This is a really useful and helpful review Lynda, because it would never have occurred to me to ask for the long arm service to use cotton – I had assumed that they always did. Now I know to always ask.

Gutterman makes quite a lot of fluff on my Juki domestic – although not so much that cannot be easily cleaned at the end of each of my (smallish) projects. I really like the Aurifil threads for piecing, and one of the reasons is that they make so little mess, last so long, and stitch so neatly even on the tiniest of stitches x

Great read and you are right participation in crucial…that’s why we both did so well

Love these kitties, could be very tempted by a pattern in spite of my stack of UFO’S. The mini quilt Gini received certainly echoes the colours she loves, beautifully made.

Seeing your FMQ in close up its amazing. Looking forward to seeing the pattern too.

I’m waiting with baited breath for your lovely pattern!

Haha, Christine, you sound like me! I have so many crafts I have dabbled in/with too. Currently making Luna Lapins, soooo fiddly. Thankds for thre interesting Blog.

Lovely work, both the dogs and the roses look so lifelife. Thank you for showing them.

Love Andreas’s work and this is a great interpretation

Letting the “cat” out of the bag I even read and commented on this and didn’t get that the mini swap was for me! Can’t wait to read next months blog…and for you to show people just how stunning your work is…thanks again for my mini xx

The stencils look quite nice and useful. However, your point about the thread was interesting. From the photo, which is a little blurry, it looks like the thread supplied is by a Japanese company called Yokota – it will be written on the back of the label as 横田 and you will also see a USA cotton mark on it. They make a fine thread and a medium one – the fine one has a burgundy and gold label and the medium one has the blue and gold label, which is the one in the kit. This thread is NOT supposed to be split and should actually be used doubled for traditional sashiko (i.e. one thread but you bring the ends together and each stitch has both strands in it).

To use medium sashiko thread, you really need fabric with a much lower thread count than the cotton supplied, which looks like a patchwork cotton. If the weave is too tight/high thread count, it will be very difficult to get the thread through the fabric. If they had supplied fine sashiko thread, you would have been able to get it through the finer fabric without any problems or needing to split it. They haven’t matched the thread to the fabric properly.

The needles in the kit are not sashiko needles. There is a difference between embroidery crewels and sashiko needles – the crewels can bend quite easily and sashiko needles are hard tempered so they don’t bend and super sharp. The stitching action for sashiko (which you can see demonstrated in the video link on my homepage http://www.susanbriscoe.com, which shows the two x one hour sashiko lessons I did on Sewing Quarter last year) involves pleating the fabric onto the tip of the needle and then easing out the gathered fabric, which helps regulate the stitch length and keeps the twinned strand of thread under control.

The marker is fine for sashiko but really you only need a white or yellow marker for the dark fabric, so they are including a lot more colours than you actually need in the kit – selling you more than you really need.

My verdict – nice stencils, kit seems to need better instructions, £39.99 is a lot for what you are getting. You can buy a 40m skein of medium sashiko thread for £2.50 or less, a packet of Olympus or Clover sashiko needles for around £2 and £5 respectively, and half a metre of fabric for sashiko from £6 – £8. So even on the high side, that’s around £15 for materials. A Clover White Marking Pen costs around £8 (this is the roller ball one that irons off or washes out) and other markers are a similar price. That adds up to the stencil and instructions being worth around £17, which seems high.