French Embroidery techniques

Glazig embroidery pattern by Pascal Jaouen

As life tends to come between me and my threaded needle, I've roped you all in to keep me on track of this year's resolution to embroider more. How? you might ask. Simply by blogging about project progress each month. The thought of letting you, my dear reader, down, spurs me on immensely!

First up, are my French embroidery projects: the colourful Glazig embroidery kit by Pascal Jaouen and the Boutis white work kit by AveryClaire. My goal was to finish them both before today. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accomplish them both. To no fault of my own.

Not only where the instructions of the Glazig kit very meagre, so was the amount of thread accompanying the kit. I have nearly finished, but not quite. I still need to do the last of the weaving in the red 'fire' bit. This is the first time ever I have run out of thread in an embroidery kit. As this kit is stitched using Au ver a soie silk perle, you really want to be able to use many short lengths as the thread is so prone to wear. This is actually what the instructions tell you to do. Even so, I would have preferred to re-stitch some parts as the thread has really suffered. However, I could see half-way through the project, that the threads were probably not going to be enough, so I didn't. On another note, silk perle is an ultra-slippery thread and some stitch combinations really require practice. Again, not possible with the amount of thread provided for in the kit. One way around this would be to substitute the silk perle with cotton perle.

Overall, this expensive kit just doesn't deliver. Apart from the meagre instructions and the lack of materials, the work drawing and the picture of the finished embroidery do not quite meet up. Furthermore, the way certain single-stitch areas are pre-printed onto the fabric means that you can't completely cover the ink with your stitching. Needless to say, I have emailed Pascal Jaouen two weeks ago to ask him to send me some more thread so that I can finish my project. So far, I haven't heard back... And I never would!

Boutis embroidery pattern by AveryClaire NeedleArts

What I was able to finish, were these stylish Boutis ornaments by AveryClaire. I enjoyed my foray into this elegant white work technique immensely. And I have so much spare thread left, that I could stitch up some more :). I might just do that before next Christmas. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for further kits by the very talented Karen of AveryClaire!

Next week, we'll check in with St. Laurence to see how he is doing. Hope to see you then!