I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your friends and family. Today lots of people are busy braving the boxing day hordes to score a crazy deal on treasures they didn’t get for Christmas. But not me. I’m relaxing at home, eating leftover turkey, reading the new magazines I got in my stocking and investigating 3 great uses for WonderFil’s Eleganza thread.
The Eleganza threads
Eleganza Thread
A couple weeks ago WonderFil sent me a selection of their Eleganza thread and I can’t wait to try it out. According to the WonderFil website Eleganza is a 2-ply 100% long staple Egyptian cotton thread, double-gassed and mercerized.
WonderFil’s website says that the process of double gassing involves burning off the lint from the thread two times, resulting in a much softer and cleaner finish.The result is a wonderfully smooth and lustrous surface that allows the thread to glide beautifully through all types of fabrics and fibers. The thread’s tight twist creates beautifully firm stitches while its surface sheen produces a luxurious finish to embellishment stitchery.
The thread is offered in 100 different colors ranging from saturated solids to subtle tone-on-tone and random dyed contrasting variegates. According to the website, it’s perfect for hand work or embellishment projects, it’s especially good for wool applique, hand embroidery and sashiko. My interest has been piqued!!
WonderFil Threads – EleganzaAvailable in 100 colors in the WonderFil colour line and 90 colours in the Sue Spargo colour line, Eleganza™ is a perfect match for your next hand work or embellishment project.
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The Sue Spargo collection
When I was at Quilt Market in Houston in October I met Sue Spargo in her booth. I’ve always loved her heavily embroidered wool applique projects and patterns and we bought a couple of copies of her book to bring home with us.
CREATIVE STITCHING BOOK from Sue SpargoSue’s book ‘Creative Stitching’ includes step by step concise written instructions, along with clear illustrations, for 50 of Sue’s favorite stitches. Included are close up, color, photographic examples of each of the stitches used. The beginning of ‘Creative Stitching’ gives you a detailed look into the needles and threads Sue uses, and throughout the book are never before seen color photographs of Sue’s work. ‘Creative Stitching’ is spiral bound t…
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I’ve been reading through the book and trying out some of her stitches, so I was especially excited to see that WonderFil has a whole line of Eleganza threads that Sue has designed.
WonderFil Sue Spargo CollectionWonderFil™ has teamed up with Sue Spargo, author, teacher, embroidery expert and artist, to bring you a new line of colors in our Eleganza™, Razzle™, and Dazzle™ thread lines! These colors have been selected by Sue Spargo to offer an array of beautiful and inspirational choices, including variegated colors that are only available in her line.
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Wool applique
I LOVE wool applique and had lots of fun a couple of years ago using WonderFil’s Razzle and Dazzle threads to make projects such as this little table runner that I made for Valentine’s this year as well as the table runner that I made for my first blogging week for QUILTsocial back in June 2014. The Razzle and Dazzle threads looked AMAZING on the wools but I did have some trouble with the threads fraying as I kept stitching with them. A little thread conditioner worked wonders to fix that problem, but I have a feeling that I’m not going to have issues like that with the Eleganza threads.
Ladybug Parade wool applique banner
Hand Embroidery
I did a lot of hand embroidery back when I was a kid, but never really got back to it until recently. The WonderFil threads enticed me to try my hand at some basic embroidery stitches, mostly on my wool applique pieces. A few years ago my husband and I took the train to Halifax and since I was going to have lots of relaxation time I decided to take along some wool and to try my hand at learning some new embroidery stitches.
I pinned a bunch of references on Pinterest and brought along some pieces of wool and my Razzle and Dazzle threads and ended up with quite a few different embroidery samples. One of the several samples that I liked the most was this little piece that I ended up making into a little zippered bag.
Now that I have my new Sue Spargo embroidery stitches book I’m going to experiment a bit more using my new yummy Eleganza threads.
Embroidery stitches made with WonderFil’s Razzle and Dazzle threads
Sashiko
Although I’ve often admired Sashiko embroideries I’ve never actually tried it myself. Sashiko is a form of Japanese embroidery which is usually worked on indigo fabric with white thread. It can range anywhere from a simple gridwork to ornate designs depicting scenes from nature. Just Google “Sashiko images” and you’ll be amazed at the different designs that are available. I’m going to do a bit more research and later this week I’m going to try my hand at this lovely technique.
Different examples of Sashiko patterns
The Slow Stitching Movement
Usually for a week of blogging on QUILTsocial, I design and complete a fairly large project and break it down into manageable steps that we can complete each day for the week. It’s usually a pretty fast paced project, but it’s always fun to see the entire project through to its completion. I think for this week we’re going to take it a bit slower! We’ve all just been through the hectic pre-Christmas hustle and bustle and I for one am looking for some quiet, reflective time. The Slow Stitching Movement was launched by international quilting personality Mark Lipinski to help creative people like us to slow down, enjoy the process, and create fiber art that we’re really proud of. Because Eleganza thread is so suited to handwork I feel inspired to take it a bit slower and to make a few smaller projects that showcase the 3 great uses for WonderFil’s Eleganza thread.
This is part 1 of 5 in this series.
Go to part 2: 4 ways to transfer embroidery designs to fabric