I just received notice of this video in my email. A lovely little looped flower stitch I haven’t seen before. I’m thinking of starting a doodle sampler for whenever I see new stitches I want to remember.
Or to be more accurate, the Original’s sequel. Presenting my latest finished embroidery, The Original’s Sequel from Dropcloth Samplers by Rebecca Ringquist (that’s a non-affiliate link to her Etsy shop, in case you’d like to try it too).
Even though I’ve learnt a hundred or more new stitches in the last three years embroidering samplers for the TAST challenges, there were a couple on this sampler I hadn’t tried before. Japanese darning, wave stitch, turkey work, bokhara couching, and this particular version of tête de boeuf were all new for me. I keep petting the turkey work, I jammed the rows together as closely as I possibly could and it’s incredibly fluffy. I’m going to try it in wool at some stage, to see if I can get good enough at it to make shaped flowers and squirrels and things with the thread trimmed to create a 3D motif.
I followed Rebecca’s Creativebug class “Advanced Embroidery Sampler ” to learn these new stitches. I especially liked how the stitches each have their own chapter so I could jump back and forth to whatever I wanted to embroider next, and didn’t have to watch the instructions for the stitches I already knew.
I’m also really fond of the needle woven leaves on the left. I’ve done them with chain stitches before, but this way of working them seems much more stable and more firmly attached to the fabric. Especially if you’re working a long leaf like these. I’ve noticed that I seem to like very textural stitches whenever I work samplers, but I don’t often use them when I design actual projects myself. I’m going to have to do something about that!
Well that’s it for my embroidery projects at the moment. I found a cool thing on Trove that I want to show you though, and it will include a tutorial so I’d better get working on it. And I have a couple of new lace edgings to update. And now that I’ve shown you all my TAST samplers, I need to make them into books.
I hope to get back to regular blogging and posting free stuff and tutorials for you, so come back regularly.
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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.
I have an admission to make. Even though I have embroidered more than 120 original “investigative” samplers in the last few years, sometimes I love nothing more than working on a pre-printed sampler so I don’t have to design anything, and I often get to try something I never would have thought of myself.
My favourite pre-printed samplers are Dropcloth Samplers by Rebecca Ringquist. You may have seen my previous post about her book, Embroidery Workshops, in which I showed my finished sampler that comes with the book. Well, I just finished my fourth Dropcloth sampler, Paisley.
Yes, that’s right, my fourth.
I’ve also embroidered Red Stripe (note that not all my stripes are red. I’m such a rebel),
and the Original sampler
and I have the Sequel sampler all ironed and ready to hoop.
I love how densely stitched the red stripe and paisley samplers are, and every one people embroider are completely different. I love having guidelines and still have the freedom to choose my own threads and change things up if I feel like it (which is why my hoop on the Original Sampler is a bit wild). Check out the hashtag #dropclothsamplers on Instagram for lots of inspirational photos and to see other people’s versions of Dropcloth samplers.
If you’re new to embroidery, or looking for a project that’s a bit out of the ordinary Rebecca also has some classes on Creativebug, including the Original Embroidery Sampler, the Advanced Embroidery Sampler (aka The Sequel Sampler), Embroidery Transfer Techniques , Layered Floral Embroidery (I’m going to try this soon), Embroidered Heirloom Napkins , Embroidered Kids Pillow , Embroidered Photo Ornament and the Embroidered Embellished Skirt. You don’t need to buy any of her samplers to do any of the workshops. All you need is fabric, thread and a hoop.
Now I just have to decide whether to take another look at the layered floral embroidery class or start my sequel sampler. Hmm…
- This post contains affiliate links to Creativebug. The links to Dropcloth Samplers on Etsy are not affiliate links. Rest assured, I only link to products and services I enjoy, and believe my visitors might like too.
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
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
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!
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and Creativebug, (where you can get a 2 week free trial and 60% off coupon for Joann’s for a limited time).
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