Teaching a new workshop today

I'm off to the Interknit Cafe in Farnham to teach a workshop on Embellishing your Knitting. In the workshop I'm focusing on embroidery and applique as there isn't time to do all the different ways of embellishing your knitting e.g. painting, crochet, needlefelting, machine embroidery to mention just a few other techniques.

The workshop has a sort of floral/nature theme as I wrote an article for Knitting Magazine on Swiss Darning (published in the August 2010 issue I think) and used a floral image in the article. I showed three versions of the same image in the article. The first version below was worked from a chart drawn on graph paper with larger squares so the finished piece comes out smaller and has less detail.


The second sample, stitches on a piece of knitting worked in the same yarn as above was stitched from a chart drawn on graph paper with smaller rectangles therefore giving a larger finished design with more detail.

The 3rd sample was worked from a chart drawn on the same scale graph paper as sample 2 but the image has been flipped and rotated so it is drawn landscape style rather than portrait style. Knitting is not square so it was necessary to re-draw the chart.

Having started with a flora theme I decided to continue with this influence for the other 2 samples I've made for the workshop. I designed them as cushion fronts. The sample below is applique and I've gone for an autumn leaves theme. I worked several different leaf shapes and some acorns. A couple of the leaf patterns and the acorns where from the Nicky Epstein book 'Knitting Embellishments'.

The last sample which is another cushion front uses embroidery stitches in various ways. The top left and bottom right squares are embroidered based on a knitted stitch pattern to help with the placement of the embroidery. Montse Stanley's book 'Knitting Plus' has lots of ideas of using a stitch pattern to base the embroidery on.

The top left square is a number of embroidery stitches based on backstitch or running stitch with a second colour emboidered on top and the bottom left square was freehand embroidery using lazy daisy stitch, feather stitch, chain stitch and French knots.

As with most of my knitting workshops I like to give the knitters a choice (within limits) of what they want to do as everyone is different. Lets hope the knitters enjoy there day!