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Month: September 2015

TAST Week 11: Embroidered Whipped Wheel Sampler

whipped-wheel-sampler

This week’s embroidered sampler for the Take a Stitch on Tuesday challenged evolved a lot during stitching.

I started with the thought of making a simple spot pattern testing different threads, in a continuation of last week’s spotty theme. After working the right hand third though, it was looking a little dull so I started playing with using different stitches for the spokes and all hell broke loose!

First I worked the large variegated green wheel on the bottom left, using fly stitch for the spokes, then tried the big lavender and yellow wheel with long tail chain. Adding the French knots to the green wheel made me think that adding decoration to the other wheels might look nice. Then adding the French knots to the outside of wheels made me think long tailed French knots might make good spokes.

I ended up trying a lot of different things for the decoration:

  • Lots of French knots everywhere
  • Outward pointing fly stitch, starting at the tip of each spoke to make stars and flowers
  • Outward pointing fly stitch starting between spokes to make little “tips” on each spoke (like the half purple, half green wheel with orange knot in the centre)
  • Inward pointing fly stitch between spokes
  • Inward pointing fly stitch between spokes with a straight stitch in the centre of each
  • Inward pointing fly stitch with a French knot in the centre of each
  • Straight stitch between spokes with a different coloured French knot on the end
  • Fly stitch spokes in two colours (one for the fly, one for the spoke)
  • Fly stitch spokes in two colours with a stitch across the end of the fly to make little triangles
  • Leaving half the length of the spokes showing
  • Working the whipping “upside down” so you can see what would usually be hidden at the back (go over the spokes, then back under instead of the usual way – under then over -). These look particularly nice surrounded by rings of chain stitch
  • Combining regular and upside down whipping
  • Working the whipping in two coloured halves, whipping half and then twisting around the other colour before turning and going back.

For spot motifs of this kind my favourite threads are quite fine with a firm twist. Flower thread, perle cotton in sizes 20 – 5 and Coats chain mercer crochet all worked well. For a textural piece just about anything would work well except fibres with a lot of natural curl to them like mohair. The mohair thread just wanted to go it’s own way too much, rather than wrapping around the spokes where I put it.

Along with my beaded feather stitch fish sampler, this has turned out to be on of my favourite finished samplers so far!

Some useful links:
TAST on Facebook
Sharron’s TAST FAQ on her website, Pintangle.
Free vintage stitch book downloads.
My TAST Pinterest Boards

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Embroidered Running Stitch Sampler for TAST, Week 10.

This week’s Take a Stitch on Tuesday sampler is running stitch. Or I guess you could say it was last week’s and I just finished it.

Embroidered running stitch sampler on green fabric with white spots.

(Click on the photo for a larger view)

This week I decided to combine running stitch with spotted fabric and see what patterns I could create.

Stitches include:

  • Basic running stitch
  • Laced running stitch (left and right borders, outer border on the centre medallion)
  • Double running stitch (bottom border)
  • Whipped running stitch (centre flower of the medallion)
  • Pattern darning (striped darning between the spots near the centre bottom)

I usually use threads bought at the local (and not so local) op shops* but this time I tried a new thread that I had treated myself to some years ago. I intended to use it for machine embroidery but my embroidery machine died of old age and I don’t intend to buy another one so I decided to use it for hand stitching. It’s a really lovely thread called Valdani Cotton from Romania. I bought mine from The Thread Studio in Queensland. You can see it in my sampler in the vertical stripe of 5 lines of running stitch on the left hand side, plus I used it double to write “running stitch” in back stitch. It’s a joy to stitch with, lovely and smooth with a nice sheen and the 35wt that I bought is strong enough for quilting. The colour I used seems to be discontinued “Midnight Roses v16” but the selection of colours available is quite extensive.

I love the movement and texture you can create with running stitch, especially the diamond shaped inner borders and circles.

Now on to the current week’s stitch! My fabric is already hooped and ready to go.

Some useful links:
TAST on Facebook
Sharron’s TAST FAQ on her website, Pintangle.
Free vintage stitch book downloads.
My TAST Pinterest Boards

*op shop is Australian for charity shop or second hand thrift store. Known as bric-a-brac shops for the most part if the proceeds don’t go to charity.

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TAST Sampler for Week 9, Couching

Embroidered sampler with couched flowers, sun and bugs

(Click the photo for a larger view).

This week’s embroidered sampler features various types of couching in a little flower garden scene.

For the border I used pattern couching (with plain couching on the right). Pendant couching and silk ribbon couched with French knots for the clouds.

The ground is worked in puffed couching and lattice couching. I always forget that you have to be very careful when laying the grid for lattice couching because it can go wobbly very easily so I left it wobbly to remind myself next time I try it. That, and I used up the last of my favourite dark brown and didn’t want to undo it and throw it away.

😛

This little basket of flowers is from a sample I worked earlier this year. I managed to fake making it straight by adding a little bit to the bottom of the basket on one side and added French knots to the spaces in the couching for added interest. You can download the pattern for free if you’d like to try it.

Embroidered basket of flowers

The rest of the sampler features a lot of couched spirals, with plain couched leaves (and chain stitch leaves on the little flowers), and couched satin stitch for the filling in the main flower.

On the right hand side of this week’s sampler there’s also a bit of couched ric-rac braid. Ric-rac can be couched in many different ways but my favourite is to run a line of thread up the middle and using a zig-zag stitch so you can barely tell it’s ric-rac underneath.

I couched a lot of ric-rac on this Dorset feather stitchery sampler that I made a few months ago.

Feather, chain and blanket stitch sampler

I’m really fond of couching so this week’s sampler was a lot of fun. Now, on to running stitch!

Some useful links:
TAST on Facebook
Sharron’s TAST FAQ on her website, Pintangle.
Free vintage stitch book downloads.

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TAST Week 8: Chain Stitch

I’m getting a little behind with my TAST samplers because I didn’t start last week’s stitch until Friday. Here it’s Thursday again and I haven’t started this week’s stitch yet. Hmmm.

First I tried some various chain stitch borders and a couple of circles.

TAST Week 8, Embroidered Chain Stitch Sampler

Variations include whipped, laced, back stitched, zig-zag, twisted, double, broad, whipped double, heavy, magic and linked double chain stitches. I used some to couch other threads and added stitches to others because they were a bit boring 😛

Then I decorated a Spoonflower swatch with whipped and detached chain stitch.

TAST Week 8, Embroidered Chain Stitch Sampler on a Spoonflower Fabric Swatch

I’d better get stitching on this week’s sampler!

Some useful links:
TAST on Facebook
Sharron’s TAST FAQ on her website, Pintangle.
Free vintage stitch book downloads.

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