Strawberry Fayre: inner Hearts

I've continued work on Strawberry Fayre and have finished the first of the four inner hearts. The stitching is largely the same as for the front and the back heart. As I really did not like the way the picots under the strawberries had turned out on the front heart, I swapped threads. The instructions tell you to use a stranded variegated spun silk (Gumnut Yarns 'Stars'). This thread is far too fluffy to make a nicely defined stitch. As a result, my picots turned quite fizzy. Strangely enough, the picots in the Inspirations pictures are sharply defined... Another hint that the threads listed in the instructions might not have been the ones used by Carolyn Pearce :). As I wanted better picots, I looked for a thread less fluffy and with a tighter twist. So here are my new picots using House of Embroidery #12 perle 'bush'. Much better indeed!

 

$Unfortunately, I ran out of the green Güttermann Sulky thread. Although I was able to substitute it with a thread from my stash, I wasn't a happy bunny. Reading the comments on my Instagram account, I am not the only one who has run out. I don't think this is acceptable for a kit priced at €138 or $170. So far, I only had good experiences with kits from Inspirations. I stitched my needlecase 'Cottage Garden' and 'Home Sweet Home' with the original kits and had no problems. My issues with Strawberry Fayre, and the solutions I have started to implement, have given me the confidence that I will be able to stitch future projects from Inspirations using my own stash!

Seeing today's blog post on real thread cards over on Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread combined with a recent enquiry by one of my readers, I am pondering making real thread cards for the Heathway Milano crewel wool I sell. Since there are now 33 fabulous colour families which each have nine lovely shades, this is going to be a huge undertaking. So I'd like to ask if there are other readers potentially interested in these thread cards. I am thinking of wrapping the nine shades of a colour family around a strip of card and then glueing several strips onto an A4 page. Two pages back-to-back in a pocket and the pockets into a sturdy cardboard file. How does that sound? Please share your thoughts below!

For those of you who missed last week's post on the new Heathway Milano crewelwool colour families, you can find a free pattern of a Russian doll here. And don't forget, if you like what you read, please consider making a donation using the PayPal button on the right :)!