This monogram project originated as a local guild summer challenge (2021).

I’ve been inspired by Charles Henry and his partner Elin. They are in France and make some of the most beautiful architectural embroidery designs. Eventually I want to embroider one of their pieces but I’m having trouble deciding which one. Instead I’ve decided to practice their running stitch technique on this piece. Please check them out!

https://www.charlesandelin.com

Over the past year and a half I’ve been learning a lot about goldwork and couching techniques. Couching is a wonderful technique and relatively easy to do (it does take quite a lot of practice getting the stitches just right though!) I found a very nice piece of gold twist in my stash which worked perfectly for this piece – I added a lovely hand dyed turquoise perle cotton (by Colour Complements) backstitch to accent the gold.

I was originally going for a more traditional look for the monogram, but decided to step outside of my normal and try something new for me! No pattern, no set design. I drew a couple of guiding lines on the fabric and went to town with the running stitch!

The monogram design is from a Mary Corbet Needle ‘n Thread ebooks called “Favorite Monograms”. It’s a great resource for any stitcher’s library!

https://shop.needlenthread.com/product/favorite-monograms

I used a mixed bag of perle cotton threads for this project. Mostly #8 – but there may be a couple of #12’s mixed in as well. This was a great project for stash busting and I got to use some threads I purchased years ago that I bought purely because they were pretty! It felt great to be able to dig them out and thread them up! I love overdyed threads and I had a couple of beautiful skeins from Colour Complements (expensive, but soooooo worth the purchase).

https://colourcomplements.com

The monogram sat for quite a while after it was stitched. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to make it into a page for my embroidery journal. The size of the fabric that I had originally stitched the piece on wasn’t large enough to become a page on it’s own so I decided to trim around the stitching and attach it to another piece of fabric.

To blend the monogram fabric to the new backing fabric, I extended the running stitch over the edge and onto the new fabric. I am quite pleased on how it turned out! It’s been months since I finished the monogram and it was quite fun trying to find the same threads that I had originally used in my stash!

L is for Lisa – another random stitchy bit which I didn’t really know what to do with. I continually try out new stitches and have a few small practice pieces like this kicking around in my stash. I decided to add this to the page just for fun!

Have you ever had stitches that give you trouble? For me, it’s always been chain stitch. I continually practice with small projects in hopes that, one day, my stitches will be more consistent in length and also less twisty. Slowly, I am improving! Who knew that such a simple stitch could cause so much trouble – LOL!