Hardanger – not as hard as biking up Alpe d’Huez
Here’s a little tutorial on hardanger, which is fun, once you’re over the fear of cutting your stitching up. Hardanger adds some texture and interest to stitching; pure hardanger pieces can have the feel of fine lace.
First, stitch klosters:
These klosters are stitched with DMC pearl cotton #8. I picked the color 676 to closely match the fabric (Moon Glow from Picture this Plus); this adds texture without color, additionally I don’t have to worry about the color of the fabric showing through the threads. The klosters will keep the fabric from unravelling at the cut edge.
Step two is to cut the fabric! For this design I’m cutting out the threads of fabric in between the klosters. This means that I cut at the interior edge of all the klosters. I do this very carefully and with sharp scissors. I put the tips of my scissors around a thread, then push in toward the kloster a tiny bit before snipping the thread:
Step three is to pull out all the pieces of thread that were cut. In each quadrant of this particular design, I’m pulling out eight vertical and eight horizontal threads while leaving four vertical and four horizontal threads uncut in the middle of the quadrant. Clear as mud? Here’s a picture:
Sometimes I use a tiny tweezer to help pull out threads, but I didn’t use it this time.
Ok, so I’ve carefully cut my threads and carefully pulled them out, and now I’m left with this:
The next step is to do the decorative stitching with my DMC pearl cotton #12, also in color 676. For this design, I’m doing wrapped bars and Greek crosses. Wrapped bars are pretty easy; starting on one side of the uncut middle threads, I go over two threads, then under two threads, wrap around and go over and under again. Fill up the uncut threads, then move on to the other side. The Greek cross is a bit different. First, I wrap my thread around two of the uncut threads from the outside to the middle of a quadrant; sometimes this is a bit tricky as the thread can get squirrely and it needs to lie flat. Then I start doing the over/under thing again, but this time, I’m going between two sets of threads that are at 90 degree angles to each other. The thread will naturally fan out and look like a quarter of a circle. When the fanned out thread is as far out as I want it, I wrap the remainder of the second bar with thread. Then repeat around for this particular design:
Finally, the finished product:
Not so bad!
Ok, who wateched the stage yesterday! It was awesome although I was really hoping Christian Vandevelde would make a break for it as well. Now, we have to see if Sastre can hold his lead through the time trial on Saturday or not. As a side note, I don’t recommend doing hardanger while watching something like yesterday’s stage. I did have one miscut, although it was easy to recover from, since it was a thread that went underneath a wrapped bar. On the other hand, I’m happy to say that this design is now completely stitched! I’ll be framing it and hopefully printing it this weekend.
Becca submitted the following pictures to the TDF SAL, and I’ve added them to the Flickr group:
Aren’t those awesome? Cross Eyed Kat design, yellow stitching, bicylces, French stuff, and kittens! I just want to pick up the kittens and play with them, although Mocha might get jealous.
There’s still time to enter the TDF SAL! Join in until Saturday (midnight CST).
July 31st, 2008 at 9:50 am
This tute is great! I can’t wait to share it with my readers. Thanks so much for this resource.
Denise
http://needlework.craftgossip.com
July 31st, 2008 at 9:58 am
[...] your fear of hardanger with a clear, simple tutorial from Kathryn Rocha of Cross Eyed Kat web site and Kat Gets Cross Eyed blog. You can cut through the [...]