Work In Progress Wednesday - February 26

Last weekend I finished the first pages for my TAST 2012 fabric book. You can take a closer look at them in my TAST 2012 album.

My black sampler with fly stitch, detached chain stitch, half chevron stitch, feather stitch and many others.

My brown sampler with (half) chevron stitch, satin stitch, butterfly chain stitch, knotted Cretan stitch, linked double chain stitch, knotted buttonhole stitch and beaded Hedebo edge.

My red Aida sampler with cable chain stitch, Palestrina stitch, bonnet stitch, up and down buttonhole stitch, Basque stitch and a herringbone stitch border.

Parodox in stem stitch. Paradox is one of my favourite tangles. Just take a look here if you want to know how to draw Paradox, it’s very easy!

And my grey linen sampler with feather stitch, detached chain stitch, Palestrina stitch, oyster stitch, closed base woven picots, drizzle stitch, checkered or magic chain, buttonhole eyelet flower and an alternating stem stitch border.

But I also added more names of the stitches to the cover for my fabric book. 
20 names are stitched, only 28 to go!

TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday, an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle. You can find all info and links to the stitches on the TAST faq page.

Work In Progress Wednesday is a support group to encourage people to complete languishing projects, Works In Slow Progress or UFO’s. 
More info at Pin Tangle.

Easter bunny

When I was looking for knitting pattern in Anna 3-2013 I saw the pattern of a cute Easter bunny. I just had to stitch him!

 Now I only have to turn him into an ornament.

Randje 17

The first border for this week, a nice one with leaves. The second border is in backstitch and I only want to stitch the cross stitch borders, so I’m skipping it. This border is stitched with 2 threads of stranded purple Anchor on 28 count linen.

 More info about this SAL at Randje per week.

CQ fan block

I wanted to patch a CQ fan block for a long time. This weekend my sewing machine was in action for WIP Wednesday and I just had to make some time to stitch this block. The size is 9 x 9 inch. 

Made by B & A 12 of 12

Three years ago I made a series of ATC’s from Barbara’s fabric paper.

I’ve got the one with the arrows at the bottom of this page.

For this last ATC I used the damaged part of the fabric paper. I just made some running stitches around it in perle 8 and 12. I couched a boucle knitting yarn to the edge.

Ghiordes knot on my second pebble

Ghiordes knot AKA Turkey work was on my to-do-list for a long time. My second pebble was the perfect project to give it a try. I used a full thread of stranded Schürer floss for my ghiordes knot after reading the instructions in my embroidery book. If you’re not familiar with this stitch, there’s a great video here. At the base of the ghiordes knot I stitched whipped spokes and colonial knots with perle 12.

At the other side I stitched a stemstitch filling with 3 threads of stranded floss and decorated it with beads.

The beads spreads to the part with the star too. They look very nice between the colonial knots.

More colonial knots, this time in brown stranded floss around and between the crested chain stitch (TAST stitch 70).

And this is how my second pebble looks today.

I think the embroidery is finished, so maybe this pebble will be finished soon.

Work In Progress Wednesday - February 19

This week I started the embroidery for the cover of my TAST 2012 fabric book. I’m using 2 threads of stranded DMC on 14 count Aida. It will be filled with all names of the stitches in backstitch in red and green. I just stitch the words until I’m at the end of the row and continue at the next row. 7 names are stitched, only 41 to go!

More info about Work In Progress Wednesday at Pin Tangle.

Randje 15-16

This is how my worktable looked, when I was stitching these borders. I have the pattern on our tablet, so I can enlarge it. Very good for the eyes! At the left is my orts jar, it has lots of purple orts!

A progress photo of randje 16, the first border with 2 colours. I used 2 threaded needles to prevent counting mistakes.

And a detail of the finished borders of this week.

More info about this SAL at Randje per week.

Eastern stitch & beaded Eastern stitch

TAST stitch 99 is Eastern stitch and TAST stitch 100 is beaded Eastern stitch. TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday, an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle.

I stitched 2 samplers side by side on 14 count Aida, both with the same threads. This one is done in perle 12 with 2,5 mm beads.

The next one is done in perle 8 with 2 mm beads.

This one is done in perle 5 with 2,6 mm beads, I made the stitches a bit bigger.

My last design is done in Stef Francis perle 5. It’s a combo of 4 detached chain stitches as the foundation for the second part of the Eastern stitch.

The finished design. I used 2,6 mm beads.

Take a closer look at my complete samplers here.

Page 26

A collage in my altered book Een stem van papier.

Happy Valentine

Baroque lady

A few days ago I shared the beaded shell chain stitch collar of my baroque lady. 

I didn’t want to share the lady then, because she still needed a face. After stitching her face, she told me she wanted a necklace with a big diamond! Luckily my youngest daughter always gives her earrings to me, when she loses one. I keep them in a special box and there I found my ‘diamond’. The baroque lady was very happy with her new necklace.

The pattern of the baroque lady is designed by Ula Lenz.

Work In Progress Wednesday - February 12

Last week I shared my finished Fantasy fabric book. So now it was time to start my TAST 2012 fabric book. I made a total of 13 samplers, all 6 x 6 inch, so my book will have 13 pages. You can take a closer look at them in my TAST 2012 album.

I wanted to start with these 5 samplers, but I don’t have enough stiff interfacing in my stash. I bought 2 meters in a local shop recently, but that’s 30 cm wide, just a bit too small for 2 pages side by side. So now I’m trying to find interfacing online. In the meantime I’m going to start to embroider the cover for my book. I’m not going to use the same design as I used for my TAST 2010 fabric book, it will be totally different this time.

More info about Work In Progress Wednesday at Pin Tangle.

Randje 13-14

The borders of the 6^th week. It’s stitched with 2 threads of stranded purple Anchor on 28 count linen. More info about this SAL at Randje per week.

Queen Elizabeth I

Catherine made this gorgeous ATC for me for the Kings and Queens swap at 

Fibre Fever. 

Shell chain stitch & beaded shell chain stitch

TAST stitch 97 is shell chain stitch. I’ve used it on my second pebble. I stitched two rows and decorated it with woven picots. The thread is cotton a broder.

TAST stitch 98 is beaded shell chain stitch. When I saw Queenie’s stumpwork lady a few days ago, I remembered the baroque lady I paper pieced in 2005. I used perle 12 and 2 mm beads to stitch a nice collar to her dress.

The pattern of the baroque lady is designed by Ula Lenz.

TAST stand for Take A Stitch Tuesday, an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle.

Blooming tree

The last theme for the Fibre Fever ATC swap was trees. I made this ATC for Kim in the USA. I cut the tree and grass without a pattern and was very pleased with the result. The stitches I used are:

• whipped backstitch for the tree
• straight stitches for the grass
• colonial knots for the blossom
• a combo of straight stitch, detached chain stitch and colonial knots for the flowers
• at the edge I couched some knitting yarn

All threads are stranded floss.

Beaded linked chain stitch

TAST stitch 96 is beaded linked chain stitch. TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday, an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle.

I thought the beaded linked chain would be great on CQ seams, so I stitched 2 rows on the first page of my fabric book with CQ seams. The first row is Caron Wildflowers with 6 mm bugle beads. The second row is perle 5 with 2,6 mm beads.

I also used this stitch on an ATC. The background is a watercolour resist experiment. I wrote about it here. The beaded linked chain stitch is done in stranded floss with 2 mm beads.

Work In Progress Wednesday - February 5

This week I finished my first Work In Progress Wednesday project for this year: 

my Fantasy fabric book.

Here all pages were sewed together. It only needed a spine, . . .

. . . which I knitted with a hairy knitting yarn.

I found the pattern for the unicorn here.

The pages in this book are made for me by Catherine, Evi, Helinä, Janny, Juliette, Margreet, Mary, Masha, Maureen, Ritva and Anne. I made a slideshow, which you can watch here. I’m very happy with my new fabric book!

More info about Work In Progress Wednesday at Pin Tangle.

Old Eastern stitches

TAST stitch 99 is Eastern stitch. TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday, 
an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle.

Eastern stitch is a lovely canvas stitch, but it’s also a nice stitch to experiment with. The first examples are part of my TAST 2010 sampler. I started my sampler with a normal Eastern stitch filling in Stef Francis perle 5.

The Eastern stitch reminded me of Chinese characters. I changed the second part of the stitch to make it look like that. The thread is perle 5.

Then I stitched the previous variation in a row from left to right. I only made the foundation bars at the first stitch. For the next stitches I used the second part of the previous stitch as foundation bars. I’m not sure if you can still call it Eastern stitch, but I like this variation. The threads are perle 8 and 5.

Another try to make the Eastern stitch look like Chinese characters. I played with the tension of the perle 12 thread.

Here I made 2 squares of Eastern stitches like the one in the second sample. 
The top  square is done in perle 8 and has detached chain stitches in the centre. The bottom one is done in perle 12 and has an Algerian eye in the centre.

A combo of Eastern stitch, Siennese stitch, chained cross stitch and French knots. I stitched the Eastern stitch in 2 different colours, blue for the foundation and red for the bow. There's a French knot in the centre, chained cross stitches in the corners and Siennese stitches at the 4 sides. I decorated it with small bugle beads. The threads are perle 5.

This last experiment on my TAST 2010 sampler is done in Caron Watercolours. Just 4 stitches in a square with 2 mm beads tucked between the stitches. You can take a closer look at my TAST 2010 sampler here.

My last sample of the Eastern stitch is a progress photo of my embroidery Nefertiti. At the bottom half I stitched Eastern stitches in different threads and sizes.

There are more old samples of Eastern stitches from other participants in the Flickr TAST group.