Embroidery silk spools

I’ve been working on getting ranges of color for my embroidery silks. These are wound on Louet cardboard pirns six inches long and about as big around as a pencil. The pink range is what I’ve been using to embroider the peony. These greens will form the leaves – the blues are just to have blues. Eventually, I want to have a rainbow box with all the shades I could possibly need.

The yellow-green range is the most recent. I’m getting better at getting a consistent leveling on the dye.

With the blue, you can see a little bit of unevenness in the medium shades. Some people have told me that the variations add “charm” – I want less charm, more “do what I said.”

I like the fact that the lightest colors appear to be white – until you put them in the wrong range, at which point their color jumps out.

Again, spotty color in the mid-range. I’ve figured out a lot of the trouble (not enough calsolene oil, plus some dye-bath handling issues) but I’ll probably use these up rather than re-dyeing them. Or who knows… they may go to something dark to cover my sins.

You can see the size of the quills here. Each one has 85 yards on it.

24 replies
  1. pir_anha
    pir_anha says:

    Re: Embroidery silk spools

    gorgeous. and yeah, i know what you mean about the “charm”. charm is great — once you’re creating it on purpose rather than purely by accident.

    still. so pretty. 🙂

  2. admin
    admin says:

    Re: Embroidery silk spools

    Exactly. With this technique of embroidery, I can put in as much charm as I want, with the needle… but if the thread is spotty, it can make colors show up where I don’t want them to be.

  3. labrys6
    labrys6 says:

    I am utterly in awe of crafts workers….I have such insensitive fingers (spinal injury to neck) that fine handwork defeats me. It nearly drove me mad machine sewing Yule outfits for a friend’s medival feast—no fine work like yours at all.

    I do wish I could do embroidery…I’d love to cover something with little gold and black fuzzy bee bodies!

  4. usagiweaver
    usagiweaver says:

    Don’t overdye the midrange ones! They could possibly be JUST what you want some time in the future for a different project. Then you’ll be wishing you could duplicate it. Plus, it’s something to compare the next batch of midranges against to see how far you’ve progressed in your dyeing skills.

  5. admin
    admin says:

    Correct – they’re reeled filament silk. I do twist them slightly to help them degum and dye without snagging – if you don’t give them just a little twist (like one per inch), you get a lot of tangles.

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