More Color!

On my way home from my daughter's house the other day I took the opportunity to stop in my favorite shop for embroidery supplies. I went in intending to indulge in a purchase of maybe 5 to 7 dollars. An hour and a half later I left with $20 worth of happiness.

This isn't all of it, but there were only two other skeins in my bag that didn't make it into this picture. These are Watercolours by Caron. I bought them in part because I figured the luscious colors would help me get through the gray days of winter. (I had to lighten up the photo a bit; I think I overdid it.)

Then yesterday I finally took the plunge and dumped all of my embroidery threads on the floor to reorganize them. I'd had all my cotton flosses grouped according to color in the bigger plastic box you see on this shelf. The smaller tote had the lesser quantities of rayon threads, silk, linen, and perle cottons.


Now the bigger box holds my neutral threads and cool colors, and the smaller box has the warm color threads in it. My cotton flosses were strung together by color on shower curtain rings and then all the rings were loose in the big box. I've kept all the cotton flosses strung on their rings and then strung the other fibers together on another ring (within the color family). The rings and the balls and skeins of bulkier threads are all kept together now in one or two-gallon Ziploc bags.

The Ziploc bags keep the color families separated from each other within the boxes.

After all that I finally put my band sampler in the hoop and had a go with the new threads and some new-to-me stitches:

The top row is Portuguese Stem Stitch done in two different threads. The first part and last part of the line is done in 6 ply cotton floss, the middle bit was done with two strands of the Watercolor thread (which is a 3 ply cotton).

The second row is a laced running stitch. The bottom two rows are the same stitch, another version of the laced running stitch. In all three of these rows I did the running stitch in a perle cotton (#5 or #8; the 8 was really too fine). The yellow row is laced with another of the Watercolor threads (all 3 ply). The next row was laced with a fine ribbon intended for knitting. The bottom row was laced with a thread called Overture by Rainbow Gallery.

Can you tell that I like the variegated colorings? ;- )

(The stitch links will take you to Sharon B's Stitch Dictionary. She does not have the Portuguese Stem Stitch up there yet.)