Have Your Say

Closing & Opening

In last week’s Have Your Say, we started closing off some of the conversations that were continued at the end of last year, but as we ran out of space, this week we’re making good on our promise to finish them off.

Having shared her recipe for Colour Play in ASU#359, Jane wrote in with another recipe, this time to guide our practise with crazy ribbon embroidery. The recipe ensures that not only will we practise the technique but will have something to show for our time with needle and thread, or needle and ribbon as the case may be!

A Recipe for Crazy Ribbon Embroidery

1. Decide on the stitches you want to practise.

2. Look for small motif patterns that use these stitches.

3. Decide on the size of the fabric you will use to embroider your motifs.

4. Plan which motif will be embroidered on each section of your fabric.

5. After you have embroidered all your motifs, choose a wider ribbon that you can roll and twist around your motifs to section them off from each other, anchoring your ribbon in place using beads.

6. Decide how you would like to display your work – a pillow, small quilt, tote bag, or on stretcher bars as I did.

‘This piece also allowed me to mount my antique black glass button collection, but however you decide to use your piece I know you won’t feel like you wasted your ribbon practising and you’ll be ready to try a bigger project. Have fun, Jane.’

Jane, we appreciate you sharing another recipe with us and wonder what’s next in your cookbook for all things needle and thread?!

Have you written your ‘Stitching Travel Itinerary’ for the New Year yet?

Ex Voto Tintern Abbey – William Marshal’s Stormy Crossing to Ireland (source)

If not**, Shirley** wrote in to let us know that she recently had the chance to experience the Ros Tapestries in Kilkenny, Ireland. Like the Bayeux Tapestry, they too tell the story of the Normans. There are 15 panels in total and ‘they are exquisite, the work is beautiful, and it is an unexpected treat’.

Can’t make it in person? You can see more by letting your fingers do the walking HERE.

For those of us who are still feeling guilty about the Christmas gifts we didn’t quite get the last stitch laid on, Sylvia has a remedy for Christmas 2023.

‘If I am working on a project that is intended as a gift, that isn’t quite complete, I give it and then take it back as soon as it is opened and continue the work.’

We know not everyone in the Inspirations Community will be able to bring themselves to do this, but we think it might just liberate some of us who stitch our way through Christmas Eve only to find we still fall a little short on Christmas Morning!

Although our intention was to close off some of the ongoing conversations that were started or continued last year, the truth is we don’t want the banter to end. So, if you have something to add to what was shared this week or a conversation you’d like to start, simply email news@inspirationsstudios.com