Once upon a time I acquired a pattern or kit for a cat-themed cross-stitch pillow. Since it had four cats and we had four cats, and there was a certain basic correspondence between the looks of these four, I decided to make it over in our cats’ images.

And I put a lot of work into it – twenty years ago or more.

As much work as I put into it, there is a lot left. I never did figure out good colors for Tabitha (the unfinished grey and tan cat) – she wasn’t as high contrast as that stitching. And at this point the discoloration of the fabric and white thread may be permanent.

I used the pattern for O.D., the calico, in another setting already, and I’ll save what I have for the other three as well. The stitching itself, however – it’s time to let it go.

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From left to right, these are Relaxation, Invitation, Ornamentation. Click to embiggen; the next larger size would have made them taller than my browser window, and I find that super annoying on other sites.

My hubby took some fantastic closeups of them that I’ll share two of:

These will be on display at the Upper Valley Food Co-op in White River Junction, VT, as part of their Earth Day art show. I believe they are up for three weeks starting today, and there’s a reception 4-6 PM today.

A bit on the making: The hoops are 12″, 10″, and 8″ wooden embroidery hoops painted with acrylics; two are over 12″ scrapbook paper. Each has a two-layer fabric “frame” perhaps with other fabric elements and a hanging ribbon that originated on a candy package. The webs are nylon filament sold for beading and the dewdrops are Mod Podge Dimensional Magic, a material I’d been looking for an excuse to buy and try.

The smaller spider is thread and wire (and a loop of filament leading to the hanging thread), held in place with friction and Fray-Check. The bigger one is wire and beads made rigid partially via Jewel-It embellishment glue. The wire lettering is also held in place by Jewel-It. I used steam (was going to say an iron, but that implies touching) to “block” the nylon, which shrinks it a bit but also helps it take the shape it’s pinned to when heated. That was especially important for the hanging spider, who doesn’t weigh enough to straighten the nylon itself!

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Title, compass rose, and attribution. Since I did the vast majority of the work last year I used that date. And since I am me, I designed the alphabet myself, all the letters in upper- and lowercase, and digits although I ultimately liked the look of the Roman numerals better.

Since blackwork was popular over a long stretch of time I had a lot of options for an era-appropriate script. I found a website called Medieval Writing with lots of examples of scripts and was able to observe my lowercase options pretty thoroughly. I decided to create a blend of 15th-16th century English chancery hand and 15th-16th century French and Italian humanistic minuscule, with an eye to legibility for modern readers. Well, it turned out more to be based on those scripts in the way that TV movies are based on true stories, but I think it has the right flavor. I made the uppercase and numbers by looking at assorted typefaces and online calligraphy lessons, and the ampersand right out of my head. My favorites are the old-looking a, dramatic d, and potbellied U.

I have for you a blackwork alphabet PDF that includes the laid-out text for the map (aside from my name, which I didn’t think would be of much use). I thought it would be useful as an example of kerning the letters even if you wanted to use this for a different project.

After stitching, I washed the map and hung it from a deck chair out back, before I remembered I needed to block it on the ironing board with six or seven hundred pins. Next stop: the frame shop. I’ve never had any of my embroidery framed, so this will be an adventure.

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The main way was for patterns to stitch through, whether by machine or by hand. For the sample embroidered seam block I made for my second crazy quilting class, I used strips of tracing paper to make evenly-spaced repeating stitch patterns from my graph paper sketches. It was a mixed blessing – the stitching creates the perforations to tear along to remove the paper, so shorter stitches = easier removal. Mine were long and tearing the paper without stressing the stitches was a challenge. I also had trouble with the stitches getting loose when I tore away the paper and had to consciously stitch more tightly than I normally would to accommodate it. One piece of advice unrelated to my block: don’t fill areas while the tracing paper is still attached because you will never get it out.

Advice from elsewhere: Susan at Plays with Needles recommends Bienfang brand tracing paper in particular. I’ve only tried what I have – Strathmore – and it’s fine, but takes a little effort to sew through. I’ll test out Bienfang when I need a refill. If it’s easier to tear that will help a lot with avoiding stitch distortion.

I also printed a large letter to be used as an applique pattern. I put tracing paper through the printer by trimming it to about 8″x10.5″ and taping it across the top to a standard sheet of letter paper, an idea I got from a tutorial for decorating candles with printed tissue paper. I generally use a small piece of tape at each end of the short edge and two more equally spaced in between.

Advice here: if you’re printing large solid letters and don’t have a way to convert them to outline, change them to a nice medium gray. Then you use less ink, which means less time to dry and less distortion from soaking the paper. For my applique I straight-stitched by machine around the outline of the letter, removed the paper and trimmed the applique fabric as close as possible to the stitch line, and then made a tight, narrow zigzag all the way around. In one spot my trimming was a little too close and I had to recapture the fabric with the zigzag, but most of it went as planned.

[This pattern was for a gift for friends we see very infrequently, and in fact we passed it to a mutual friend and it may not even have made it to them yet, but I am tired of holding on to this post until the gift is given!]

Incidentally, the letter shown is Oleo Script Swash Caps, a font that’s free for commercial use. The designer also has the plainer Oleo Script, but I specifically wanted an E with loops in it. Both are thick enough that at a large size you don’t even need boldface to make a good applique letter.

My second recent use for tracing paper was to make my own rub-on transfer. I was drawing a greeting card and had a little fuzzball character that I didn’t trust to come out as well in future versions, so I traced him with a soft pencil (4B), turned the tracing over, and rubbed with the (eraserless) back end of the pencil to transfer graphite. Then I went back with a colored pencil to finish the drawing. It worked really well, and I was even able to face him in opposite directions by turning the tracing paper over, using the first trace as an image to trace again, and rubbing the second version onto the page. In the photo, where I’ve transferred but not drawn over the image, you can see where the first version rubbed onto the scratch paper a bit, ghostly under the tracing paper (which itself is not easy to see).

By the way, as I focus less on blogging I’ve found myself using Facebook a bit more, mostly for random crafty links I come across (though the Fun With Vintage Patterns album gradually grows). I’m not regular with it, but moreso than here.

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I made two pencil bags using a tutorial from craftlog.org, with some changes: I was using zippers with decorative tape, so I wanted them entirely on the outside, and I was limited to 7″ instead of 9″ length. I cut the fabrics (and lightweight interfacing because they were quilting cottons) 9″ by 11″ instead of 10″x12″ and sewed them down the 9″ sides, right sides together with interfacing on the wrong side of one, and with a half inch seam allowance. After pressing, I turned it right side out and pressed flat, with the lining fabric peeking just a tiny bit to the outside at each seam. The zipper took up the length of the seam – make sure you space the teeth a bit away from the fabric – and I ran two lines of topstitching down each tape. The second side is awkward, of course. From then on it’s just as in the original tutorial (well, without needing to trim the zipper tape), though you have to pin the open ends of the zipper tape close to each other on the backside of the pouch, and I attached my binding differently from hers. That’s a matter of taste and familiarity. I like to unfold the tape and line the smaller side up with the edge of the fabric, then stitch in the fold, and after wrapping the tape over the edge with the ends inside appropriately, stitch in the ditch on the front to secure the back of the binding.

The other item up there is a “spa scrubbie” from Flamingo Toes. I didn’t change the pattern at all, but doing the final topstitching I wish I would have hand-basted the turning opening closed first. I worried that pins would be bent in the sewing of it, but I wasn’t able to keep the edges lined up by hand and so had to go back and hand-sew afterward anyway. The terrycloth was a washcloth, which was just right size-wise (wide enough to gather up, long enough to trim off the smooth “stripes” parallel to one edge, but almost no other extra), and the other fabric was from a thermal shirt I couldn’t resist at the thrift store, but which turned out to be too small even to be a layering piece. Glad to put some of its cute owls to use.

The Christmas sewing not from a pattern amounted to two other things. First, cat toys: pillows with strips of fabric and lots of fresh catnip from the bulk spice aisle of the local co-op, with the ends closed at 90 degrees to each other, so to speak. One end has the side seam in a crease, and the other has the side seam halfway between creases. I’m told they’re quite popular and the first one was soaking wet a few hours after the kitties were given it.

Finally, with no photo because it’s not mine to share, a friend asked me to make texting gloves for another friend. He had wonderful lined leather gloves and conductive thread from Chica and Jo, and asked me to stitch the Triforce on the index fingers and thumbs. Turns out the Triforce is a terrific motif because it splits out into three regions that are relatively small, which gives you accuracy plus different spots to use for tapping versus pinching. I didn’t worry about making the interior of the stitching “messy” (as you’ll see in various tutorials) – when outlining the large triangle I stitched all the way across on the inside, but due to the fuzzy lining it wasn’t terribly noticeable. When we tested, though, that was ample contact to trigger the screen. Two tools were indispensable for the process: a large marker to act as a “darning egg,” keeping me from sewing through the lining of the opposite side of the finger, and a needle puller (small flower-shaped piece of rubber, like a jar opener), which I used to protect my finger when pushing and to grab the needle for pulling. Nice leather is both tough and grabby.

When next we meet it will be 2015! Enjoy your New Year’s Eve!

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After many moons, the blackwork map is stitched. I have improved and repaired the pattern, as well, which you’ll find linked from my Upper Valley Fiber Crafts post on the topic.

This time around I couldn’t hang it outside after washing like I’d been doing, so I pressed the water out in a bath towel and pinned it to my ironing board to dry. That allowed me to put more tension on it than the hanging did, which made a really visible difference in the wrinkles. I also pulled on it a bit, like pizza dough, while it was soaking in warm water, and folded it differently than before in the big tupperware-type-thing it was in – this time I made sure the map itself was as flat as possible, with the excess fabric folded in around the edges.

Here’s a shot where you can see the last portion stitched a little closer.

Now I have to decide what kind of title or legend or signature I want to apply to it, how, and where. But that’s for another day!

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This segment had the fun Piermont-Haverhill puzzle piece border.

Just the bottom 10 (and a half) towns left!

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This time I sewed a little casing into the bottom of the fabric before washing it. I used warm water and dish soap instead of laundry soap to be sure to cut through any oils from my fingers. When I hung it to dry (via large binder clips around the top of a metal deck chair) I slid a dowel into the casing for weight and even stretch. I think that helped get more of the embroidery hoop marks out, compared to the previous update. The dowel came in handy later as well – rain was threatening, so after the fabric was mostly dry I brought it in and hung it between two chairs inside via the protruding ends of the dowel.

Onward and upward! Well, some upward, but more rightward and then downward. You’ll see this again at the 3/4 mark, in a month or so.

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I had to rip and re-stitch part of Pomfret, where I accidentally stitched over 3 strands at some point and couldn’t disguise the problem. I actually hemmed and hawed so much about whether to redo it that I finished stitching the whole town, but concluded that it would be silly to spend so much time on this project (it’s at least an hour per town for me) only to leave in an error that really was plenty obvious. Fortunately I was able to take out the bad part without disturbing too much of the rest, and still have enough loose thread to re-secure the ends.

Before taking the photo above I washed the fabric. I’ve had problems in the past with long-term projects becoming irrecoverably grungy, so I plan to wash this every time I’ve finished enough to give another update.

Remember that you can make your own map or hijack the filling patterns for other purposes by visiting Upper Valley Fiber Crafts.

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Originally I wanted to partition the map into what we really think of as towns, which are smaller, more numerous, and more irregular than what the state governments regard as towns. The large boxy shapes date back to at least 1860, though, and I determined it would take me months to draw other boundaries. Drawing my own borders would also result in many arbitrary decisions about what was in or out of town.

I also didn’t intend to include 46 towns in the final map, but again, restricting would have required arbitrary decisions. The towns I included comprise the beat of the local newspaper, so any arbitrariness to the boundary is well in the past now.

To make the town outlines I imported an area map into MacStitch (of which I still owe you a full review) and traced the edges with backstitch. Deleting the cross-stitches was easy since none of them were black, so I was able to simply remove each color and its stitches from the palette. I then adjusted a number of the edge lines so all town corners would be at grid corners, in case anyone wants to make their own arbitrary exclusions.

I asked for and was granted permission to use fillings from Kim Brody Salazar’s wonderful blackwork fillings collection, but between asking and receiving I had the idea to make fill patterns out of the initial(s) of each town, and couldn’t let go of it. That meant 46 different fill patterns, 7 of which had to be built from the letter C. That is not a letter that has much difference between upper- and lowercase, or print and cursive. Also difficult were 3 Ws plus WF and WW. Oddly enough, the solitary F and E gave me more trouble than, say, the 4 Ss. Many evenings of sketching while watching the hubs play Skyrim passed as I designed letter fills and then slotted them into their locations.

A few more evenings passed while I stitched the beginning of my sample, shown above. I don’t have time to continue to be so dogged about this, so it will be some months before I’m done, but you’ll see it again then. I’m working on 32-count linen (over 2, for an effective count of 16) with a single strand of black embroidery floss (DMC 310). The stitching I’ve done is all six strands of a 2–2.5 foot length of floss.

There are a few useful links in the pattern post that are also now on the ideas and inspiration embroidery page, halfway down, where I’ve added a blackwork entry to the slowly growing directory of embroidery techniques.

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