"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Monday, June 07, 2010

Giving myself a break from lists!

Also, a break from my current UFO. I have been wanted to play with my new Sashiko fabric ever since I borrowed the book "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations" from our library. Today was the day. I decided to start with a small easy design, and traced this and another pattern on to my indigo fabric.
The book says if you don't have the actual Sashiko threads, you can substitute cotton perle, crochet cotton, 4 strands of DMC, or similar. I chose to use some perle which I had lying around, as the colours were similar to those in the book illustration. Here is my tracing and my first stitched attempt. I used white dressmakers carbon paper to transfer the tracing on to the fabric, as you can see with the other pattern still to be stitched. I'm not going to use perle cotton again; it was too thick and difficult to pull through the fabric. I have some crochet cotton that I will try next. Next time I go to a Craft Fair, I'll purchase some proper Sashiko thread, as it will look much better. I'd like to do more of this style of embroidery. It is basically only running stitch, and while that sounds easy enough, to do Sashiko properly, the stitches must be very even, and in a certain sequence according to the pattern. If I get the right cotton, maybe my poor hands won't ache as much as they do after an hour of tugging perle cotton through resisting indigo fabric!

2 comments:

Catherine said...

I can`t wait to see what you`ve made. I saw the fabric in an earlier post and it is lovely.

As for lists. I`m always misplacing them. Good intentions but the lists just disappear in drawers, on desks, the laundry basket, never where they are intended to be!

Lakshmi said...

Gina, it is interesting..i never heard about shashiko..will be waiting to see..nice colours

BTW completed stiching one corner of the leaf project that you sent to me and started another corner..they are not coming gud like the one which was prestiched ..but enjoying stiching..