Friday, November 21, 2008

A Little More Stitching

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to try for a bigger project, but meanwhile here's what I've been doing. I put a border around the peacock, which I think makes it look more interesting. Now I just have to try the pillow finish. Carol R. has sent me excellent directions and now it is up to me.
And I've picked up Schoolgirl Lessons again. This is the perfect easy stitch for an anxious stitcher like me. I'm trying hard to avoid making mistakes, because the floss leaves a pinkish tinge whenever it is frogged out. We are traveling to New Jersey for Thanksgiving next week and I'll take my little schoolgirl along for some turkey.
In thinking about trying something more advanced, I've got questions as always. Does anyone have any advice about keeping control when you have a lot of different floss to use in a project? This is baffling me at the moment. It's one thing to keep the floss in bags or rings with floss tags at the start, but what happens once you start cutting the floss and are in the process of using different colors? How do you keep it all straight? Once you start unwinding a skein of floss it isn't easy to keep it neat when you are cutting lengths to use, and multiplying by several colors just winds up in a mess, at least at my house! I am interested in learning about your systems - there must be a better way to do it than living in floss chaos (hmmm, Floss Chaos - another name for a blog for me!)

7 comments:

Teri said...

Hi Michele. You're doing a great job with all the projects you've been working on! I love the colors in that little peacock! As far as "keeping control" of floss goes, I've always used the plastic floss boxes to organize all my floss, or to gather my floss for a large project. I wind each skein of floss on the little cardboard winders, label the winders, and keep them in numerical order. That system works well for me. I only have one color out at a time and wind whatever is left back on the cardboard winder before moving to the next color. I look forward to seeing what "big" project you choose!

staci said...

Your stitching looks wonderful Michele...love the peacock!

My DMC is wound on bobbins and a rewind the cut lengths back on the bobbins. Hand dyeds I loop back on the floss tag :) Looking forward to seeing what your new bigger project will be :)

Sonda said...

The peacock looks great! I do the same as Teri and Staci to keep my floss organized during a project.

Jennifer said...

I use a quart or gallon size ziploc bag per project, depending on how many threads I'm using. When I kit up the project, all the threads I need go in that bag. Most of the threads I use are already on bobbins, but DH prefers to work on skeins (he doesn't like the kinks bobbins leave in the threads). He uses snack size ziplocs - 1 per skein. Even if the wrapper no longer stays on the skein, the skein is housed in the bag, along with anything that's cut off, keeping it all neat and together.

I wind leftover thread back on the bobbin, and sometimes I stick threaded needles back into the bobbin (between the wound thread and the bobbin itself) if I'll need them later in the project. If I'm working on a skein, I use the snack bags, but remove the needles.

I also try to work with one color at a time. DH prefers to work with multiple threads, and has found that the needle sorters (a strip of magnet on a piece of cardboard) work well for him. There's room to write in the color or symbol and it keeps the needles sorted

Carol R said...

I use floss bobbins too for DMC threads - same as the other and put current projects onto a ring.

The peacock looks great and I look forward to the 'finish'!

Michele said...

love your peacock :)

With any project, I put all the floss and fabric and pattern in one project bag. With overdyes, I just put the unused threads back on the card that the floss is on. With DMC, I work off just the skein and put it in a snack bag with the left over threads .. kinda like everyone else! lol

Sally said...

Love the peacock and Schoolgirl Lessons is coming along nicely.

I use bobbins for most of my threads. I find it much easier that way.