A New Kind of Crazy

So, what do you do when you have an ape-ton of projects to complete before an event? Sit in front of a tv and learn a new skill in your "spare time", of course! 

Yeah, I have no idea.  Actually, this only took me a couple of hours, on a night I was taking a break, and all my stuff is done (posts soon), so this was a fun little diversion. 

I've always thought drawn-thread embroidery was lovely, and had intended to learn to do it "someday".  Then a laurel I spoke to at LPT in September about my other embroidery brought up the subject, and the idea has been standing at the door of my mind making faces at me through the window ever since.  So a couple of weeks ago I grabbed a linen scrap out of the trash and decided to try it out. 

 

1. I removed about 14 threads from this fabric.  MAN that was a pain in the butt.  I hadn't even realized it, but the variation in the thread widths in this fabric which give it the "nubbly" texture make it really difficult to remove them one at a time!  I'll have to remember that on future projects. 
2. I used plain sewing thread for this project, first to gather groups of 4 fabric threads together on one side of the design...
3. ...and then to gather the same 4 threads on the other side, so that they were grouped like ladder rungs. 
4. Then I used a length of white embroidery floss to weave every two "rungs" together in an X 

I also experimented with using a colored thread to do the weaving; and also with weaving 4 "rungs" together instead of two - you can see that it didn't come out very well.  the groups of 4 are very bunchy. The completed panel is about about 1cm wide.

 

My second attempt was on a smoother, lighter-weight piece of linen.  It was easier to remove the threads from the fabric, since this fabric wasn't nubbly; but because threads are thinner, they broke often during the process.  Because they were smoother, though, it was much easier to get groups of 4 woven together, and the design came out a lot better on this one.  The completed panel here is about 1/2", which I believe was about 20 threads, if I remember correctly.

This piece ended up being made into a coif; but I don't have pictures for you because it ended up being too small for my head (oops), and a picture of it laying flat just looks like a wad of fabric.  I think I'll give it to a friend of mine this weekend.  

I REALLY ENJOY DOING THIS.  I think my exact words, to my roommate, on the first attempt were that this is "exactly the kind of crazy I want to be."  I have GOT to do more of this!  There are so many cool things you can do, so many different designs and uses for them!  YAY!  

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