Category Archives: Playful Free-Form Embroidery

The Frankenstitch Story #7: Garden Path

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Wherein the Embroiderer Is Led Down the Garden Path

The embroiderer shuffles back into the studio with a hot cup of tea and several cookies. What more can she do to bring the FrankenStitch to life? Her memory of the dread when her editor returned the step-outs for Playful Free-Form Embroidery has disappeared like a packet of cookies. Instead, she now sees the odd parts as a familiar whole. They are becoming a new design, a unified embroidery with personality, quirks, and a sprinkling of cookie crumbs.

And so, she concentrates on the garden areas of the design, filling in the black background fabric with seed stitches here and adding straight stitches inside a lazy daisy stitch there. The fine size 12 Pickles and heavier size 8 Ocean from the elusive Artfabrik dyer fit the color scheme and sew like butter.

Whip stitches in bright Oranges thread lace through the birdhouse stick and the stems of the red flowers. The blue daisy stems are crisscrossed with blanket stitches using Bordeaux (the thread, not the wine).

It is not lost on her that her indoor hand embroidery “garden” replaced her outdoor gardening. Both indoor and outdoor activities soothe the soul. Although with indoor gardening, you can munch cookies while stitching. And there are no mosquitoes.

To be continued….

A FrankenStitch Story #6: Repentance

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Wherein the Embroiderer is Contrite

The embroiderer gazed with dismay at the FrankStitch design, a combination of step-outs from her book Playful Free-Form Embroidery. The half-flower looks so sad. Why had she cut it down the center following the straight edge of the black fabric?

Then, in a show of solidarity with the tragic half-flower, the embroiderer trims the remaining edges of the design in organic curves. But it is not enough.

So the embroiderer snips off the sad half-flower and replaces it with a full flower that extends over the edge of the design. Yes, she regrets her rash use of the scissors in the past. But this time, she tries to make up for it.

Returning to the design, the embroiderer again selects a hand-dyed thread from the enigmatic Artfabrik dyer. It is a size 8 Aquamarine thread that repeats the rich hues of the stitched garden. She applies a backstitch around the sun’s edge using the blue thread, then echoes the yellow fly stitches that form the sun’s rays. The reward of another cookie lures her ever onward.

To be continued….

A FrankenStitch Story #5: Regrets

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Wherein the Embroiderer Has Regrets

The next day, the embroiderer returned to the studio and took up the step-outs from her Playful Free-Form Embroidery book. Then, feeling regret for having tossed the red flower in the trash bin with her cookie wrappers, she rescued the flower and placed it on the edge of the design. Surely the flower would hold no grudge.

Then in a show of bravado, she cut the flower in half and stitched it to the edge of the design. It is now a sad half-flower. A tragic reminder that her rash use of the scissors has caused more than one regret in her life. But she can’t think about that now. There is more stitching to do.

Her attention rested on the yellow orb in the sky. Was it, in fact, the moon as suggested in her original Natural Gardening design? With the addition of the house, didn’t it more sensibly represent the sun rather than a moonlit garden?

And so she embellished the yellow orb, adding a jolly blanket stitch to trim the edge and fly stitches to create rays. She chose a size 8 pearl cotton thread called Butter from the quaint Artfabrik dye shop located in the state of Illinois. The Artfabrik dyer was known to favor cookies much as the embroiderer did. And so she trusted the dyer and thus the quality of her threads.

To be continued….