Stitch Sunday 1 – Stacked Buttonhole Wheel

So here is the first part of my Stitch Sunday Challenge, stacked buttonhole wheel. I know buttonhole wheel is an old favorite, but I was asked about variants of it on my sampler so I decided this would be the starting point. Stacked buttonhole wheel is simply buttonhole wheels worked over each other.

If you want to join me in this, just try it out, post it on your blog, flickr or where ever else, and leave a comment with a link here. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

First thing, work a buttonhole wheel as usual.

Next, work a smaller buttonhole wheel over it, putting the new spikes over the old ones.

For the outer ring, work buttonhole stitches over the outer border of the first buttonhole wheel.

Now this is the finished result. I probably should have used some contraption to draw proper circles before stitching. Of course, your circles can beas messy or orderly as you want. They don’t even need to be round.

You can use both stacking methods like me or only one, or think up an entirely new one.

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“pulled-through cable stitch” – a strange stitch revisited

Recently, Elizabeth at Qieter Moments explores stitches again with her usual brilliance. She had just discovered a new one, raised chain stitch She has instruction in that post, and in subsequent posts lovely variations on it. I realized how similar this stitch was to an obscure German stitch I had used on my detatched chain stitch sampler. I pointed her to that posting and she did some more wonderful variations on it .

In order to complete that little debate, Iooked for the little booklet where I found that stitch. It is “Sticken-das Vergnügen” (roughly stitching-the amusement) by Wolle Rödel, a needlework store chain. The stitch is called “durchzogener Kabelstich” which translates to pulled-through cable stitch. The way it is done there it indeed looks like a cable stitch variant, but it is done more like (raised) chain stitch. This and Elizabeth’s blog are the only places where I ever saw a stitch like this. Who else did know them?

Now here is how to do it, according to said booklet. The stitch is worked in vertical rows to form a kind of raised band, to work it horizontally turn the fabric. Te lengths of the horizontal stitches can vary between barely visible and long to get a spined or centipede-legs effect. In the booklet they are longer than shown here.

You can click the photographs to enlarge them. I’m sorry, I know they are not as good as they should be, but I don’t want to fiddle with this any longer today.

First do a horizontal straight stitch, and bring the needle back up to the front right in the middle of it. Pull normally.

Now proceed by doing a regular detatched chain stitch over the first straight stitch.

Bring the needle up to the front for the next horizontal stitch in one line with the end of the little stitch tacking down the chain stitch.

The first stitch done.

Start the next stitch like the first one, bring the needle to the front in the same hole where you ended the last stitch.

TAST3 detached chain stitch

Yes, it’s the yellow-orange-green “it’s spring and i’m uncreative” colour sheme, together with some pink to add to the saccharine sweetness, but i so felt like it. I did this in fact after the cretan stitch piece and was exhilarated that I finally get somehing done.

I was also sick of tendious work, so i did this one on coarse, loose jute scrim. I used various knitting and crochet yarns and nr. 5 and 8 pearl cotton. Of course it still took some time to do, working on coarse material has its own pitfalls. It is intended that two sides are neatly finished and the last one not. The lace at the bottom had to be added to met my size requirement because that piece of scrim was a leftover from something else. I always glue the borders of jute scrim before I start embroidering.

The stitches at the left hand border are so-called pulled-through detatched chain stitch (translation from German). You do a strait stitch, tack it down in the middle with a detached chain stitch, do the next strait stitch right next to it and tack it down with another detatched chain stitch so that the chain stitches appear connected. In the lower right corner and upper border are variations thereof. I simply did cross stitches instead of strait stiches and tacked them down with detatched chain where the half cross stitches meet.