Saturday, 13 July 2019

Good morning everyone,

Thank you for being here and welcome to my second blog. How was your week? Was it another fabulous one? Mine is pretty good. Work was consistency but not too busy I suppose it is a school holiday still. It probably gets busier when school is back next week ( I work at the camp) but that’s ok. I think I have prepared enough in these 2 weeks to be ready for it ๐Ÿ™‚

Anyway, that’s enough about work. Let’s talk about something fun. Our embroidery project. This weekend I will go through with you about the equipment. What we need in embroidery. Please note this is what I use, you could use mine as the guideline and develop to your own style.

One good thing about embroidery is ‘simple’ you don’t need much in this hobby. And thing last pretty long, so you don’t have to keep buying more stuff. My studio (previously master bedroom) is quite tidy and spacy.

First thing you need is embroidery hoop. There are a few sizes and styles available. My favourite is wooden as I love to keep all of my works on the hoop, so the hoop itself needs to be high quality and presentable. I use a few sizes. 15cm, 17.50cm, 20cm and 35cm.

Cotton embroidery floss. I use 2 different brands. DMC brand from France which is available to purchase in any craft shops in Australia. And Venus brand from Thailand. I use this one when I start my embroidery journey on my trip to Thailand so I brought a few over to work on.

Needle, I use a few different needles in my work. Birch Embroidery needle size 6 for most of my works. Perfect for single and double strands. Birch Chenille Needle size 18 for yarn and 6 strands floss. Birch Beading Needle size 10/13 for the very small beads.

Pincushion: Working with the small needles the last thing you need is spilling the needles everywhere. Or end up with having the needle stuck with your clothes. I am mad with OH&S every time I stop stitching the needle needs to go on the pincushion.

I use three of them. One for the unused needle. One for the used embroidery needle and another one for the used Chenille needle so they don’t tangle up.

You could make your own pincushion. I made 2 of them. The ramekin one that looks like a cupcake and the yellow one for my workshop. The colorful one was a gift from my mother in law when she knows that I start getting obsessed with embroidery she found this one for me ๐Ÿ™‚

Embroidery scissors. You may think you can use any scissors, but believe me, once you start getting hook with your stitching rhythm you want a perfect size and sharp scissors to get you going with the next steps. This one is about 9cm long which is perfect for my liking.

Needle Threader. A must have, a magic thing that helps my work a lot easier. Save your time for stitching, don’t even try to put the floss through the needle without it. I highly recommend to get one.
*My tip is before using it, squeeze a bit of the superglue on the join between the plastic and metal to make it last longer. Especially if you work on yarn or 6 strands floss, the pressure of pulling will make it falls apart easily. See pictures for the sample ๐Ÿ™‚

Calico Cotton. I love to use Calico Cotton in my works. It is affordable and super easy to work on. I could draw the picture on. I could apply watercolor paint and very smooth to stitch through.

Sketchbook: I design all of my works by sketching first. Most of them are on the sketching book. However, there will be some that I have experimented on the computer laptop screen. I am not an expert on that yet so sketchbook in my best friend at the moment.

Pencil: With embroidery what we need is the sharp lines so we can stitch along. I use HB to draft first and complete the sketch with 4B Mechanical Pencil.

Eraser: every experiment come with mistake ๐Ÿ™‚ We need this helper to fix it.

Watercolor and brushes: I use Reeves on most of my works. Few different brushes depending on the size of the work.

Nothing fancy in this category. I got all of them from stationery shops and Officeworks.

That’s pretty much all we need in embroidery work. To make things easier for you, I have some of them available here on my website. Check them out on my ‘online shop’ or copy and paste link https://hoorayhoop.com/shop/

I hope today blog is useful. As I am a super brand new blogger my writing may not as good as the other professionals, but I love doing Embroidery. It is such a wonderful hobby and I like to share my skills here with you all. If you have any questions or like to leave some comments please do so ๐Ÿ™‚ *Don’t worry when it asks you for email, only myself can see this bit not the public.

Next week I will share you how to do the stitches. Stay warm and I will see you then ๐Ÿ™‚

Jo