Nuts & Bolts

Here I'm posting the front and rear of the armature for the patka sampler.

Distortion has been kept to the minimum considering it hasn't been worked in a hoop. While working on this several thoughts came up: 1) All sewing and embroidery thread/floss has a front and back. This means that care should be employed when cutting and installing the floss in your needle. Put it in the wrong way and you'll find that the "twist" works loose. Making for untidy floss as you embroider and a whole lot of irritation because the floss tends to knot more easily as you work it in and out of the fabric. 2) The length of the floss is an important feature of how much control you ultimately have. (Now there are any number of occasions when one can't work with a short length and there are tricks you can use to ensure that your work is perfect, however they're not applicable here.) A good length for me to work with is between sixteen and eighteen inches. 3) Knots to anchor your stitches are period. They do tend to leave a bump on the reverse that sometimes shows through. Standard knots also come undone over a period of time when an item is both worn and washed regularly. My preference is to anchor my stitches by drawing it through the fabric in the same spot a couple of times. A dimple can result from this and I haven't done this here. Instead I've worked the ends into the reverse of the embroidery and trimmed off the excess. 4) While you work you will notice that the floss twists in upon it's self and if ignored this can also cause irritants and knotting. Hold the embroidery parallel to the floor and let the floss with the needle dangle. It'll untwist as the tension relaxes and the floss smooths out. You can achieve something similar if the floss is too short by manually easing it by running the floss between your fingers up to the needle, you do need to untwist the excess thread on the far side of your needle for this to be totally successful.