Today I made...

Yubinuki!

Well actually these bead style Yubinuki took more than a day to make but you get the idea. They are threaded onto my Tekobari case so they didn't roll away.

I use fine silk threads to stitch the designs and fluffy silk topps to pad the base. Lucky me, I got all these supplies when Miho went to Japan last year. I have such an awesome sister.

You might remember a while back I made a bunch of forms for my Yubinuki so I had evenly spaced marking lines... they worked a treat. The Yubinuki above are S11 (purple/blue and green/magenta), S15 (blues/white) and S8 (blues and in-progress gold/bronze).

The S8 ones could have been stitched on S4 but I used the additional 4 marking lines to place the thin stripes.

Super cool way to mark a C10

Yesterday Barb and Kathy shared a snappy tutorial video they made about a way to mark C10. They learned this from Ozaki Sensei during their recent visit to the JTA museum in Japan.

There are several ways to mark a C10 and this new (to us) way looks like a really great method which takes less thread and (if practised) seems like it would be quicker and more accurate too. This method is outlined in the Japanese book Owari Temari  ISBN483770391 on page 22-23

I am going off to look for a nice practice ball so I can try along with the video.



Thank you so much to Kathy and Barb for sharing this with everyone. I think Barb will be sharing lots of information about the Japan trip at her blog so bookmark for future reference.

To remove or not remove... now that is a question

I noticed on TT this week a thread started about the merits of removing marking thread. Everyone has their own feeling about this, and it prompted me to reflect on mine.

I guess I really love to see sparkly marking lines on most temari (for a gal that wears no jewellery - except my wedding ring - I sure love my temari bling) so I love to leave those marking lines on the temari. If it looks good I leave it.

I find it very difficult to ignore 'inconspicuous' threads, they just never seem to fade into the thread wrap for me. I have tried matching Perle 8 or a thin embroidery satin thread but they are quite obvious. I find using two wraps of the base thread just hopeless as I tend to stitch more at night when the lighting isn't as perfect as it could be. There was a time when I would have been too scared to remove my marking threads for fear the whole temari design would explode off the surface. These days I am more confident about the security of my stitching (nice thick base thread layer and I ensure I take a good bite off it with my needle at every stitch) and as I understand the divisions better it is easier to remove the marking threads I don't want to leave on the ball. If the design calls for having inconspicuous marking threads I am usually inclined to mark with a contrasting sewing (serger) thread and just remove it at the end.

I guess we all do what we like (and feels comfortable for us), and as our experience grows so does our safety zone. This means we all eventually amaze ourselves when we realise what once seemed impossible (or daunting) has become a part of our regular routine... and we hadn't even noticed.

A dozen flowers... round up and a new bunch

So all in one post here are the images of my recent bunch of flower temari. Actually, although the post titles in this series we labelled A dozen flowers technically there were two dozen.

First, here are the twelve C10 faces.

Next is the same designs all stitched on S10.

I've also started restitching these designs on my football (soccer) temari. This temari has been wrapped and sitting in a drawer for about two years (maybe even longer) so I have been feeling a bit guilty about neglecting it for so long. The circumference on this one is 42.5cm so I should be able to get some nice detail down with pearl cotton #5.

I've got this one labelled with tags so I know which face to stitch each design on. I've also added the extra marking lines. This time I am stitching in 3 shades of pink, 3 shades of blue and 3 shades of purple so theoretically I should end up with 4 faces of each colour set. I don't expect I'll have this one (the third dozen) stitched before Christmas (although I just might surprise myself).

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I am working on another temari (34cm) which I would like to show soon but it is still only half done and it is turning out too lovely to share an 'in progress' image.

TT Renzoku Stitch Along

Ok I didn't actually plan to do this stitch along but decided at the last moment to try it out. All the talk about Renzoku/HHG designs lately has got my interest peaked. I remrember seeing this design on TK but it didn't strike me as one I wanted to do.

I have really enjoyed making this one. It came together fairly quickly, once the path was established, and needed only a small amount of ripping out.