Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Brazilian Embroidery with Blending Filaments

I've mentioned often that I enjoy adding sparkle to my Brazilian dimensional embroidery. Beads, metallic threads, Candlelight thread, Kreinik cord, etc ... all love to get acquainted with my needle and see what I will do to/with them.

Most of the time the threads don't mind that I have my way with them. The extremely fine cellophane blending filaments, however, tried to argue with my needle, breaking apart on a whim.

Never one to throw anything away (much), I like the idea of re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle, daydream, re-invent. So I pulled out all of my Kreinik blending filament spools -- 4 or 5 at a time, held them together and crocheted a row of chain stitches.
When you do it with a crochet hook, it's chain stitch. When you use a needle, it's a chain of "lazy daisy stitches" without the tack (detached buttonhole).

After I made the chain as long as I wanted, sometimes 4" or 6" long, I pulled out a tapestry needle and made a detached buttonhole stitch in each chain stitch loop. Sometimes I went back and made two detached buttonhole stitches in each.

That's a close-up, above, of a bead embroidery picture that I did which was published in Bead & Button Magazine back in 2003, and available in their Kalmbach Bookstore. You'll see a larger picture there.

A group of ladies in our local BDEIG chapter in the Portland/Beaverton, Oregon area selected a picture (Google "coloring pages" online for ideas.) This search engine is great for inspiration -- just ask my 4-year-old grandson who is the proud recipient of a half-dozen Star Wars coloring pages that he got to select himself yesterday morning! (Back to the subject...) We combined Brazilian embroidery threads, beads, buttons, including lots of pressed glass flower beads we found at Beadcats, and used ultrasuede, cotton sateen, brocade, or any other fabric we chose, and we each had a completely different finished embroidery.

So, that's one way to use up your threads. If you look at the picture above, you'll notice that I stitched a button in place first. Next, I curved the strip of crocheted/embroidered blending filament fibers around the button. And to make the flower "look" tubular, I added a few fly stitches.

I wrote about it in The B.E. Wrap-Up, our BDEIG quarterly newsletter, but I also - never at a loss for words, it seems -- wrote an article and submitted it to Bead & Button for publication. Imagine my thrill when they accepted. It made me feel "famous." But the best part is that I didn't have to throw anything out and enjoyed the creative embroidery.

I hope this idea inspires you to look at your stash with a fresh eye.


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