Koninginnedag

Every year on April 30 I go to the Koninginnedag flea market with a friend. This year I wanted to see if I could buy some pretty fabrics, lace and doilies for Karen’s class. The weather was very nice, so it was a real pleasure to look at all the things people wanted to sell. I had two empty bags when I left home, but they were stuffed with goodies when I came back! Let me show you the doilies first. Here’s one with a pretty lace edging. I bought 3 of them with a matching table runner.

This is a doily with cutwork, I like the aberrant shape.

A crocheted doily, I bought two of these.

Another pretty lace doily.

I was very lucky to find a few lace curtains. This gorgeous curtain is just a big piece of lace. I think it's about 2 meters long.

This is another gorgeous curtain, it has a very wide piece of lace at the bottom. I like the scallops and the flowers.

I also found a few pretty toddler dresses. I’m going to use their fabric and lace. This dress reminded me of the dress my youngest daughter wore when she was a baby.

Another pretty dress. This one has small loops at the edge of the collar, if I’m correct I’m going to learn how to make these in the coming weeks.

This was the first thing I bought today. It’s a pretty dress with lots of lace. There’s a petticoat under the skirt.

When I was looking at a few embroidered wall hangings, the lady told me I could buy them for € 0,15! She also told me she didn't stitch them. There are so many hours of stitching in these pieces, I just had to take them home. There are lots of satin stitches, stem stitches and buttonhole stitches in them. Not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. There were 3 wall hangings, a clown with a saxophone,

. . . a gnome with an owl . . .

. . . and a gnome watering the flowers.

Now it’s time to wash and iron my goodies so they are ready to use in the coming weeks.

Wheatear stitch

The TAST stitch for week 17 is wheatear stitch. Yesterday I stitched 3 rows of wheatear stitches with different threads on Aida.

This yellow row is done with Stef Francis spun silk with flames. I stitched 2 half rows, one from left to the centre and one from the right. At the meeting point 

I stitched 2 extra stitches. I varied the size of my stitches too.

This is a detail of the second row. It’s stitched with 2 threads of stranded DMC, one yellow and one purple. I changed the angle of the straight stitches in this row, so when they meet it forms a diamond shape.

I had lots of idea’s to try with different colours, but not enough time. So I all stitched them in one row with purple and yellow perle 8. At the end of my row there was not enough purple left, so I made a few single yellow wheatear stitches.

Here I alternated the colour with every stitch.

In this row I alternated the colour after 3 parts of the stitch in a continuous row.

Another example of alternating colour. I used the same colour for the second part of the stitch and the first part of the next stitch. It looks like a little row of tulips.

Here I used yellow for the first part of the stitch and purple for the second part.

This is the same as the previous sample, this time with purple for the first part and yellow for the second part.

It’s a pity I don’t have more time to experiment with this stitch. I have one more project to finish before the end of the month.

Buttons & Butterflies

There were 3 packages in my mailbox last Tuesday, all from Australia! One of them was this gorgeous ATC made by Elizabeth. She made it for the April swap at Stitchin Fingers. I finished my ATC for this swap today, I’ll share it with your when it has arrived at my swap partner.

I’m going to write about the other packages in the next couple of days.

Old wheatear stitches

The TAST stitch for week 17 is wheatear stitch. I’ve used this stitch from time to time on the seams of my CQ, but always with stranded floss. My first detail is part of my TAST 2007 sampler. The fabric is muslin, so I made a grit with a water soluble pen. I added an extra straight stitch to the brown wheatear stitches.

On the same sampler I stitched a circle with wheatear stitches. I wrote about my complete TAST 2007 sampler here.

This is a seam on my crazy ATC Little Witch. I stitched the wheatear with 3 threads of stranded floss.

I think this is the last time I used wheatear stitch. It’s a seam on block 7 of my Crazy Monday quilt. I decorated the wheatear stitch with detached chain stitches at the arms and a French knot inside the loop.

I hope I have time to experiment with wheatear stitch, it’s a busy week again!

Mooka

My week 13 sampler is finally finished. It was my intension to use some of the stitches of the first 12 weeks of TAST, but my sampler was grumbling! It wanted French knots, lots of them. And that’s what I did. I used a complete skein of stranded DMC color variations, my last thread was just enough to secure it at the back.

This sampler started with the chain stitched Mooka with ecru perle 8, an official tangle pattern. Mooka and Mooka-licious were the inspiration for my embroidery, 

it was in my studio journal for almost a year.

The whipped and woven wheels on this sampler are stitched with cotton a broder and perle 5, both ecru. I shared a few close up photo’s yesterday. The French knots are stitched with 2 and 4 threads to represent the shading of my Mooka. When I draw a tangle with pen and paper I use a pencil for this step. That’s why 

I used the DMC color variation for my French knots. There’s a bigger photo of this Mooka at my Flickr-page.

Wheels & Knots

I’m still adding French knots to my week 13 sampler. Today I want to show the whipped wheels I added last week. These 2 are stitched in cotton a broder (left) and perle 5 (right). The right one is a combination of whipped and woven parts.

Another whipped and woven wheel in cotton a broder.

A whipped wheel in perle 5 with a donut bead. It’s one of the beads I bought in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. I wrote about that here.

I hope to share my finished sampler tomorrow.

Second Love

This ATC is called Second Love because my first Love ATC didn’t arrive. Except the crocheted heart it’s completely done on my sewing machine. This ATC arrived within a week!

Vintage

This is my second fabric book page for the book page swap at Stitchin Fingers. I made it for Trillian in Germany. I’ve also sent her a new ATC for the February ATC swap, because the first one was lost in the mail. I’ll show the ATC in another post, because I want to share the details of my block with you. It’s going to be a long post today!

On this crazy book page I only used TAST stitches. Here I stitched herringbone stitch with perle 5, Cretan stitch with perle 8 and French knots with 2 threads of stranded floss. The French knots are this week’s TAST stitch.

A Chevron stitch with 4 threads of stranded floss and long tailed slipped detached chain stitches with cotton a broder. The slipped detached chain is a TAST 2010 stitch.

The third seam is a feather stitch with detached chain stitches, both with 2 threads of stranded floss.

This seam is a row of flipped fly stitches with bullion knots (a TAST 2007 stitch). Both are done with cotton a broder.

A button cluster, the one on the right is a vintage button from an old coat.

Another TAST 2010 stitch, the buttonholed herringbone. I stitched it with 2 threads of stranded floss.

Here I used French knots to attach the ribbon with 2 threads of stranded floss.

Half buttonhole wheels and French knots with 2 threads of stranded floss. I used a template for this, because I didn’t want to use a water soluble marker on this fabric. I’ll share that in a later post.

Here I sewed a piece of hairpin lace on the seam. It’s one of my first small hairpin lace experiments, I wrote about it here.

You can click the photo's to see them bigger. There’s a bigger photo of this book page on my Flickr-page.

Old French knots

The TAST stitch for week 16 is French knots, my favourite stitch! I’ve used this stitch in many different ways. My first example is a detail of my ATC Love with one thread of stranded floss. I stitched a cross stitch heart on pink Gingham and decorated it with French knots to emphasize its shape.

Here I used French knots to stitch the Eiffel tower. This image was my guide for the knots.

On this ATC I used French knots as a filling. The outline of the mushroom is done in stem stitch. The French knots are stitched with stranded DMC color variation, 2 threads inside the dots and 3 threads at the bottom. The mushroom is designed by Mollie Johansen.

This is a progress detail on block 15 of my Crazy Monday quilt. I used the French knots to raise the dots in the fabric.

This is a progress detail on block 8 of my Crazy Monday quilt. Here I’m using the French knots to attach the rickrack to the curved edge. I didn’t use pins to hold the rickrack.

Here I used French knots to attach the organza ribbon on my ATC Animal Skin. I’ve used this technique in more projects, but this was the first one.

This embroidery was inspired by Luiz’s beautiful embroidery Good Morning. It’s a detail of my ornament Reply to Good Morning. The thread is an overdyed Stef Francis perle 5.

This week I’m going to use French knots to finish my week 13 sampler. It still needs a few whipped wheels too.