Micro Ice Chenille 12 (bright green) and Medium Braid (same as the leaves).  I machine stitched around the leaves, but it was mainly hand stitched.



This piece was mainly machine stitched using various gold Fine Twist (ZT0003 White Gold, ZT0033 Yellow and ZT0004 Gold) and Fashion Twist ZS1152 Jade threads.  The feathers were stitched in gold as well.  The background was made up of thermofaxed feathers and feather stamps.  I free machined feathers onto the background randomly.  I just made the stitching up as I went along.


This piece was my favourite.  I screen printed the design, using a freezer paper stencil.  I then machine stitched the blocks of colour and hand stitched in the leaves.  I used Fine Twist in 2T0041 Royal Blue, 2T0044 Lilac, ZS1153 Plum for the purple background, and Fine Twist ZS1137 Snow.  Snow was great as it was white thread with a fine silver thread running through so it sparkles like the snow!!

The threads were fantastic to work with, particularly the Fine and Fashion Twist machine threads.

Thursday, 30 January 2014

New pieces with Kreinik Manufacturing Company

I first met the lovely Dena and Doug at the Craft, Hobby and Stitch Trade Show in Birmingham last year.  They were kind enough to give me some threads to review for Workshop on the Web and I loved working with them.  Just before Christmas, Santa came early when he dropped off a huge box of all different coloured threads, for me to work on something new for the the next CHS show, coming up soon.

It was like Christmas had come early, and I was slightly frustrated at having to put them to one side and get on with the Festive season.  But as all good things come to an end, I now have something new to look forward to!

I have started making a couple of pieces using printing technqiues.  The first is 'feathery' themed, as I am currently addicted to feathers (on Pinterest, where I have a burgeoning board).


I have painted the background using Koh-i-noor dye paints, then have stamped over with homemade stamps, thermofaxed some feathers in differing sizes, and as you can see in the top right hand corner, I have started to stitch!  I am using Kreinik's Gold, and I will also be using White Gold and Yellow for this first layer of stitching.  These are from the Fine Twist range.

For my second piece, I printed a leaf and stem design using blue screenprinting ink and a freezer paper stencil.  I used Plum Fashion Twist and Royal Blue Fine Twist for the first part of the machine stitching:




I will post a few more pictures as I continue!