Cross Stitch Mini Sampler

Sorry for my long absence, I was so busy at my day job. For almost mindless stitching, I added a cross stitch section to one of my sampler bands.
The cross stitch alphabets came from an old DMC publication, which you can download here.
The rest of the design just happened, the back stitch letters are my own.
SK are my real life initials. The saying, two lines of a song by The Tremeloes was, at that moment, about all the things you experience when working with people.

The piece was stitched on an almost evenweave dress linen, about 26 threads/13 crosses per inch using 2 strands of Anchor floss for the cross stitches and #12 pearl cotton by DMC for the back stitching.

By the way, I think it is funny how much you read about cross stitch in embroidery blogs recently. Are these the beginnings of a trend or something?

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Stitch Sunday Inspiration: Whipped Connected Fly Stitch

Earlier this week, I introduced spaced connected fly stitches used to depict plants. Like I wrote before, the mid line of such a plant sprig can be whipped to make it more pronounced.

First, do a prig of connected fly stitches. If you want to depict a plant, pay attention to start it neatly and give it an organic form. Avoid making it too regular.

Next, whip the mid line like you would a row of back stitches. Always run the needle under the stitches from the same side so the thread goes over the midline stitches.

Behold the finished twig.

Stitch Sunday 8 – Beaded Fly Stitch

So this is Stitch Sunday 7. this time it is fly stitch, and because regular fly stitch was part of TAST I am making it beaded fly stitch.

It is fitting that fly stitch is shown after a chain stitch variant, because fly stitch is a sort of link between the buttonhole/feather/cretan stitch family and the chain stitch family. On the one hand, it could be a sniplet of a feather stitch, on the other hand, it could be seen as a wide open detatched chain stitch.

Like most chain stitches, fly stitch can be done by doing the tacking stitch first and then threading through the loop, or by making a loop and then tacking it down with a stitch. Here I am using the latter method.

For beaded fly stitch, first put an even number of beads on the working thread.

Next, insert the needle at the other end of the loop, and have it come out again where the tacking stitch is supposed to be. Make sure half of the beads are on each side of the place you come up with the needle.- If you haven’t beaded the loop but want to bead the tacking stitch, put the required number of beads onto the working thread after this step.

At last, complete the tacking stitch and take the needle to the place where the next stitch is supposed to begin.

Of course, you can also work the tacking stitch first. In case you work with the fabric in a hoop and work stab action, this is recommended. In this case, first do a little straight stitch that is the tacking stitch. Bring the needle to the front where the loop is supposed to start. put half of the required beads on the working thread. Slide the needle under the tacking stitch without piercing the fabric. Put the rest of the beads on the thread. Sink the needle where the loop is supposed to end.

Was this clear enough without pics?

Stitch Sunday 6 – Woven and Buttonholed Feathered Chain

Last sunday I showed you how to embellish feathered chain stitch by weaving the little leaves.

This makes a quite attractive plant. But, the stem of it is a little flimsy. You can change that by buttonholing over it.

You probably ended the weaving at the top of the plant. Now you wrap the working thread around the stem like you would do wrapped zigzag stitch.

Next, start working buttonhole stitches over the stem. Make sure the buttonhole stitches point to the outside of the zigzac.

woven buttonholed feathered chain

When you arrive at the leaf, take to the needle to the other side of it so you can again work the buttonhole stitches to the outside.

Finished!

Stitch Sunday Inspiration – the New Sampler

This is the top section of my new sampler band. There is an example of free form feathered chain stitch. The lavander dots are tiny woven wheels. They are done without padding, do you know the trick to make them stand up like that? Or should I make them a stitch sunday stitch one day?

Stitch Sunday Inspiration: Woven Roses

Everyone commented how my woven buttonhole wheels look like roses. Of course, that is a classic use of woven wheels done in Ribbon. Sorry to the ribbon embroidery fans if my work on this looks amateurish, I have never really learnt propper ribbon embroidery.

So I got a spool of organza ribbon, this was the only ribbon like thing and the only colour form the red family I could get without undertaking a trip across town (for which I had no time) so I went ahead with it.

First, I drew a little rambler rose twig and transferred it onto my current sampler using a fine liner. Then I stitched a buttonhole wheel. Roses are supposed to have 5 groups of petals, but I did the circles too big so I stitched 7 spokes. No one except the nature freaks are going to notice. Then I came up with the organza band in the middle and started weaving round and round.

The weaving was hard going because the buttonhole wheel lost stability from tugging on it. I kept tugging on the spokes after every stitch to keep them from wrapping around the organza. Later on the buttonloe wheel was pushed back into shape by the mass of organza band. In the last row, I wove very loosely to form the outer rose petals, then I sunk the organza band to the back.

The finished flower is a bit disordered because of the instable buttonhole stitches but charming. I fixed the outer petals with a few stitches in sewing thread which has the colour of the background.

For comparison, I did two other variants. The upper one with straight stitches emerging from the middle of the circle as spokes is (I believe) the traditional way to weave a ribbon rose. for the second one, I made a spider wheel as base. two spokes need to close to each other because you have to treat them as one to end up with an uneven number of spokes.

the straight stitch wheel was easy to weave, you have to find the right tension that creates neatly folded petals and that’s it.
The next picture shows how the spider wheel is woven. This again, is somewhat hard because it is not fixed in the middle.

No here are the finished roses. the spider wheel rose (lower, right)was imho no a sucess, the other two are charming, each in their own way.

Sampler, Part 3

OK, I guess the text of these posts gets boring, but I have no idea how to make that un-boring (is this even a word?)

So here we go. This section shows some more TAST stitches, buttonhole wheel cup, and some other buttonhole wheel variant, namely whipped and woven buttonhole wheels.

The last row is my take on beaded feathered chain stitch.

My Latest Sampler

I miss embroidery of late, so I dug out one of my unfinished samplers. I found it needs some serious finishing work. I was made from a commercial linen band that is supposed to be ready to use. But…. the drawn thread seams are already coming loose. So, I have no choice but sew around it again in drawn thread stitch. And believe me, these days I do have other passtimes than endless hours of mindless sewing. So, chances are I’ll use some fabric from my stash again next time, when I have to do this anyway I can as well save some money. Since TAST, the old one stitch a week challenge by Sharon Bogon, is on hold now and has been so for some time I’ll have to decide how to proceed, until I’m done with the drawn thread work I will just document what I already have done last year. So this is what the seam of this band looked like after embroidering the band normally. and this is how it looks after working ordinary drawn thread stitch over it. By the way, here I have shown how to do this. And now there is the first part of the sampler, after finishing work was done at this part. I know, this is one of the parts of the sampler you have seen before, but I want to show it from beginning to end this time.

TAST – Knotted Kretan Stitch

One more old TAST stitch: knotted kretan stitch.
Yes, I had an uncreative day. One fine day I’ll need to spend some more time with this stitch.

TAST 20 -Butterfly Chain Stitch

er another old TAST stitch, butterfly chain. Did you notice how it is basically another twisted chain variant?

At the beginning, I did it wrong, trying to make it a normal chain variant. Then I learned and explored its usefulness for formal bands. During the first few rows I tried it as a regular chain stitch variant.

Then, I tried to do it in a more random way. I was not entirely convinced. But this did get my imagination going. how about doing this as bark of a tree?

The next sample was about as random, only I used wool thread that gives a good coverage for most of the ground stitches. I like this much better, although the first random version is probably better for bark.