Crewel Embroidery

I love crewel. I love the designs. I love using multiple stitches, and I love the feel of the yarn moving through linen twill. I don’t, however, love the current trend of the big design companies to print their designs on evenweave (tabby) fabric. It makes it really difficult to make edges smooth, as they must be to look correctly. And the fact that the fabric is usually 28 count or lower doesn’t help, either. Next thing you know they’ll be printing them on aida.

I’m currently sorting threads from a kit like this. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just masochistic, but I really liked the design! And it fit in my budget… I may hate it by the time it’s stitched.

As with many things, you get what you pay for, and the nice kits with quality supplies are going to cost you. Many of these are imported from Britain as well, which also raises the price point. So I suppose that the lesson I am trying to teach myself is that no matter how much I like a design, it just isn’t worth it if the materials are second rate: I should have saved my pennies and bought my coveted Jacobean Lace pillow design in a month or two, rather  than succumbing to immediate whim driven by a sale to buy the inexpensive one. Not that it will keep me from stitching it, but I’ll probably whine a lot while I do.

And yes, this does mean that I have bought cross stitch kits for thirty dollars and then gone out and spent the same amount on linen to replace the aida to stitch them on. And I think the result was well worth it, too! 😛

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One Response to Crewel Embroidery

  1. You’re not alone–I bought a kit with a pattern of the Chat Noir poster, but it came with a hideous tan aida. Spent almost as much buying a piece of proper yellow fabric as I’d spent on the whole kit.

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