Materials for Crewel/Surface Project: Personally Yours, designed by Judy Jeroy

This project is made personal by the use of your own initial, and also by the use of your own choice of fabric, threads, colors, and stitches. True crewel embroidery is done with worsted and linen plain- or twill-weave fabric, and that is what we suggest you use for this project. We will provide the fabric, but you are responsible for providing the rest of the materials. See below for further information on obtaining threads.

Fabric: 8” square. You may want a second piece to practice your stitches. The chapter will purchase the linen twill fabric for you.

Needles: crewel needles (#3 or #4); tapestry needle for some stitches

Threads: Assortment of flower- and leaf-colored wool threads, such as Appleton crewel wool, Gumnuts (Australian wool and wool/ threads), Heathway Wool, DMC Medici (discontinued)

Hoop: 6-inch hoop

Selecting Colors

You can choose your own colors. However, if you want to duplicate the color choices of the examples in the NeedleArts article, here is what you’d need:

The "J" example: three shades of green, dark red, pale pink, yellow, medium teal (7 skeins). You could reduce this to one green (total of 5 skeins) if you use the alternative design on page 28.

The "A" example: three shades of green, three shades of blue, one medium/dark purple, one medium mauvy pink (8 skeins). You could reduce this to one green (total of 6 skeins) if you use the alternative design on page 28.

Even if you don’t want to reproduce the examples precisely, you can use this information as an aide in selecting your own colors.

Selecting Threads

Mrs. Stitches in Mendham (973-543-2040) carries several woolen threads that are good alternatives to Appleton: Gumnuts and DMC Medici (now actually produced by someone else). The Edwardian Needle in Bloomfield (973-743-9833) also carries Gumnuts threads, and probably others usable for crewel. (They don’t list the threads they carry on their website, but the Gumnuts site lists them as a stockist.)

Tristan Brooks Designs, Memphis TN, 901-767-8414. (This is Barbara Jackson’s company.) http://www.tristanbrooks.com Heathway Wool, 9 shades of 20 colors, $2.75/skein. This is more expensive than Appleton, but is very nice.

Appleton crewel wool comes in 420 colors. I don’t know of any local shop that carries Appleton, so you may need to order it online or over the phone. Most of the online sources I found do NOT show you the colors; you just order by color number. There will be a color card at the January and February meetings, in case you want to use it to select your colors. I did find one online shop that DOES show the colors, so you might want to use it to select your colors, and then order from whichever shop you prefer. If anyone finds a better source, please share the information with the rest of us! I also found a downloadable color chart in PDF format, at http://discountneedlework.com/media/products/Appleton_colorchart.pdf . Remember that the colors you see on your computer’s display, or that you print out, may not reproduce accurately the real color of the threads. But this is better than nothing. Appleton comes in 28-yard skeins and 195-yard hanks. This design is quite small, so a skein (less than $2) of each color should be plenty.

Some online sources for Appleton Crewel Wool:

NeedleWork Corner, Carbondale IL http://www.ineedlework.com/appleton-crewel.html $1.75/skein. Listed by number only, no colors shown.

Wool and Hoop, Marfa TX, 432-386-0386 http://www.woolandhoop.com/crewelwool.html $1.95/skein, can see the colors

Wooly Thread, Yakima WA, 425-241-7489 http://woolythread.com/yarn.html $1.40/skein. Online order form is wacky, so perhaps better to call them. No colors shown, order by number.

Alex-Parras Needlearts (a division of Thistle Needleworks), Glastonbury CT, 800- 635-9757 http://store.apneedlearts.com/apcrwo.html $1.55/skein, listed by number only