Saturday, March 24, 2018

March 2018 Thread Club Revealed

Happy Saturday, my friends!  It's rainy and dreary here today in Missouri but here in the bright studio I continue to play with all the spring colors...
The March Thread Club, I hope, was a cheerful and bright addition to your stash.
The ten new colors this month are (from left to right):
  • Mint Macaron (a semi-solid light mint)
  • Lemongrass (a pale yellow semi-solid with just the tiniest inclination toward green)
  • Bunny Nose (a cool light pink)
  • Sherbet (a pale orange that reminds me of Circus Peanuts!)
  • Flamingo (a bright salmon with tonal variegation)
  • Wisteria (lavender with hints of more violet variegation)
  • Calliope (my favorite, a blend of pale blue, lavender and mint)
  • Leprechaun (a bright springy green with hints of gold)
  • Verbena (a cool pale green)
  • Miami (a saturated fuchsia)
For those who are subscribed to the 5-skein club, colors included Miami, Flamingo, Wisteria, Verbena and Leprechaun.
The 3-skein subscribers received Miami, Wisteria and Verbena.
All of the new colors will be available to purchase in the shop soon!  In the meantime, I have enjoyed seeing people break into their skeins already and post WIPs including some of these new shades.  Don't forget to use the #colourandcotton tag on Instagram for us to see your work, or join our Colour and Cotton Stitchers Facebook group!
Have a wonderful rest of the weekend - it's back to fabric club preparations for me!

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Welcome! And a March Thread Club Update...

Hello, my sweet stitching friends!  Angela here, with a new little way to share a bit more behind the scenes of my dye studio.  I've wanted write about my business for quite a while.   
Today, I thought to myself - it's time! 
One of my favorite parts of this experience has been connecting with friends from truly all over the world.  Social media has been a wonderful thing in expanding my circle of stitching friends, but it can sometimes feel abbreviated...and with seemingly endless changes to algorithms, you never quite know who you're reaching at any given time.  I'm excited about the opportunity to write and share in greater detail what fills my days as the one-woman-and-two-dog-show of Colour and Cotton!  I hope you'll grab a cup of your favorite coffee or tea and spend just a few minutes with me each week.
I can't quite believe that it's nearly March.  This week has been filled with floss winding and dyeing...increasingly no small feat as each month I welcome more and more subscribers into my little stitching family - I thank each and every one of you so much!
Procion dyes
The studio is bursting with containers of dye, mixing utensils and measuring cups.  Not much hope of keeping things tidy when it's thread week!  These days I dye over 10,000 yards of thread each month for club orders and even in the expanded studio, space is a precious commodity!
February's thread club colors were inspired by many requests for neutrals, which perhaps surprisingly, are my favorite to dye!  Greys and browns are, for me, among the most challenging colors to dye as it requires mixtures of other primary colors and the final color can be accidentally shifted in the direction of green or blue all too easily.  
For March, I knew I needed to share with you some refreshing bright and springtime colors!
Don't be disconcerted by the neon orange!  These threads were quite a different color once dry.  Always makes for a little surprise when test dyeing threads for the first time.  (And sometimes makes for a bit of a bummer when the final dry result is much different than you anticipated!)
For each month's club colors, I test anywhere from 20-25 dyes searching for the perfect assortment of five colors.  Three of those five colors are selected for the three-skein subscribers, and another five colors are added to the primary five colors for those who receive ten skeins a month.
Lots of new pastels which didn't make the five-skein thread club cut will be added directly to the shop, once skeined and tagged!
The March thread club orders will be shipping tomorrow through Saturday.  Please watch for your shipment confirmations and as always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Have a wonderful rest of the week!