Category Archives: Needling Around

Seams Great by Dritz

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Seams Great is a product for encasing raw edges of fabric to prevent fraying.  It has sadly been discontinued, but there are some alternatives:

  1. You can make your own.  I’ve got some 15 denier nylon tricot fabric on order to do this.  All you have to do is make a continuous bias tape the width you want.  The original was 5/8 inch.  You’ll want to determine the direction of the curl so you can place seam allowances of the joins on the side you prefer.  The nylon curls so that the right (public) side is on the outside. There are many tutorials online describing how to make continuous bias tape.
  2. Buy a similar product from Farmhouse Fabrics, which is selling it as “Seam Finish.”  They are still offering it as of February 2023.
  3. Try to buy some on Etsy or Ebay, but as of February 2023, there was none available.
  4. Use an alternative seam binding product like rayon seam tape.  Not as easy to apply, but very pretty.  Wawak offers it in a slew of colors.

What makes the original stuff so great is that curl I mentioned in option 1.  As you apply it, you stretch it just a bit and it wants to curl right around the raw edge you are finishing.  It’s also extremely lightweight and doesn’t add bulk to the raw edge and is a very sheer light gray color so it doesn’t visually stand out. I could not find that gray color in 15 denier nylon anywhere so I settled for natural/cream.  It’s always so sad when a favorite crafting product or sewing notion is discontinued.

Another UFO becomes a FO

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Here’s a design from Mary Corbet’s “Spring Variety” pre-printed towel set. I am calling it Summertime because I need more towels for June, July and August. Not to mention Sunflowers and Zinnias bloom in summer. I see that horizontal crease but have been unable to press it out. You are warned not to press the pre-printed designs prior to stitching, and now I don’t want to compress the lovely 3-D effect of the threads by pressing too aggressively so I’ll just have to live with that crease.

I’m getting close to having a towel for every month, which was my initial goal for this project. What to embroider after that? Honestly, I think I’ll just keep on with the kitchen towels. They are so much fun to work.

P.S. In crafting circles, a UFO is not a suspected alien spacecraft, but an UnFinished Object.

But wait, there’s more!

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As promised I’m adding a Zinnia blossom to this month’s sketch.

I planted the California Giant Zinnias with the express purpose in mind to use them as subject matter for this project and my own personal journals as well. They’ve taken over the back corner of my yard with their cheerful exuberance after a very slow start. The first batch got mowed down immediately by either slugs and snails or earwigs. A second planting was more successful. Perhaps too successful.

And you can also see that I’ve been doing some embroidery at my drawing table. See the little green origami ort box and my tool block at the back. It’s dangerous when I start mixing metaphors and artistic pursuits. You never know what might happen next. I could put stitches in my artwork or paint on my needlework. Simply shocking!

Crewel, sort of

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But it’s finished after all these years! Probably 8 or 9 years ago I embarked on a crewel embroidery correspondence class through the EGA, or Embroiderers’ Guild of America.  As always, half the fun was collecting supplies and tools and notions specific to this type of embroidery, which is traditionally done with very fine wool on a linen twill weave fabric ground.

After a trip to Needle in a Haystack in Alameda, to collect the crewel-specific supplies, I was ready to start. And stop. And start. And stop. Again and again and again. I never got further than one short line of stem stitch because I simply couldn’t stand the tactile sensation and sound of the wool as it passed through the fabric. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard. So I’d put the project aside and then come across it again in a few years and wonder why it wasn’t further along. So I’d hoop it up, thread up a piece of wool, start stitching and remember. Eeew. Scritch, scratch and back in to the cupboard you go!

Finally this summer I decided I could embroider this design with cotton floss and even try out some DMC floche. Ahhh. So here it is:

There’s plenty to critique about this project even without mentioning that it’s not done with the traditional wool, but I’m so happy to have it finished I’ve decided to ignore its flaws, put it into a display hoop and hang it up in my sewing room.

Here is the original inked design after I made revisions to the original design given by Judy Jeroy. Her design is copyrighted so I cannot post it here, but I mostly changed the shape of the motif from an oval to a heart. And in the final stitching I removed a large tulip like flower and added a few tendrils here and there. Making changes to the original design was part of the assignment. As was changing colors and even stitch choices. The class was quite enjoyable, all up to the point of dragging that wool through the linen. I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out what the problem was and then solve it.