TAST 12 – Cretan Stitch

So this week’s TAST stitch is cretan stitch.
Since my sold sampler is full, I started a new one on the next band-like thing I found that doesn’t need prep work before I can begin. I’m not sure about it at all. I added some browns to the color scheme to coordinate it with the first one and keep it from looking saccharine.

This was my cretan stitch sampler for the first TAST challenge. I can’t decide if I’m calling it done or add some more.

Next Sampler Sections

Well, here are the next 2 sections of my sampler. The lilac trellises and the green pattern are taken directly from the book, the rest is wild experiments.

New Sampler

Now here is what you all were (probably) waiting for – embroidery content. Yes I wanted to get back into it. Yes my UFO boxes looked somewhat unappealing. So what’s a girl to do? Yes, let’s start something new. A sampler, like ever so often.

I recently gifted myself wit “The Stitches of Creative Embroidery” by Jaqueline Enthoven. I decided I would get most out of reading it if I tried the new to me stitches at once, so I started a sampler. It is made out of a strip of deco hessian from a dollar store, some strands of floss and stranded cotton from my stash and a few sock yarn scraps from recent knitting projects.

here you can see the whole thing:

The finished parts of it:

 

A Loss and a New Beginning

Something horrible has happened: I forgot my tast sampler in the train to work, and gone it was. Gone the months of work, and the material proof of all I learned during this time. This really put me off embroidery and blogging for a while, but I guess that’s life.
I’m sorry for whining, and for not letting you know earlier why I’m silent.

Anyway, I could not bring myself to continue with tast where I was forced to leave it, so I abandoned the challenge for this year. I collect all the stitches ans since there won’t be a new challenge next year I’ll try again from the beginning then.

Of course, I did not abandon stitchery. I did the finishing toughes on two old things you’ll see soon, and I started to faff arround with blackwork. Mary Corbert has posted a bunch of free blackwork patterns here and here, I used them to have a go at blackwork. I have no idea how the finished piece will look.

It is stiched on light yellow linen I got at a deco fabric shop. I don’t think it’s perfect evenweave but close enough. It was labelled 100% linen but was to cheap for that and feels more like cotton. Never mind, it feels good and looks nice. By now I have gone back to the shop and bought more of the fabric, both in that yellow and white.

The threads are machine stitching cotton 30, machine stitching cotton 12 and a silk sewing thread that in in between in strength, all in brown. When I was shopping for thread they were out of black, can you believe this? I was angry about this but now I think the brown on yellow looks very good. They are more smooth and are easier to work with than one strand of floss, but more expensive.
The pic is not that good, my scanner doesn’t like hard contrasts, I had to photoshop it heaviely to make it look brown and yellow instead of dark and off white.

More Algerian Eye Stitch and some Arrowhead stitch

Yet another section of my sampler. The diamond shapes in the middle are filled with Eylet stitches turned to stand on a tip. I always stitched into every hole. For the big shape and the small shape surrounded with running stitches I used 4 strands of stranded cotton. In the small shapes on both sides I used one strand for the same stitch. The non-pulled variant surrounded by running stitches is the classical canvas eylet stitch.

The eylet patterns should be easy enoug to figure out, if not just ask. the middle row of the one in the upper left corner was done using valdani sewing thread matched to the pearl cotton.

The three arrowhead section show that this stitch did not exactly inspire me when I started using it. We will see later how that changed. the patcch in the lower right corner is a good example why it is also called knitting stitch.

This time you can click the image to enlarge it.