Tenar’s cave

Again, no update for a long time. And this time I even blame my craft. I have bought wool for a pullover on a whim and can’t wait to see it finished, so I’m as busy as I can be. More on this project will come soon.

Still, I started to do my sample for the take a stitch tuesday challenge . This time it’s long and short stitch .

In Germany, we call works in uncounted long and short stitch “needlepainting”, while regular or counted long and short stitch is often regarded as a variant of brick stitch, Barghello work or even satin stitch. I’m in fact planning to include a section of this with the satin stitch sampler, so I’m leaving it out here. I knew about this kind of work, but have never really done it before. Because it seems rather tendious I’m not doing a complete sampler, just a little tryout piece this time. And while I didn’t get very far with it until now I post a little bit about how I’m doing it.

First, I chose a photograph of a rose, which can be seen here. The deviantart account of the photographer is here and of course I asked them for permission. Then, I cut out the rose blossom, converted it to black and white and a suitable size for printing it out, and tweaked the contrast and brightness a bit. This is the result:

Then, I took transparent drawing paper and traced the outlines of the petals with a black fineliner. Unfortunately I didn’t scan that before the next step.
Next, I used a pencil for producing iron-on patterns (can anybody tell me the proper English name for that please?) to trace the lines of that drawing on the backside. (Please don’t bother with downloading and rezizing this, I’ll post a cleaned up version with better resolution when I get round to it). If you trace the motif directly with this pen you will end up with a mirrored image on the fabric.

In order to make working easier for me, I traced the rose a second time and shaded that drawing with a pencil, to get a feeling for the motif and which shades of colour should be used where.

Now I was finally ready to iron it onto fabric and start stitching. I used cambric because I have a large stash of it, but probably calico or another somewhat heavier smooth fabric would be better. The last picture shows the ironed-on pattern and the beginnings of the embroidery. Click on it to enlarge it. (I just noticed that I scanned the two drawings from the wrong side of the transparent paper -will have to change that some time)

My Satin stitch sample makes slow but steady progress. Here is another scan. The thing is supposed to be a tin bucket when it’s ready. I have been using variant parisian stitch in four shades of grey and a shade of mud brown for the dirt spots. I used 6 strands of cotton embroidery floss on hardanger fabric. In order to get enough coverage and sheen, I separate the strands, let them untangle and combine them again before starting to work. I also make shure to use the thread going with the grain not against it. As you see, this isn’t perfect anyway, took me some time to get the rhythm, but it was less difficult than drawing the stitches on paper. I made the shading up as I went, next time I’ll have to plan that better.

here is a description of the satin stitch variant I used. The numbers show the succession of the work: The needle braught to the surface at 1 and then is piercing the fabric in the order the numbers indicate. Note that you should pierce holes which already have thread in them from the front side to make shure you don’t pierce threads.

The 24th tast challenge was french knots . Now this is a stitch I find hard to do, and I’m still busy with the satin stitch, so I’ll pass this one for now. But I upload an old work of mine, an ATC card. The picture is woven into jute scrim and in part oversewn with other stitches. The middle is done in french knots in cotton floss, in part blended from two colours.

So I finally got started on my satin stitch sample. As you can see, I have decided to do things orderly this time. I have secured the seam of my fabic with a sewing machine (I know it doesn’t look pretty, I suck at using sewing machines), and then hand-sewn it into a frame made of waste cotton. This allows me to use an embroidery hoop. I have done all my previous samples free hand, and that shows in most pieces. No such sloppyness this time! But I still couldn’t bring myself to draw an orderly design sketch, things just happen as I go.

ight now, I’m using the variant paris stitch in embroidery floss. I have to be careful with this because the 6 strand floss is just barely covering the fabric.

OK, here is my stab at crossed buttonhole stitch for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge.

I liked this stitch very much and will use it again. Did you notice it’s similarity to the Bonnet stitch?

Now what’s the title of this? I won’t tell you that right now, or the story behind it. My mother and my brother claimed not to know what this picture is supposed to show, and uttered the wildest speculations about what it might be. Can you recognice it? Or is it really that bad? I’m not shure if it is entirely done, but it is at least 95% and I need a break from it, so I post it.

Finally, another update to my blog. The last week’s tast challenge was satin stitch.

Of course, this stitch is a mainstay of embroidery, but for the challenge, I decided to stick with counted variations of satin stitch. After looking through books, and the great website of the American Needlepoint Guild I first drew a few variations. That was both to provide inspiration, and to get into the groove again for counted embroidery. Did I already mention here that I hate everything that requires counting? Oh well, sometimes I have to do it for the sake of the results in embroidery. But doing all these drawings was hard for me and not exactly inspireing, so I haven’t stitched anything yet. But I wanted to show I have done something.

You can click on all the pics in this post to see a large version. I hope they are large enough to see what I’m getting at with them. The different colours are only to make it easier to count/ see, every stitch can be worked monochrome, or in any colour combination you can think of.

First thing I have drawn is a classical hardanger star pattern.

A few more patterns; description below, and sorry for the random numbering

1)woven stitches 2)checkered stitches 3)Pattern from Sharon B’s sample 4) Scottish stitch variation 5) Scottish stitch 6) Mosaic stitch 7) Parisian stitch (regular long and short stitch) Hungarian stitch 9) zick zack (called Byzantine stitch when the rows are worked in the same hole as the previous one) 10) Jaquard stitch 11) diagonally woven stitch

1) Milanese stitch 2) Milanese stitch diagonal 3) self-invented zick zack pattern