Charm School Week Five: Stumpwork

Perseverance

It's Thistle Week here at Plays with Needles. It wasn't intentional, but I've stitched two versions of a thistle within one week...very odd. Wonder what that means??

I really enjoyed hearing your stories about thistles from yesterday. It seems, for their prickly exterior, there must be something awfully sweet about the thistle blossom itself because horses gobble them like candy; hummingbirds and butterflies flock to them; and, gold finches can be seen covering them this time of year.

Picture courtesy of A Wing and a Prayer

But I digress. This week I explored Jane Nicholas' Dragonflies book.

All of Jane's stumpwork books are fabulous but I chose this one because it houses the design and instructions for this week's charm.

This week's charm is not my own design. Because of all of the supplies needed for stumpwork, I decided to work on a unfinished piece of Jane Nicholas' design. I had previously finished the dragonfly so I just needed to stitch the thistle (which Jane refers to as a cornflower but, for me, it's a thistle...) and convert it to a charm.

I stitched the thistle using a stitch called Turkey Work. It's a method of securing loops onto fabric, stitched in rows. The closer your stitches, the thicker the pile. I use my fingers to hold back the previous loops while I stitch the next row.

You'll often see this stitch used for fuzzy bodies, and thistles but I like to use it for puffs and dots as a background or pom poms, and it makes a great afro! Mary Corbet has a wonderful video tutorial for turkey work that you can view here. And lots of other great tutorials for other stitches as well. Thank you Mary!

When you're finished stitching all the loops, it's a mess until you give it a hair cut and trim the pile in the shape you desire.


I always go slowly here because you can't add any back. Trimming also makes a mess too but it's easily cleaned up with some tape wrapped around my finger.


Here's what I learned this week:

• I forgot how much I missed fine surface embroidery and stumpwork. I think I could work a stumpwork sampler and be very happy. Every one of Jane's books is exceptional.
  
• Stumpwork takes some set up time to properly hoop your work, find the wires, etc. but once you've amassed the supplies, it's a joy.
• There's more to the thistle than meets the eye so I'll have to ponder on that a bit.

Congratulations for persevering through this post. See you next Tuesday for Charm School when I'll be exploring this book...


It's a BEAUTY!!