Katarina Is Here

Hello everyone

How are you?  Hope your week is going well.  Am thrilled to let you know that at last the 3 new Shades Of Whitework kits are available for sale in the Etsy Shop.  Katarina The Cat, Chickadee and the long awaited Complete Lesson in Whitework – flower mandala.  This is the ideal design for learning the technique as it features several shapes that are repeated in the design therefore good for practice.   All 3 techniques, Needlepainting, Miniature Needlepainting and Whitework are now available as Complete lessons, which means you can learn the technique in the comfort of your own home.

Kits with or without thread.

All the whitework kits are now available with or without thread.  Due to the fact that I have to import the threads into South Africa, it is much simpler for you to purchase the DMC stranded cotton in your own country and the only other threads which these projects use are DMC Cotton Floche.

Threads & DMC Cotton Floche

Floche is a lovely soft cotton thread that is ideal for surface embroidery and very forgiving for satin stitch.  One skein of floche has approx 150m of thread on it which will cover approx 4 whitework projects.   Floche is imported from France and it is not always easy to obtain so I have decided to make the two colours that I use most in these designs, available in the shop you can find them here.  You will find a list of the threads needed next to the product description – there are approx 6 shades of DMC stranded cotton and 2 colours of Floche, for each project.   If you purchase the kit only without thread you can purchase the threads from your local Needlework shop or online and one skein will do a couple of projects, so really it is far more cost effective. But should you require the full thread pack this is also available as an option, however stocks will be limited to availability.  Some of the thread packs are not available right now I am awaiting stock.

Kit contents

The whitework kits all include a generous size of beautiful, high quality Irish Linen cambric fabric with a pre-printed outline, so no tracing required, an full colour printed instruction booklet and 2 sharps needles size 10.

Gutermann Threads

The Gutermann threads used for outlining in the miniature projects and also in the new book Miniature Needle Painting are available for sale in the Etsy shop.  Those of you residing in the USA may find these difficult to source as the numbering system is different to that of Europe & Africa so Mary Corbet of Needle N Thread kindly offered to source US substitutes for me and these are now listed next to the Gutermann threads in the shop.  You can read her article here, and the previous post here, thank you Mary!

Again if you purchase one small cop of this sewing thread it will probably last you a lifetime or certainly numerous projects.

Fabric for Miniature Needlepainting

Southern belle 200 count muslin is used for all the miniature needlepainting projects.  This is available from the Etsy store, and I am pleased to let you know that it is now also available in the UK from Mace & Nairn.  Cotton satin which is used for needlepainting embroidery is also available from Mace & Nairn in the UK and can be purchased from Threads In Bloom in the USA.

That’s all for this week. Meanwhile, wherever you are in the world, remember “Embroidery forever, housework whenever!”  Keep smiling and happy stitching!  Trish