Menu Close

Month: October 2016

Lock and Feathered Chain Stitch Embroidery Sampler

After stitching three samplers for week 55 of the Take a Stitch Tuesday embroidery challenge, I ended up working stitches 56 and 57 onto a single sampler. I still managed to record everything I wanted to remember though!

Stitch 57 was feathered chain stitch, which I’ve done before and is a real favourite of mine. The version of feathered chain stitch that I know is slightly different to the one Sharon uses, so I recorded both versions in a range of different threads, plus one in green perle cotton with beads up the centre.

Lock, double lock, and feathered chain stitch embroidery sampler

Stitch 56, lock and double lock stitch were totally new to me, however. I tried them in circles, as fillings, and with beads which I think all work really well. The real surprise was when I worked them into leaf shapes with the initial straight stitches leaning in different directions on the flower on the right. I really like the way the dark green leaf on the left looks.

I’ll definitely be using this stitch in the future. I think it would be a great stitch to use in combination borders for all sorts of purposes.

signature

Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch – TAST Week 55

Whilst I’m not behind in my embroidering for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge, I am very late in blogging about them! Today’s stitch (from about 3 weeks ago), is up and down buttonhole stitch, and as usual, I got totally carried away with it. In fact, I ended up with three finished samplers.

Firstly, I tried it as an edging around a scrap of fabric I had tested a wood block print on. Then, as a filling on the same piece to make a lemon tree. I coloured the tree section in with a sharpie because you couldn’t really tell it was supposed to be the leaves 🙂

Embroidered sampler with up and down buttonhole stitch.

I also tried lots of curves and circles, variations on the leg lengths and directions, beads and couching.

Then I thought it might be interesting to try it as a filling stitch on an evenweave linen. I buy almost all of my materials from the local op shops (charity thrift stores), so I have a lot of different fabrics to try.

I really love the triangles and the boxes with diamonds in them but boy, do they take a long time to stitch!

Embroidered sampler with up and down buttonhole stitch fillings.

Finally, I tried some circles on some spotty fabric. I think the ones with three rounds of stitching are my favourite and it’s nice finding a use for some of my Spoonflower samples.

Embroidered sampler with up and down buttonhole stitch worked in circles.

If I remember to take a photos, tomorrow I’ll post about stitches 56 and 57!

signature