Month: November 2015

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My half chevron stitch sampler for week 18 of the Take a Stitch Tuesday embroidery challenge.

I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for this sampler so I grabbed my bag of scrap threads and just started stitching.

At the bottom I started with randomly overlapped stitches in greens which I made into flowers with orange French knots.

Above that I used different types of brown thread and different sized stitches in very straight sections to create an unplanted area of soil. Above this are another couple of random “grass” rows.

For the sky I worked rows of half chevron back to back in a flowing filling stitch. I really like the way you can emphasise the curves by working some sections along the row quite openly and others very close together.

Finally, I tried using the half chevron stitch as an outline. For the cloud the spikes point inwards, and on the sun they point outwards. Considering I had no idea what I was going to stitch when I started, I’m really pleased with the outcome!

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

In my last post I mentioned I would be using a painted background in my crossed buttonhole sampler but thanks to a trip to the op shop, I changed my mind.

I try to learn something new in all of my samplers. Sometimes I’m learning a new stitch or a design technique. This time I decided I had painted enough backgrounds already, so why not learn to appliqué circles?

A bit of googling later I found this video by Sarah Fielke.

It works! It’s lucky that I keep a flat cereal box in the stash at all times for emergencies like this! And I now have some circular templates I can reuse.

I can definitely see a lot more appliquéd circles in my future!

Who knew, when I started my embroidered French knot sampler for week 15 of the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge, that it would result in a fiery meteor of thread oddments hurtling towards Earth?

I certainly didn’t.

I had intended for this week’s sampler to be a negative space cookie cutter image in the centre, surrounded by French knots but it didn’t turn out that way. I ran out of time to mark my fabric on a day when I knew I’d be in a waiting room for at least three hours so I just grabbed everything and headed out the door.

I then began stitching what I thought was going to be a target shape of my basic sampler colours (purple, yellow, orange, green and brown) but when I checked my bag of oddments, most of the interesting greens were rather thick and they made the circle look like it was gathering mass from somewhere, or breaking up through the atmosphere. And so it evolved into a meteor. My love of dodgy science fiction movies may have been a slight influence there.

My background fabric this week was cut from a remnant of black featherwale corduroy. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t remove the fine white fibres that were stuck on it so now they’re space dust.

🙂

My threads include everything from 3 to 8 strands of embroidery floss, rayon, tapestry wool, Appleton wool, size 5, 8 and 10 perle cotton gobelin wool and whatever else was in the scrap bag.

I’m all ready to start stitching week 16’s wheatear sampler on another op shopped remnant, this time it’s twill cotton stripes in white, navy blue and a disturbingly intense lime green. I plan on sticking to just two threads, one navy blue and the other white but to be honest, anything could happen once I start stitching.

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