TAST – Barred Chain Stitch

This week’s TAST stitch is barred chain stitch and alternating barred chain stitch.
got to know this stitch during the first TAST and use it a lot for ragged lines.

This week I mostly spent gardening. Spring is slowly arriving here, the bushes are still bare, and I spent a lot of the time cutting the bushes in my garden to shape. So I stidtche some bushes. I’m not sure if I’m leaving this section as is or add some more, but I wanted to post something in time this time round.

TAST – Whipped Wheel

This week’s TAST is whipped wheel. Of course I have done this before. As old inspiration, I show you a little tutorial. I’ve taken the pics for it long ago, but never got round to writing up the tutorial. This is a good time to do it.

For another old example, look at my gallery, and Waiting for Spring

Also look at whipped and woven wheels on glued jute fiber.

But now to the tutorial. This is how I do padded whipped wheels when I’m on the commute and have no padding material availiable. You could do the same by stacking felt, that would be less expensive but would probably take longer than this method.

First, draw a circle as big as you want the stuffed woven wheel, then smaller circles inside that. I space them about 1mm apart, or 2-3 on rough material like this.

Now, fill the smallest circle with satin stitches going round and round like a spider web. They will pile up.

Do the same with all circles exept the outmost one.

Next, do the spiderweel you will actually whip. For this one, use the outmost circle as guidance. When you are done come out with the needle in the middle of the wheel and start whipping.

This diagram shows how to do the spiderwheel.

This shows how the whipping is done. If it’s not clear enough, look at regular whipped wheel in a stitch dictionary.

And now look at a cool shot of the finished thing, showing the dimensional effect.

I Keep Knitting (despite TAST)

And now that I’m on vacation, I actually find time to photograph and post a few of my knitted things. I’ll show more over the next few days.

This is a little bag I made. It was inspired by seeing the leaf pattern on a cowl I didn’t want to make. I know the thing is lacking a drawstring – I’ll buy some satin band as soon as i get round to it.

I quite like the improvised pattern and may actually write it up for download, but I want some braid between the seed stitches and the rest of the bag. I will have to test knit that before publishing.

the empty bag:

The same, filled with a pack of tarot cards (which is what I knit it for):

Once more, from a weird angle:

And a closeup of the pattern:

Would that be something you might knit?

TAST – running stitch

This week’s TAST stitch is running stitch. The easiest stitch of them all, and maybe the one with the most possible variations.

Others have posted long explanations about the running stitch embroidery traditions of various cultures, do go to Sharon’s blog and look at the postings of all those people. I show old stuff again, but this time lots of it. A sorry to those who know my blog and know these pics. Life is keeping me busy these days.

The fist shows a modern variation of kantha stitching. Kantha is an Indian form of stitching, it consists of many running stitches, sometimes used similar to quilting. Here the stitching was done over painted bondaweb between cotton and poly organza.

The next is a sample of pattern darning as used in european embroidery. It is also called diaper stitching because it was sometimes used to hold the layers of diapers together to give them enough volume for their purpose.

The next one shows a piece made mostly from manmade fabric and thread, stitched kantha like and then treated with a heat gun. The two links go to postings about this piece with more information.
<a href="http://tenar72.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/another-melting-experiment-with-panne-velvetand-lutradur/"melting experiment with lutradur
detail pics of the same project

TAST – Couching

So this week’s TAST was couching.

This is a stitch or group of stitches that is so versatile that I was at a loss what to do. You can couch almost anything using almost any stitch.

What I did here is probably better called laid work. Or nue is done the same way just with gold thread and silk. If you use different colours and patterns for the couching stitches it is called new england laid work.

-the next one shows – from left to right – oriental couching, bokhara couching and figure stitch.

Sorry I had no time to be more verbose today.