A Sampler Continues

This sampler began way back in late 2006 when I joined in on a round robin with an on-line stitching  group that I belong to. I have blogged about the beginnings, the trials, the fixes, & the additions before if you would all like to read the back story.

I have decided that 2015, (8 years since the beginning!) will be the year to finish this sampler and turn it into the carry bag that it was designed for. So I have pulled it out and am very slowly working on it.

Last year I added another very narrow band of needle-weaving. I had been working another sampler featuring needle-weaving borders, and thought I could work one on here. The ones that I had been working on the other sampler were a little wide to work in the space I had, so I just narrowed it down. I have worked it here in the same  hand dyed green that I used in my hardanger band.

Further up the sampler is my hardanger band, sitting alongside the gorgeous seahorses that were stitched by Margaret. I feel the two bands sitting side by side are a little heavy, and there is still quite a bit of white fabric between, so my aim is to fill the white space. I have always felt that the triangular spaces left by my hardanger needed to be filled, but with what? A spur of the moment decision led me to eyelets, so I added them in pink. Still a little heavy so I have started outlining them in green to help soften them. I will wait until I work them on the other side before I make a decision to add anything else. My mind is playing with ideas, including a very narrow straight band of some kind between my eyelets and Margaret's seahorses, and maybe something else light between the eyelets. Ideas from outside in the blogging world are welcome. Watch this space!

Experimental Fun

A few years back I salvaged this piece of disgustingly (to me) coloured fabric. I thought it might be good to play with some experimental drawn thread work on it. It sat in the cupboard for a long time, then about a month ago I needed something to take to my creative stitching group, so out it came, along with some coloured threads that I thought would go. On the day, I just threaded a needle & started stitching, letting the needle go where it wanted. I soon discovered that the fabric would pull to a certain extent, so a piece of experimental pulled work it became. The most fun I had was with the eyelets.

I'm not sure what I will do with it yet, it might somehow get turned into a little notebook cover. Time will tell.

SS Band Sampler

I have finished stitching the last sampler of the Stitching Sister Counted Thread Band Sampler Round Robin.

This sampler is for Margaret, who has stitched the up/down tulip design at the top. For my band at the bottom, I tried to keep the flow of pink & green that seemed to be happening. I played with designs on graph paper first then decided the colour. The stitching started with two rows of 4 sided stitch, with 6 threads removed between the rows. I then needleweaved the remaining threads to keep them strong. Above the 4 sided stitch I worked groups of radiating straight stitches, while below is a row of large eyelets which have been outlined in back stitch. The top row was then mirrored below the eyelets.

I feel a little sad now that this is all over. I love stitching counted thread work of all types and this RR has been an excuse to venture out with colour & stitch combinations.

Mandy's Band Sampler

I have finished stitching on another sampler. This one is for Mandy and is part of the Counted thread Round Robin that I am participating in for the Stitching Sisters on-line group that I belong to.

Here is the sampler when it first arrived back in January. Before it arrived, I had thought that I would do some blackwork on it. But when it actually arrived in the flesh, I felt that a blackwork pattern would not quite work at the stage that the sampler was in. So I had to put my thinking cap on & let the sampler talk to me for a little while. The first thing it said to me was colour. There were lots of colours happening already and I needed to work something that would bring all the colours together. So I went through my stash of threads and picked out those that I thought would work in some way, shape or form. I then let my needle go where it felt like going.

In the end I worked eleven smaller rows of stitching, which in the end formed into two bands, one wide & one narrow. The rows were worked as follows:-

1. A row of four sided stitch in yellow ( a colour I only occasionally work in )

2. A row of four sided stitch in green, leaving four threads between the previous row & this one.

3. Removing the four threads left between the rows of four sided stitch & wrapping the remaining threads in an orange hand dyed Perle 12.

4. A row of alternating half eyelets in another green, with the gaps filled in with a third green.

5. A row of alternating half eyelets in the same green as before, with no gaps filled in.

6. A mirror immage of row 5.

7. A mirror immage of row 4.

8. A repeat of row 2.

9. A repeat of row 1.

10. A repeat of row 3.

11. A simple row of a blackwork pattern which I alternately flipped vertically. This row was worked in a deep pink to match work previously done in the sampler.

I think the colours that I have chosen have worked and I hope that Mandy loves what I have done. I know I certainly enjoyed working this sampler & could have continued working on it to the end. Unfortunately this is not how a RR works, but I am now enthused to start a sampler of my own, to work on how I want & how my mood takes me.

Below is a close-up of part of my band. It is amazing what close-up pics show, and no, it is not a mistake, just a loose thread that needs snipping (whew!). For some reason Blogger is playing nasty games & turning things sideways.

Pulled Thread Bookmark - June TIF Challenge

Yesterday I finally finished the TIF challenge for June. Only nine months late, but who is counting.

This bookmark started purely as a sample for stitching eyelets onto this RR Sampler, then ended up being part of the TIF challenge run by Sharon B last year. The stitching has been finished for quite some time, all it needed was a backing fabric to be slip hemmed onto the back to hide the reverse side. Now it can be ticked off the list. Yippee!

Counted Thread Experimentation

I have been slowly working on a band for the Counted Thread Band Sampler Round Robin that I am in. This is Mandy's sampler & before this sampler first arrived, I had ideas as to what I was going to do, then when it arrived I felt that what I had planned would not fit in well. It took me a while to get started & I am just letting the sampler tell me what it needs. The first thing was colour, somehow I needed to bring all the colours together. So I searched my threads and pulled out all the colours that were already in the sampler, then made a decision as to which ones I would use. I settled on a yellow, a hand dyed orange, and some greens. I felt these colours whould not only work together in a band, but help to reflect the colours already present elsewhere in the sampler. I haven't finished yet, I still need to work more eyelets, and then I think the band will tell me it still needs something else. Time will tell. I'll post a pic of the whole thing when my section is finished.

Just some more fill in type stitching today. This is the beginnings of a little bag I started with one of my classes. The idea was to strip some scraps of fabric together & then add stitching. We would open a stitch book at any page, & take the stitch from that page & play with it. The idea was to extend my student's knowledge of stitches & see how creative they could be. I have had enough of stitching on this & now need to make it up. Just something else that my sewing machine is waiting to do. When it is finished I hope to use it as a thread bag, as lately my project threads are all over the place, unwinding themselves into messes. So I thought this might help to keep them tidy.

Just filling In

Anyone who knows me knows that I have to stitch every day. If I don't, there is something seriously wrong. I am at the point now where I really need to plan my next serious stitching, because I am just filling in with fiddly things. I am on the down hill run with all the wedding sewing, with just hems & fiddly bits to do, the stitching on my Stitcher's Plus Challenge (which started here) is finished, my wrap for the wedding is finished, & I am looking for something to stitch in front of "the box" at night. So last night I pulled out a stitch challenge I gave to one of my classes some time back, and stitched this eyelet. Well, I stitched a few of them, and really want to stich more. The piece really needs some more fabric strips sewn to it before I can do too much more. Mmmmmm.................. maybe that is something to put on my "to do" list. Now I just need to find something to stitch tonight.

TIF Challenge - June

All year Sharon B has been running the TIF Challenge. I had good intentions of completing something every month but things have got a little out of control lately & I have let the TIF challenge slide. I have completed January, February, March & April, but got stuck at May. I have an idea, & got all my fabrics ready to do the challenge, but that is as far as it got. Now the challenges are up for June & July & I am getting further behind.

The June Challenge is about "Stash Busting - Stories That Are & Stories That Are Possible'. So while I have been working on the RR of my previous post, I had to sample a new stitch, and guess what I dug into to do this sample? Da da........ my stash of course! OK, so while I was working the RR sampler, I also started turning my sample into a book mark. It only took me a month to think that this was actually stash busting, and that there is a story behind the stash of fabric and also the thread. So here goes.

About 8 years ago I wanted to make a hardanger sachet, (above) so went about designing it & worked out that I needed a meter of Belfast linen. Any hardanger worker will know that a lot of the designs are worked on the diagonal, and this one was no different. So consequently I had a lot of fabric left from my meter, just odd shapes. The shapes were definately big enough to do something with so they went back into the "Stash" for later use.

About 4 years ago I dug into this "stash "to see if I had enough fabric to make my tissue box cover. Yes! One piece was just enough! The pattern for this was also a strange shape, with funny corners cut out. To do the drawn thread work, I had to withdraw the threads & work the ends back into the fabric. When the piece was finished I had more odd shaped pieces (just smaller than before) , but this time with ends woven back into the fabric. These woven ends can be seen still dangling in the pic below.


OK, some of the pieces are big enough to make small doileys, parts will make book marks & some really small parts might just squeeze in a scissor fob or tassle, so back into the stash they went. It is one of these pieces that I pulled out to sample "single cross eyelets" on for the RR. The sample has since decided to become a book mark.

Then there is the story behind the thread. This story begins also with the meter of fabric and the hardanger sachet. I wanted the stitching to be pink & green , & was game enough to dye my own thread. The problem was that when I dyed it, I wasn't happy with the colour, so wound it all up on empty machine thread reels & placed it in my thread stash. When I started sampling the single cross eyelets, I pulled out this thread from my stash to use, after all it was just going to be a sample.

Now the book mark is nearly finished. It has used fabric & thread from my stash, and combine this with a new stitch to me, I am very happy with the result, even the colour of the thread! So the story began eight years ago with a meter of fabric, and will continue well into the future with many stories to come. The book mark will mark my place in many of the novels that I like to read before going to sleep, as well as references to new & wonderful stitches that I want to try.

Sarah's Band Sampler

Another band for the Stitching Sister Counted Thread Band RR finished. This one is for Sarah in Texas. This one was a little more difficult for me to design for than the previous ones that I have done. Initially I thought that I would work some cherry blossoms, or maybe some Chinese scrolls, but when the sampler arrived, I didn't think these were suitable at this point in the sampler. Sarah had already worked scrolls in the previous band, so they were out, & the cherry blossoms were curvey & I felt this needed something geometric. So I looked to the card that came in the package for inspiration.




My eye instantly went to the key design in the border on the Emperor's robe, so I took one section, mirrored it, then flipped this to form my basic motif, which when repeated, reminded me of Chinese lattice work. Design decided on, I now needed to think of stitches. The fabric lent it'self to pulled work, something I have not done very much of, so I found a stitch called "Single Cross Eyelet" which I thought would work. So I graphed the key pattern over three squares on a graph, supposedly working the eyelets in a checkaboard pattern, only to find that this made the whole design much wider than what I intended. So then I marked the key pattern in just a single row of eyelets & it worked fine.

I worked the eyelets in two strands of DMC Stranded thread, & when they were finished I felt they were a little bland. I tried to outline them in back stitch but the eyelets are worked over five threads & this did not work out mathematically, so I tried over one thread (yuk!) and also over all five threads ( also yuk!). In the end I woked tiny cross stitches in blue over the single cross formed in the center of each eyelet.

So now this sampler is ready to continue on it's journey. Sarah, I hope you like what I did.

Reticella Progress

I just thought I would share some of the progress on my latest Reticella piece. There really is not much to share at this point. I am still trying to overcome the re-designing I had to do when I made an itsy bitsy counting error. Well, it wasn't really a counting error, it was more about not thinking a design change through properly, which led to a counting error, then to a huge error in stitching on my fabric. This then led to my Reticella border not fitting in the space. When I discovered the mistake, I made the decision to re-design the piece rather than unpick it. I am still on that re-designing process at this point in time. I have had lots of ideas & stitching friends have given me still more ideas. I have written them all down & will work through them one by one to see what will fit in the space that I have. Then I will make a decision as to what I like the best. I would love it to be a Reticella piece, after all, that was the point of the piece in the first place, but that may not happen. It will depend on my design capabilities. The fact that it is on even weave linen opens the space up to all kinds of counted thread techniques. Watch this space for further reports on my progress.

More Reticella

I just thought I would share with you all my latest stitching sample. I have worked this in preparation for a major piece I want to do. The sample was to test out a new design, plus different borders & corners. The sample has now served it's purpose, I have made decisions, & the major piece has been started. Yippee! Holiday stitching here we come. Watch this space for a pic of the real piece, sometime in 2008.

Advanced Certificate Major Work No 2

One of my aims for this year was to get through the Advanced Certificate in Traditional Embroidery Techniques Course that was being offered buy our Embroiderer's Guild here in Sydney. It was lots of work, having to produce a portfolio, a visual diary, two major works, and a study in the history of our chosen technique. About 6 weeks ago I was having reservations about finishing major work number 2. I was at the point that I didn't care any more, I had achieved what I wanted and that was all that mattered. I had discovered that there was a lot more to this drawn thread world than meets the eye.

Well, today I am happy to say that my Major Work number 2 is finished! With one week to spare! All I have to do now is present my work! Yippee! So without further ado, here is is for everyone to see. I have used my own hand dyed fabric & thread and hours & hours of labour!