Embroidery

I have been doing a little embroidery.  Hand embroidery.  At the moment, I seem to be obsessed with samplers!

One day when I couldn't get moving, I threaded all the embroidery threads in my box and added them to a piece of felt.  It really helps keep you going!
I am doing one with Sue Spargo on Craftsy, which I have showed before.  I am also doing two with rebecca ringquist on creativebug.  I am only just

starting on these.  The stitch combination up the top, I enjoyed, however the red and blue stitches are supposed to be tete de boef or the head of the bull.  Rebecca taught it differently to how I know it.  She used three sepearate stitches, on the right.   I was taught to do it as a fly stitch with a chain tail, at top left.  I also tried reversing the fly stitch and adding the chain below that.  The variations are interesting, and who's to say which is right.  Stitch names are not really that important to me so long as I don't get confused.
The third sampler, is a set of samplers from Christen Brown's book Embroidered and Embellished.  At present I am working on the first one with simple stitches.

I am also doing some crochet for charity for our local CWA (country Women's Association)  branch of which I am secretary.  We have decided that we will start the year with a drive to make hats scarves and blankets for the homeless as winter will be along soon.  This is something I have been wanting to do for so long.

I have been doing a little journaling.  This is this week's page for daily journaling.
Also The Tangled Textiles Group I belonged to has come to an end at challenge 15.  On the page, there is a grid for each of the challengers showing their work.
I thought I might show my grid here for you.

So, a quiet week for me.

Happy Creating!

Frayed heart and another TAST

Today's ATC is very simple.

I like frayed edges, so I made a heart with frayed edges, put it on a 21/2 inch charm square, then added another charm cut in half and frayed to the sides.  I stitched everything down with running stitch and added some lazy daisies and beads.  To finish the top and bottom edges, I sealed them with clear nail polish then blanket stitched over it.  It is backed with a playing card.

As I said the other day, I am participating in a challenge called TAST2012 along with hundreds of others.  It is Take a stitch Tuesday and our challenge is to use the hand stitch put up each week on Pintangle.  I have been a bit behind, but I did a bit of work and am now up to date.
This week's stitch is chevron stitch

Here are some of my ideas for this stitch, in my sketchbook.

and here are some shapes I did with it.  On the right is a close up.  If you click and enlarge, you will see that this is not what I intended to do, because my guide marks are still visible.  I did a shell shape and then I didn't like it, so I unpicked it and did something else.  I must say, my stitches got so small in the centre of the spiral and the top and bottom of the oval, that I really couldn't see quite what I was doing, but it turned out well anyway.

He who works with his hands is a laborer. 

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. 

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

St Francis of Assisi

Working with your hands

First Love and TAST

Since I had to make an ATC for The February swap on Stitchin Fingers, I decided to do a few different ones on the theme, which naturally, was love for February.   I now have twenty, in various stages of  disarray and as I just got home and had no ATC, I did a quick one.

Basically, the background is collaged bits on the theme of love, then a little metal heart charm.  Some gold letter stickers spelling out THE word and some glitter.  So now there is no excuse for not making a valentine!
Over the next few weeks, We will all probably get very bored of  love and hearts, but I was so surprised when I sat down to begin designing.  It was actually quite fun.  I usually avoid hearts as a design element, but I filled a whole page with scribbles, which I haven't photographed, because they are still packed from my trip, but will show tomorrow


Now that it is week six in TAST2012, I have my week 5 sample finished, lol.  Week 5 was herringbone stitch.

The top sample on the gree chiffon in a dark green was my first one.  A bit boring, I thought, so on the one below, in a paler green thread, I went back over it and looped a purple thread around it.   See Sharon B's handpicked highlights, here. I'm afraid I was not very adventurous this week, but now I am home and able to stop worring about going anywhere, I'll work harder on this week's sample, which is....  Chevron stitch.

Ah well, I think my inbox will just have to wait until the morning, with all the other housekeeping that has not been done for a few days as I'm a bit tired.


Happy creating.

some face wipes and a sampler

Today's ATC has leaves on it again! (are you surprised?)

This card is made from a painted baby wipe and face wipe which I made here
I have layered a square of face wipe on top of the baby wipe and some more pressed leaves.  I freemotioned around the square and the leaves and used the paint colours as a guide for stitching.  I have so much trouble with satin stich edgings (my corners get eaten up) and have tried lots of different ways, and I thought, what if I tried it free motion?  and it worked reasonably well - needs a bit of fine tuning, but no eaten corners!

Now for the sampler,

This rather untidy piece of work began it's life as a sampler for a quilt which I will show you tomorrow. 
Basically, it is simply different coloured strips tacked down on a backing, to which I have then added lots of different stitches and embellishments. 
It now has a new life as part of my TAST2012 challenge, because it is the perfect base for me to practice the stitches on.  And as it happens, three of the four stitches we have done are actually on it already.

On this section, I have

• some straight stitches, 
• a couched piece of  machine wrapped cord
• a piece of tulle bunched up and sewn down
• some seed stitches with a nylon knitting ribbon
• a fly stitch pattern
• some random fly stitches

beginning from the blue frayed piece, which is organza attatched with running stitch

• a pice of satin braid couched down with a line of blue pearl beads above it
• a piece of blue and white eyelash
• cretan stitch with a piece of nylon knitting tape woven through it
• a pice of flat tape secured with vertical straight stitches
• some random lines of basque stitch
• a piece of furry eyelash couched down and surrounded by seed stitches

 Starting just below the eyelash and seed stitches

• green ribbon attached with a chain stitch at top and diagonal lines of fly stitch
• a piece of ladder tape yarn couched down
• another frayed piece of organza attached with a curvy chain stitch and random beading above
• three buttonhole stitch leaves

 Starting from the leaves

• a piece of green chiffon which has not been embellished yet
• a piece of burned organza attached with three lines of very messy snail trail stitch
• some more eyelash couched
• woolen yarn twisted really tightly, then sewn down

and that is as far as I have got.  Now it can be my sampler for the challenge - bring on tuesday!

Collage sampler

After watching Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson on Sewing with Nancy (here)the other day, I was inspired to do a few small collages.  In one of the segments, Laura made up a pattern sampler of nine small squares.  I started out making patterns with strips and such,

But it was not long before my little squares started to be pictures instead of patterns, lol.

Here are all the little squares up on a felt board.  I have a range of these felt boards, which are just a timber frame like for a stretched canvas, only I have lots of different sizes covered in felt for viewing work on before I make finishing decisions  I call them preview boards.  Sometimes, a black border can give you an idea of what a finished piece will look like.  In any case, I tend to mount my work on stretched canvas when it is finished, so it works for me.

Above, the boards range in size from 8 to 24" square and lots of rectangles in between.
Anyhow, back to the work at hand.
I will just go through each block and show you what I did whilst I was playing.

This one was pretty similar to one of LH's in the video,only I cut some bias strips with my curvy rotary cutter blade and put them in the centre of each leaf.  It looks pretty effective.

This was the next one and it started out as the purple rays on a green background, but I decided it was a bit boring, so I played around with splitting and layering the leaf shapes.

In this one I used bias strips to curve and make wavy lines.  As I was doing it, I thought about how it might look if I put little knots in like in tree bark.

After I cut the bits for the leaf centres earlier, I had a little triangle left with curvy edges.  I decided it looked like a sunflower petal, so I made some more, only this time I used the larger wave blade.

My next experiment was to use the curvy blades to make some water by layering different colours.  Then I added some grass and reeds.

Next, I thought I would make a tree.  A very bloody tree!  At this stage I cut myself with the rotary cutter - as you do!  I did not realise how much my finger was bleeding until I dripped it all over my tree! Yuk!  OH well, a bit of paint or embellishment will fix it.  And for easy identification 50 years from now, it has my DNA.
After a little break, I played with the wave blade and got these cute little leaves by lining up the blade so that the last cut met the first cut and did not stay an equal distance away (like in the leaf centres)  It took a while to get it right, but I had fun with it.

Then, I remembered that I had a scallop template in my quilting templates and I thought - "I wonder if I can make big leaves the same way, and guess what - I did, aren't they cute?

Whilst I was cutting the big leaves, I noticed the patterns the strips of leaves made as I cut them and so I made that pattern, too.  There are actually two patterns on this square.

While I was thinking about what to put in the last square, I happened to look at the scraps left from the tree's leaves and noticed how two of them together made a pine tree, so that became my last square for the sampler.
As you see, it doesn't take me long to get back to playing after a big day doing boring stuff.
Now on to lots of stitching and embellishment.