Stitching news

I’ve been working steadily on my baby afghan.  The third block is finished, onto the fourth (crawling).  I think that I am making good time on them.  Three blocks in one month. 

2nd baby block finished

Scroll down for the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge Post

 

I have just finished up the 2nd teddybear block of the baby afghan that I am making.  The wording is in french because my SIL is French.  The pattern is in English so I need to come up with the correct french expression.  On to the 3rd block…I think the one for sleeping the first night though.

A romp through the TAST blogs….

…and checking out the detached chain samples for the TAST, Take a Stitch Challenge.  Here’s what I have been seeing!  So many creative ideas.

 Judith finished up a ufo by incorporating the detached
chain stitch on small heart cushions…also using sequins…verra nice.

Purple Missus  does a lot of dying! Wow!

Françoise of creatilfun did a lot of samples.  I really like the
one with the french knots, cross stitch and lazy daisies.  It looks so dreamy.

I’ve been back to frogstich’s blog and shes stitched up a jumble of coloured detached stitches which look so coooool! 

 Karin Hammel has made a colourful ball with the stitches and she used special german thread.  So nice. Karin, you could call this Painter’s Palette. (needlefelting)

Odile stitched up  a sheep…the possibilities are endless.
 
Magpie’s designs are so intricate.  I’m waiting on word back from her if she is incorporating the design into her crazy quilt wall hanging. 

I forget Mariyarn’s name, sorry ….but she stitched up a small bouquet, made with detached stitch with ordinary embroidery floss, and the leaves made with a fraying ribbon.  She mentiioned that the flowerpot is a stitch from Primrose Design´s blog who has a small stitch school.  I’ll have to check it out and put the link in here.

Charlene stitched up a beautiful peacock.  She printed up a photo of peacock and used it to create her own pattern design….onto silk.  She even used hand-dyed silk and seed beads. 

I went back to dawn’s place and she has elaborated  on the herringbone stitch.

Ati is doing her samples on crazy quilting…so nice. and she also made a bauble bag.   I have never seen one and it seems so complicated.

I hope you don’t mind Ati, but I want to admire the bag and check it out, so I’ve posted your picture here….let me know if you want me to take it down. Everytime I tried to post a comment on your site, my computer froze up. 

So where do I find a pattern  for a bauble bag? Isn’t it neat?

Well, I kind of feel like Sharon here, but I really want to see as much as I can.  I am learning so much here. 

Later

Detached chain stitch card for the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge

For this week’s Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge, I stitched up a little flower to put into a tri-fold card.  It turned out quite nicely and it worked up in an evening.  It contains the:* Detached chain stitch (flowers)

* Satin Stitch (leaves)…I’m proud of myself.  This is really the first time that I have done this stitch.

* Chain stitch (stem)

* French knot (buds)…this is my favourite stitch…besides cross stitch.

I’ve checked out  Galynn’s stitches…working on felt and putting the stitches all in a bunch.

I will check out more this week-end.  Stitching is so much fun

My lame attempt…

at the buttonhole for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge. …I was not inspired to create.  I may have looked too much at others’ outcomes and couldn’t come up with anything….I did three rows of the buttonhole stitch…I will continue with my practicing…especially the first line.  What I really liked this week was all the reading and researching I did for embroidery.  I live in a French area so my resources tend to be in French so I am learning my French embroidery terms.  I’ll have to visit a few of our French bloggers a little more often.  I have a very old series of needlework books and they have beautiful embroidery designs and how-tos…I had never taken the time to go through them but as part of looking up the buttonhole stitch I did…and it just furthers my interest at practicing more than just cross stitch. 

 Speaking of cross stitch. I am well into my 2nd block…a teddy bear standing.  I should be finished this week-end! I am really rolling.

Here is my lame piece:

What I found difficult about doing these short lines was the starting off and getting to the 2nd stitch…it is really not that evident.

So, now on to week 3…I hope that I am a little more creative.

checking out sites here and …

…there for the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge.  This postcard book of stitches is neat!  I really like how Fiona plays with the golds and also writing.  She is also doing a fabric book, with pockets etc…a must see.

I’ll be back to edit here.

I went looking at buttonhole stitching

As I was updating my list of Take A Stitch Tuesday participants, I checked out a few of this week’s samples.

I really like frogstitch’s buttonhole interpretation of the northern lights. Grandmaziki has come up with the same theory as me…hardanger embroidery is full of the buttonhole stitch and so pretty. 

I started to check out gunnelsvensson stitching, but my computer crashed, so that’s enough for tonight.  I still don’t know what I will  stitch.  I liked the idea of ATC cards frogstitch. 

 

Later

 

1st Baby Bear block finished….

…7 more to go.  I’ve decided to backstitch each block as I go along.  Don’t look too closely for mistakes.  Now I am working on a buttonhole sample….for this week’s Take a Stitch Tuesday.  I still haven’t had time to check out other participant’s sites…but I should get there tomorrow, or even later tonight.Now to fix my frame for my next block…and maybe start a few stitches, just get it going. 

It’s nice to get back to cross stitching.  It is relaxing.  I am all set up with my magnifying light and scroll.  I wouldn’t mind to get a stand for my scroll, a one foot stand…I can dream.

Teaching Cross Stitch…

…to children.  I started teaching my niece how to cross stitch today.  She complained of a headache after our short stitching session.  She is only 10 years old.  I started her off with a kit that has the largest aida sized cloth and a big needle.  I think that each session will be kept to no more than 20 minutes of stitching.  Her younger sister wants to learn, so I’ll prepare another kit.  It is amazing how much there is to making little x’s on material …I don’t want to encourage bad habits so I am making sure to show how the x’s go the same way, all the time….she did pretty good. I’m proud of her.  A few years ago, I gave a noon-hour workshop at my son’s school.  I have one son who is pretty good at cross stitch, although he doesn’t do much of it anymore, but he knows how to do it. He plays hockey and soccer and then stitches.  He cannot sit still, needs to be throwing a ball around and I figured that a needle in his hand was better than a ball on my walls …true, true.  He might want to start back to stitching after watching his cousin today. 

 I made a mistake on my cross stitch project.  I was trying to figure out why the back stitching wasn’t making the design stand out. I was using the wrong colour!  So I ended up taking all the backstitches out and redoing the block.  I will post it when I am finished.  It looks so much nicer now.  It’s a good thing that I noticed it right now, on the first of 8 blocks .  I haven’t touched the project for a week, but each time I went by it I would try to figure out why I was disliking it so much and avoiding it….the backstitch.

Back to work tomorrow….. I could use a snow day and just stitch all day ….let us all say some oooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmms to the snowgods.

 Thanks for all the positive comments to my shadow work.  It’s wierd, but since I have done the piece I have seen some more shadow work… After tavelling around to quite a few blogs and checking out the other work, I am inspired to branch out of patterns, we’ll see how it goes.  There are so many participants.  I’ll have to figure out a system of responding to as many as I can.  It’s only the first week.  Not having highspeed internet doesn’t help, but that could change soon.

Off for some tea and backstitching.

Later

Shadow work flower

I just finished my herringbone sample.  I tried shadow work on white organza and I think it looks pretty cool.  On the hoop it didn’t look tooooooooooo shadowy, but when I took it off the hoop, sheesh, it looked all shadowy! .  I could make it into a pot pourri cushion, that’s what is suggested in the magazine I found the idea from.  I found the shadow work directions in the UK Needlecraft August 1997 edition.  But I think that I will put it into a card.  I think that might be a neat way to collect all these samples. 

Any ideas for what to do with it now?

Note, Above is the front, the herringbone stitches are on the back and the the backstitches going around the petals are on the front of the organza….making the shadowy effect.  This is the backside….