Stitching on Black Evenweave ...

I don't know how many of you have ever stitched on black evenweave before, but let me just say "WOW!" This is not easy at all. There are all different types of light. And although I haven't had the luxury of buying an Ott-Lite myself, I am finding that the best light to stitch on black evenweave is natural sunlight, of course, or fluorescent lighting. You have to be able to have light both above & below the fabric. Otherwise, finding the right holes to put your needle into is near impossible. I have two desk lamps that have fluorescent bulbs in them. So when I am stitching inside my house, I put one on the floor & shine the light up & then set one on the end table next to the couch, of course shining the light towards the piece I'm stitching. This makes it much easier when I am stitching inside on this fabric. Otherwise, depending on the weather, I like to stitch on my back patio so that I have the sunlight instead. I have stitched on black aida before. And it was not nearly as difficult to stitch on or find the holes to put my needle thru. So now that I've gone on this rant about how hard it is to stitch on the black evenweave, let me just add, once this piece is all finished, it is going to look absolutely GORGEOUS on this fabric! Being on the black, the vibrant colors are just going to POP! So the end result will definitely be worth all the work & difficulty of stitching on this dark fabric!!! You can see the Elemental Cosmos pattern below on my first post, which is what I am stitching on this fabric. And this is a picture of what I've completed so far. It's not very much as of yet. But I am stitching a little slower with this one.

Happy Stitching!
Margie

Floss Storage

Lots of people that stitch have many ways to store their floss. And each of us have our preferred way. I myself have tried several ways. I have tried winding my floss on the bobbin cards. But that to me just too way too much time to do the winding, time which I could have spent on stitching. I tried using those ziplock bags on the large silver rings. However, with having all of the colors, this proved to be bulky & not easily or neatly stored. Then I thought about using those storage drawers that a lot of guys use to store nuts & bolts & washers & such in a garage or shop. Seemed neat enough & I thought this would definitely be a great way to store my floss. The only downside was the cost. I have all of the DMC colors in regular floss & also in variegated. The cost for each of these sets of drawers was about $20-$30. So rather than spend a lot of money on those drawers, instead I decided for a lot less cost, I would use the bead storage containers. Each compartment inside holds one color of floss. So each container holds 18 colors of floss. So I have 28 containers to hold all of my floss. It makes it easy to see which colors I need to buy more of. And when selecting floss for a project, I just pull out the container with the color floss I need, and I'm good to go! 

Here are some pictures of my floss storage system so you can see what I am describing.









How do you store your floss? 

Until Next Time,
♥ Margie ♥