Month: January 2018

This year, as well as rerunning the regular TAST, Sharon Boggon is also running “Beyond TAST” for those of us who finished TAST already. In Beyond TAST, we spend 4-6 weeks investigating a stitch family or technique.

The first technique was pattern darning. Being me, I ended up making 5 of my 8″/20cm square samplers. For my first piece I wanted to use darning as the background. I layered fabric scraps, basted them with sewing thread and then darned, and darned, and darned some more. You may be able to see that I changed colours so the darning looks like patches as well, but they’re in different shapes to the fabric patches underneath.

When I got tired of that, I added a flower, and finished the whole piece by zig-zagging all the way round with my sewing machine. I zig-zagged with two threads together in a large needle (I think it’s a denim needle). Even though my machine will sew through almost anything, it struggled with thick fabric on the left and thin on the right hand side, so I had to pull it through a bit. I really love the effect of using two threads in the machine together, I’m going to try it with some free motion machine embroidery in future.

My next samplers were inspired by Kantha embroidery.

Border patterns and fillings. (See my Kantha Pinterest board for more). I drew the basic lines for each border with a water erasable pen before stitching.

Then I tried pattern darning used as fillings and to make flowers. I made some double folded hems around the brown fabric and stitched them down with running stitch. I also kept to a very limited colour palette of yellow, green and blue. Limited colour palettes are unusual for me, as I usually restrict myself to using all of them 😉

Finally, in my Kantha inspired samplers I made parallel rows of darning with threading through the stitches to form the patterns. I used an unusual fabric for this, glazed cotton with a floral pattern on it. I think it worked well.

And of course, no investigation into patterned running stitch is complete without a little Sashiko. Embroidered on the same glazed cotton as the previous sampler using two strands of variegated perle cotton. I ran out at the last row and substituted other plain threads of the same colour but they ended up being a bit thicker. Oops.

I used Sew Easy templates and a water erasable marker to draw out the design

Next up I’ll show you my latest Dropcloth sampler. I’ve almost finished, although it’s currently drying because I spilled something on it. Hopefully tomorrow it will be dry and I can finish it.

Welcome to my very last post about the TAST 2015-2017 challenge! Today I feature two non-TAST stitches and revisit two old favourites.

I didn’t think a collection of embroidery samplers would be complete without Cross stitch, so I worked two. One sort of freestyle  on plain cotton and one on evenweave fabric.

Cross stitch is a great stitch to “sketch” with so I started with some scribbly and textural samples (top left and top centre). Then I tried various fillings and seam/border treatments in a range of different threads. I drew a lot of these first with a water erasable marker. I usually use Hemline water erasable markers because they’re easier to find locally but I prefer the Clover Chacopen Water Soluble Marker as the Hemline markers smudge a lot and get all over my hands when I’m drawing. They’re fine once they dry though.

For my evenweave cross stitch sampler I used a scrap piece of linen I found at the op shop (charity thrift store). The patterns are from an Ondori embroidery book from the 1970’s. I used six strands of embroidery floss and crewel wool for the most part, although the sky is some vintage knobbly knitting yarn couched down with cross stitches worked in floss. I’m afraid I have no idea what count this linen is as I’ve never been much of a cross stitcher. I do love working small motifs here and there with waste canvas though.

Revisiting stitch 8: Chain stitch

Since I’m going to use my collection of TAST samplers for future reference, I decided I had to record using chain stitch as a filling. I used 3 strands of embroidery floss throughout (I think. I might have used 4, although I didn’t want to pick at it with a pin to try and count the strands).

The yellow in the flower centre is variegated, as is the centre of the paisley. For the other sections I worked darker outlines, then a medium shade, and finally lighter towards the middle. Chain stitch as a filling is remarkably fast to stitch and is a great way to fill in large, simple shapes like these. This is one of my favourite samplers, even though it’s one of the simplest.

I came across canvaswork stitch while browsing videos on YouTube (that’s a link to the video, BTW). As you can see, I tried it in lots of different threads, and found that something smooth works the best. It would probably be a lot neater worked on an evenweave fabric or canvas (duh) rather than my quilting cotton, but hey, I’m a rebel. I really loved playing with all the different colour combinations on this one.

Revisiting stitch 10: Running stitch

My many investigations into running stitch simply would not be complete without a little sashiko. (see week 10, running stitch, revisiting running stitch, and this post from August last year for more running stitch samplers. I love running stitch).

If you’d like to learn more about Sashiko stitching, I recommend the Creativebug class, Sashiko Sewing with Lisa Solomon for beginner embroiderers, or for more experienced stitchers, The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook. Lisa makes drawing the designs on the fabric look so easy that I’m itching to try more designs from the book.

And that completes my collection of samplers for the 2015-2017 TAST embroidery challenge! Now that I’ve ironed them all, and shown them all off, I just need to bind them into fabric books and they’ll be ready to peruse any time I need them. After I embroider a few covers.
😉

If you’d like to see more, click on the “TAST challenge” tag under this post, or come back in a couple of days for the beginning of my “Beyond TAST” adventure!

• This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com and Creativebug, (where you can get a 2 week free trial and 60% off coupon for Joann’s for a limited time).

Welcome to part three of my “I can’t believe I finished the TAST 100 stitch embroidery challenge” catch up series. I accidentally published two posts yesterday (oops), but never mind, I have a feeling there will be a lot more embroidery going on around here to tell you about!

Braid stitch wasn’t a TAST stitch as far as I can remember. I tried it with a few different threads and I’m really not a fan. I just couldn’t get it to look nice, no matter what I did.

Stitch 99: Woven chain bar

Once again, I tried this stitch in an assortment of threads. It didn’t work well in wool because of the crimp or bounciness of the thread. Cotton lays nice and flat, however and looks pretty good. I’d reserve this for graphic elements worked in straight lines. Ever shortening rows stacked on top of each other for a roof, for example, or perhaps a single row for a window box.

Rosette of thorns is another non-TAST stitch. I had to try it because I love pretty much all variations of blanket stitch. I tried lots of different threads, from my finest perle cotton to thick knitting wool/silk mix. I love how useful this stitch is. It makes great grass and flower stems, eyelashes and geometric borders. It also works well in straight lines, spirals and curves. I think my favourite, however, is the top of the border where I alternated which side of the line the stitches were formed. Worked vertically in green it would make an amazing fern-like plant.

Stitch 80 revisited: Double whipped chain stitch.

I worked a few different lines of whipped double (or double whipped) chain stitch back when it was first announced, but I had a lot more variations and threads to try out. When I came across this great fabric in my stash, I knew they’d go perfectly together. I tried just about every thread I have in both wools and cotton, whipped triple rows, spaced rows apart, whipped the centres and the edges and whipped in both directions to make cross stitches up the centre. This would be a tricky stitch to work in circles, but it’s a great one for border treatments and seams.

Stitch 38: Revisiting cloud filling stitch.

I recorded cloud filling back in August 2016 but didn’t experiment with it at all. In this sampler, I tried lots of different ways of spacing the ground stitches the yarn is woven through, as well as lots of different yarns. In the pale pink area I started more spread out on the left and gradually made the vertical rows of stitches closer together, which gives a lovely sense of movement and perspective.

I then used cloud stitch to embroider most of this little picture.

I’m particularly fond of the beaded section in the sun. After working the cloud stitch, I stitched a gold bead into each diamond shape.

Well that’s it for part three of my five part TAST catch up. See you tomorrow for more!