In early April, after reading many frame reviews, I decided to order the frame of all frames - the Millennium Frame by Needle Needs. Everyone said this was the best frame — the easiest to use and quickest to set up, the most effective for achieving perfectly taut fabric, and the most versatile for different kinds of embroidery projects. So, full of excitement and anticipation, I ordered it with an extra size of stretcher bars. The website said 8-12 weeks and occasionally longer due to high demand, but then I got on my FB embroidery groups and started chatting with other stitchers who had ordered this frame. Some of them been waiting for it to arrive for 18 months.
18 months?! $*#@^&
So obviously it wasn't going to arrive in time for me to use it during the pandemic. Okay, maybe it's worth waiting that long for the best ever frame (maybe, though I maintain that an honest estimate of delivery time should be given on the company website so I can make a more informed decision). But in the meantime, I needed a better frame than what I had.
I had ordered some really nice Hardwicke manor hoops, which I love and which work great for small projects, but I wanted to try some goldwork, which can't really be moved around in a hoop. So I would need a larger, probably square frame to tackle that project. I already had some stretcher bars, but they're the cheap kind that splinter easily and I've never been thrilled with them.
So I decided to order some Evertite stretcher bars, which had great reviews as well. These seemed to be on back order in most of the standard sizes, so I decided to get some 7" and 9" ones because those weren't on back order and would just fit my first couple of goldwork projects.
Two weeks later, I got the word that these were now back ordered as well, and it would probably be 3 months before they were back in.
3 months?! $*#@^&
Seriously, what is going on in the world of frames? (Apparently everyone needs new frames during a pandemic.) So I decided to try one more option that would hopefully be a little less in demand and therefore come a little more quickly.
Just before the pandemic shut everything down, I had gone to my first local embroidery guild free stitch day. I was planning to join the guild, but I'll probably wait till we can meet again in person. Anyway, while there, I saw some beautiful displays of embroidery, including a version of this Japanese embroidery piece:
I had never seen anything quite so stunning before. I fell in love and immediately began researching Japanese embroidery, determined to give it a try myself. I found a couple of beginner kits and ordered numerous supplies to get me started. But the frames were pretty expensive, so I held off on ordering that. I had initially been hoping to use the Millennium frame or Evertite stretching bars for the first phase or two. But since those were going to be long delayed, I threw in the towel and decided to just order my first Japanese embroidery frame since I would probably need it eventually.
I chose the one sold by Blue Bonnet Studio because the threaded dowels seemed similar to those on the Millennium Frame, and another embroiderer who had this frame said it was very nice and easy to use. And it looked beautiful. The frame maker, John Sinton, agreed to make me a custom cherry wood frame, with maple and ash dowels and nuts and finished warp bars — just what I wanted. And he thought it would only take a month or so, which seemed a much more reasonable time frame (no pun intended).
His estimate was pretty good. It took him five weeks almost to the day to finish it, and the frame shipped this week and should be here by this evening. I'm going to start my first goldwork project on it, and after I've done a couple of those, I'm going to try to start learning Japanese embroidery on my own. I have a book about it and, of course, the internet. And maybe one day, once this pandemic is over, I can take an actual class from an actual teacher. But until then, I mean to persevere and just figure it out. We'll see how that goes.
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