magazine notes: New Stitches 203, March 2010

[julesjones]

Time to start making notes on some of the magazines I buy... New Stitches was one that I wasn't terribly interested in, because it covers all embroidary techniques and I'm really only interested in cross-stitch and blackwork (plus a vague interest in trying hardanger one day), so there wasn't usually enough to make it worth buying the magazine. But over the last few months there has a been a strong focus on those techniques, and even the other articles have been interesting to read as a theoretical study of a technique, so I've been buying it regularly. I picked up the March issue last week, and while I won't stitch any of the designs and intend to pass it straight on to Watervole the next time I see her, I found it well worth the money.

On the theory side, there is a study of the different effects that can be achieved using cross-stitch interspersed with blank squares to fill in a backstitched outline, using an autumn leaf shape. There's also a nice study of using different blackwork patterns over a pale cross-stitch to give different textures to a sheep's fleece, and this is the one that would tempt to me to keep the magazine for later use.

Introduction to a new technique covers silk ribbonwork -- I'd never try this, but it was interesting to read.

The two large patterns are a cross-stitch panel of 7 different coloured irises, which can also be stitched individually, and a blackwork clockface pattern in different colorways. The clockfaces didn't appeal at all, but I liked the irises a lot, and would try them if my stash wasn't already several years' worth.

Comments

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I do love blackwork - used to do a bit of it (I think I still have some samplers in a drawer) but the eyes aren't really up to it these days...

[julesjones]

I need to have bright sunshine or a good halogen lamp directly over the work these days -- and even then I might need to get out the reading glasses. Don't you just hate being middle-aged?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I found that using strong reading glasses made it possible for me to do embroidery again.

[vaughan-steph.livejournal.com]

I took up knitting again recently after a few decades' lay-off. It's soothing and mindless -- at least, the way I do it, it is.

<<>> Sounds like a lovely birthday present for *cough,cough* someone I know. Whose birthday just passed.

[ciciaye.livejournal.com]

It's funny you should say that about New Stitches, as the reason I stopped buying it was because it had started featuring nearly all cross stitch, blackwork and hardanger articles, when I was interested in freestyle embroidery too. (This was a good ten years ago or so, though).

Classic Stitches seemed to cover them all (and from what I can tell, it still does).

I stopped buying cross stitch/embroidery magazines quite some years ago, when I got into jewellery making. The beading magazines I like are the American ones (Bead and Button, Beadwork) which are excellent but can be expensive!