Continuing on with the Fan Flower Monogram Alphabet, here’s the letter K!
If you’re looking for stitching suggestions for this series of monograms, please check out the Letter A, where I’ve mentioned a few ideas for stitches. Also, if you have any ideas or input for stitching these letters, feel free to leave a comment!
Here’s the small K:
And here’s the large K:
And, if you’d like to save a PDF version of the small and large K, here it is:
Monogram for Hand Embroidery: Fan Flowers K (PDF)
Feel free to visit the Index of Monogram Designs here on Needle ‘n Thread, if you’re looking for more monograms, including the rest of this alphabet.
Favorite Monograms – PDF Collection
You’ll find this complete alphabet – along with 15 other decorative alphabets – all in one place in Favorite Monograms, a downloadable PDF collection of 16 monogram alphabets perfect for hand embroidery and other crafts.
In the photo above, you can see samples of each alphabet available in Favorite Monograms.
Each letter in each alphabet in Favorite Monograms has been carefully traced into a clean line drawing that can be easily enlarged or reduced on a home printer or a photocopier.
The 16-alphabet collection is delivered as via a download link to your inbox shortly after purchase, so that you can begin creating right away! Priced at less than $1.00 per complete alphabet, monogram lovers can’t go wrong with this collection!
Favorite Monograms is available in my shop, here.
Thank you Mary, this is my letter and it's really nice. Cheers, Kath.
Love it! Thanks for posting 😉
Totally off subject 😉 I just got some silk threads for an embroidery project, and while they're pretty, I guess I'm not sure what to do with them. I expected something similar to a skein of dmc just made out of silk, so I'm not sure if I can treat this similarly, or if there's anything I need to know about how to work with it. I'll be working on silk fabric, too. It's a simple pattern, I'm not going to go crazy on thread painting since I don't know how to do that yet, so just wondering if there are any good sites that explain how to use silks 🙂
Thanks 😀
Well, what kind of silks did you get? Some silks are just like a skein of DMC. Some are not, I suppose. Are yours on a spool? How thick is the thread? What's the brand and what type of silk is it? For example, Kreinik has a line of of different silks, Au Ver a Soie has a line of different silks (they all have different names and are different types of thread), etc….
If you can tell me what kind of silk you have, I'll try to give you a hand!
MC
It's Eterna Silk. It was cheaper than the rest, so I must painfully admit I went for less expensive.
*side note, I ordered from Thread Express, which, while I've only had the one dealing with them, I can't in good faith recommend them to order from…. It took two weeks for her to just get to my order, and she ignored my first email*
Anyway, back to business 🙂 It's Eterna Silk, 5m, 100% pure Silk Soie Seda. As usual, I've just lept right in and realized I was in over my head 🙂 My project is to be cherry blossoms (Asian themed project on silk fabric), but I'm not even sure how that's going to work out either, still working on that design 🙂 Lol, like I said, I like to jump right in 😉
Ah – I like Eterna silk, and I often opt for their stranded silk when I want a flat silk. The price is right, and they have a terrific color line. I usually buy mine directly from Yodama: http://www.yodamo.net/catalog/ – they are very quick and usually have the colors in stock. I did order once from Thread Express, but it was not as easy to order from them, and it takes longer.
So, if you're using the stranded Eterna silk, if you take one end from the skein, you'll see that the larger strand should easily separate into about 12 tiny strands. Think of these the same way you would think of DMC cotton strands. They can be separated from the main strand and any number can be put back together for stitching. I'd say about 2 or 3 strands of the Eterna would be like stitching with 1 strand of DMC.
You'll find that this kind of silk is a little more difficult to stitch with. It's a filament silk, not a spun silk, so the long filaments of silk that make up the strand are very … well, "sensitive" to anything at all that it could possibly snag on. You can use a product like Thread Heaven to help "tame" the silk a little bit. So after you've separated out as many strands as you want to use (or you can certainly use the whole "bunch" in the larger strand), you thread your needle and treat the thread just as you would stitching with anything else, but you need to get used to it as you stitch with it. It's going to be a little more finicky.
To keep the silk laying perfectly flat when you stitch with it, you can use a laying tool. This will help the strands lie perfectly parallel to each other, will give you better coverage, and will make the surface of the silk very smooth and shiny. To use a laying tool, you hold it in your non-stitching hand (the hand your needle isn't in), and, after you pull the thread to the front of the fabric, you stroke it with the laying tool as you're taking the next stitch, and then hold the laying tool under the thread as the stitch goes in. It's sounds like a lot of work, but once you get used to using a laying tool, it's second nature.
You don't have to use a laying tool, though. I think your best bet is just to try stitching with several strands of the silk to get the hang of how it works and what it looks like when you stitch with it. Once you're comfortable with it, launch into your project!!
You're always welcome to e-mail if you have any specific questions, and I'll see if I can give you a hand from a distance!
MC
Mary, I think I can "picture" your explanation still I don't know what is a "laying tool" exactly. This and more could give good videos with tips and tricks with gold threads, silk threads and so many things you have already written about.