Immediately after my rather sudden departure from the yarn department a few weeks ago – I was made redundant – I put aside knitting for a little while. Hardly surprising you might speculate, but I think really it was the thought that I didn’t have to do it that was quite liberating!
I have even been to knit night and taken sewing with me (which feels all kinds of wrong).
Want to see what I’ve using my making time for instead?
It’s the prettiest embroidery print – The Bubblegum Sampler – from Dropcloth Samplers. Rebecca Ringquist has a myriad of different ready printed, hand drawn embroidery samplers on offer on her Etsy shop. They range from the purely decorative to beautiful-but-useful ones with the stitch names printed alongside, with which you can stitch as you learn. I also bought one of those to brush up, since I haven’t embroidered in what, twenty years or so.
In traditional style samplers the aim was to show off the range of stitches that you could do, and was a test of the skill with which you could do them. The Bubblegum Sampler is one where you can just mindlessly backstitch (or sew the stitch of your choice), following the lines of the circles and rainbows, or perhaps filling in, using the white space. I chose the former and it has been a really enjoyable project.
I finished it a couple of days ago, and will frame it for display – probably in a hoop. I would definitely recommend this kind of sampler as a starting point for a new embroiderer, even before one of the stitch samplers. By working on a simple sampler like this, you will find that you learn to concentrate on where to place your needle tip as it comes through the fabric to line up with the transfer pattern. It will get you into the groove of stitching – that tacit movement of your hands, the needle and the hoop, dancing along in time with each other. You might even want to do another…
As for me, I’m having a little foray back to knitting so that I can complete a couple of projects but I know that it will not be long before my embroidery calls me again.