Star ornament

My last Christmas stitching is done, a small CD-ornament with an embroidered star. The size is 3,25 inch or 8,5 cm. It's stitched with Caron Wildflowers in Portuguese stemstitch and backstitch. At the edge I couched some knitting yarn. I want to thank you all for visiting my blog this year. Hope to see you again in 2012.

Another knitted Christmas ball

It took me some time to find the right yarn for my Christmas balls. I cannot use wool because of my allergy, so I had to find a nice acrylic yarn. There was not much time to knit, so my tree only has one knitted ball this year. It's pattern 15 from the book 'Kerstballen breien' by Arne & Carlos. Remember my first Christmas ball? It was just a plain one to practise knitting with 5 needles. Now I crocheted this pineapple angel . . .

. . . and appliqued it on the ball.

This one is not for my tree, I'm going to give it to a dear friend.

Crazy X-mas

My last ATC's for this year. I made them for a swap with an open theme and decided to use some of my Christmas scraps. The fabric in the centre is the same for both, it's fun to see how different they are!

Surprise in my mailbox

I received a Christmas card from Jeannette with a lovely crocheted star inside. It's hanging in our Christmas tree at eye-level. Thanks Jeanette!

TAST 2007 fabric book

I finally made a fabric book of the samplers I made for TAST 2007! It was a great way to learn how to use my new sewing machine. The pages are made of black denim, the samplers are stitched on muslin. I started stitching them in 2008 and finished the last one just before the start of TAST 2010. Only 49 stitches, I skipped the cross stitch, satin stitch and the long and short stitch. The cover of my fabric book. It closes with some ribbon and a button.

Page 1: herringbone stitch, buttonhole stitch, detached chain stitch, berry stitch and Cretan stitch.

Page 2: Chevron stitch, Algerian eyes, feather stitch and fly stitch.

Page 3: barred chain stitch, up and down buttonhole stitch, couching and knotted Cretan stitch.

Page 4: bonnet stitch, oyster stitch, Palestrina stitch and running stitch.

Page 5: woven and whipped wheels, Basque stitch, butterfly chain stitch and crossed buttonhole stitch.

Page 6: wheatear stitch, French knots, half chevron stitch, bullion knots and sheaf stitch.

Page 7: arrowhead stitch, buttonhole wheels, cast on stitch, crested chain stitch and scroll stitch.

Page 8: Portuguese stemstitch, shisha stitch, cable chain stitch, knotted buttonhole band and reversed buttonhole bar.

Page 9: rice stitch, square boss stitch, linked double chain stitch, lace border stitch, twisted satin stitch, drizzle stitch, zigzag Spanish knotted stitch, Pekinese stitch, knotted cable chain, chain braid stitch, chained bar stitch and Spanish feather stitch.

Page 10: zigzag Spanish knotted stitch, Pekinese stitch, thorn stitch and pistil stitch.

It was very difficult to take good photo's, so I made a video while I was flipping through the pages.

There's another TAST challenge next year. Read more about it at Pintangle.

Inchie Sunday 23

This inchie is made from the same resist experiment as my inchies Waves and Paradox.

Ohio Rose

I finished a second 12 x 12 inch block for my applique quilt. It's another rose design by Leta Brazell. I wrote about my first block here. I started a third block, but finish it next year. There's some Christmas stitching to do!

Halloween ATC

I made this ATC for the October swap at Stitchin Fingers. It needed almost 2 months to travel from The Netherlands to South Africa! The word Halloween with the spider came from a cross stitch pattern at Frimousse. There's a larger photo of this ATC at my Flickr-page.

Zentangled D

The last missing letter of my zentangled ATC alphabet arrived! This is the D that I made for my swap partner . . . . . . and this is the D Amanda made for me.

I'm going to take a photo of my complete ATC alphabet for the last post of this series.

Amsterdam 1

I took some photo's in Amsterdam and thought it would be fun to write a few posts about them. Every time we visit our daughter we pass by this empty building.
With all the glass windows it's easy to take funny photo's.

I like the patterns of lines and dots.

The backside of the building.

Next time I show you some other buildings in the same area.

Inchie Sunday 22

This X-mas tree is tangled with the pattern 'Nzeppel and decorated with a gold Sakura gelly roll pen. The stars are very tiny sequins.

Herringbone stitch

I'm trying to stitch a few more stitch file samplers before TAST 2012 starts in January. Today I started with the herringbone stitch. It's a grey and rainy day, so I had to use the flash to take my photo's. My first row is stitched with 2 threads of stranded DMC. I turned part of that row into a double herringbone with some orange.

Some mirrored rows with Caron Wildflowers.

Stacked rows with Stef Francis perle 5. Every next row starts halfway the previous one. I like the braided effect of this, it looks very complicated, but it's very simple to stitch.

Stacked rows with DMC broder special.

Closed herringbone stitch with Caron Watercolours.

There's more space left on my sampler, so I can experiment some more.

Biggify

Last week's zentangle challenge at I am the diva was to push your comfort zone and biggify your tangles. The background of my tile is painted with watercolour paint. Lacy is the tangle I biggified for this challenge. Below is a photo of this tile on my tangle Relax. There I used Lacy in a 'normal' size.

Inchie Sunday 21

The tatting on this inchie is the small one in the post My first tatting. I stitched it on a piece of marbled cardstock with French knots in a golden thread.

TAST 2012 logo

There were many visitors, new followers and comments on my embroidery for the TAST 2012 logo at Pintangle. As a thank you I want to share the making of the embroidery on the cover for my TAST fabric book. The border is one of Sharon's Friday freebies. First I ironed a piece of freezer paper to the back of my fabric. After centring the border pattern upside down on the freezer paper, I secured it with masking tape. The freezer paper makes it easier to draw on the fabric. I didn't took a photo of this part, but I made a photo of it when I was working on my embroidery Touch (currently my blog header).

After tracing the design on the fabric with a water soluble pen I removed the pattern and did the same with the letters TAST. I used a light box for the tracing, but a window works fine too. I stitched the border pattern in Caron Wildflowers in stem stitch, open chain stitch and raised close herringbone. I stitched the letters TAST in backstitch with 4 threads of silk floss.

I figured some of you might want to stitch 2012, so I made a pattern for that too. The font is called Colonna MT.

Read all about TAST 2012 at Pintangle.

Climbing Rose

I wanted to do some applique, but didn't want to start a new project. Then I remembered a 12 inch block I made many years ago. It's called Climbing Rose and it was part of a series of rose patterns by Leta Brazell. At the time I needed to practice some applique leaves for another project and this was the perfect block for it. Now I printed the other patterns too, so I can make a quilt with 4-6 blocks.

Elephant

Last week I finished this cute little elephant. It's a pattern from the book Amigurumi World by Ana Paula Rimoli. I knitted a long shawl for him.

Inchie Sunday 20

The whipped wheel and French knots are embroidered with Stef Francis perle 5. The backstitch border is stitched with 2 threads of stranded DMC. I added the embroidery to the cardstock with double sided sticky tape, but made a mistake when I cut it!

Strawberry cupcake

For this ATC I made a combination of trapunto and embroidery. Instead of quilting the cupcake, I embroidered it in Portuguese stemstitch. Then I stuffed it from the back and added the French knots and leaves in woven picot. The stem is a padded satin stitch. There's a bigger photo of this ATC at my Flickr-page. This is the second ATC I made for Janet for the July swap at Stitchin Fingers. Unfortunately it's gone astray again!!!

Red thread challenge

This week's zentangle challenge at I am the diva is a guest post by Chris from Tangled Up in Art. The challenge was to create a traditional black and white tangle tile with a single red "thread" running through it. When I read the word "thread", I immediately thought embroidery and that's what I did. After tangling my tile I embroidered the string in Portuguese stemstitch with red DMC 80.

Een stem van papier

. . . is the Dutch title of the old library book I'm altering. In English the title would be 'A paper voice'. I already wrote about the altered page with Punzel here. On these 2 pages I made rubbings with crayons and some gesso pages from my studio journal. Then I ironed them with a piece of baking paper to set the colours.

This is a little detail of the right page.

Here I ironed some fusible webbing to the pages. Then I added blue and yellow watercolour paint.

This page is my interpretation of Suz's experiment with leaves and watercolour paint. My red/orange background was completely dry when I added the leaves. I just closed the book and put some rubber bands around it to keep the leaves on the page while the green watercolour paint was drying. The next day I painted the edges of the leaves in black watercolour paint and removed them.

I'm going to add more other things to these pages when I finished the backgrounds of the remaining pages.

TAST fabric book cover

This is the front side of my cover. The pattern is one of Sharon's Friday freebies. I used backstitch, stemstitch, open chain stitch and raised close herringbone. Now I have to sew all pages to the cover to finish my fabric book.

If you missed the first TAST challenges, there's a new one next year. You can join here.