Tuesday Stitchers import: CQJP August

Well, I found the variegated blue-and-purple thread that I used for my buttonhole loops, but not before I gave up looking for it and used a different thread! Ah well, isn't that the way life works? What do you think? does the yellow-and-orange make a good finish to the line? Heh! I'm okay with it, anyway.


I added a nice little blanket-stitch serpentine. I'm thinking of adding French knot or seed bead accents to the line when I have some more time. :)


Another tatted tidbit, this time worked in a braided metallic (gold) and a variegated green perle. The metallic doesn't show real well in the photo. It's pretty glitzy in real life.


And then I started experimenting with the TAST Double Linked Chain stitch. :) I wasn't impressed with this stitch from the look of it on the challenge post, and I wasn't particularly impressed with it when I worked it according to the instructions:

It's okay.. it just doesn't have the punch that I'd like. Maybe it would be better worked in a different thread, or with different proportions.
But it got me thinking about what I'd LIKE for it to look like. Then I played around with varying the construction method, and got these three results, all of which I particularly like! So the DLC itself isn't likely to be one of my go-to stitches, but these three variations I came up with sure are!

One last seam treatment, a stitch combo including chain, straight, and French knot stitches:

So that leaves me with an August wedge looking like:

I'm hoping to get some more stitching done on the purple stripes before the end of the month, but I still have a BJP mandala to stitch up too! ACK!! where does the time go?

Auditioning beads for Roses

Today I dug through my boxes of seed beads, charms, etc and pulled out the ones that could work on these blocks. I long ago trained friends and family to say 'thank you' and 'I love you' with beads and embroidery floss, so I have a few to choose from. ;)

(A note about the picture: I've thrown a little bit of every possible bead onto the squares, just as a way to see how the colors, textures, shapes, and sizes are working with the blocks, the embroidery, and each other. I really don't expect to use this many beads on the blocks, and they won't be so haphazardly distributed, either!)

My favorite shape is the heart, so I have quite a few of those, and I think they're a perfect pairing for the roses.

( I can't quite shake the voice of the head of my art department ringing around in the back of my head saying (about the hearts), "It's trite, it's cliche, and it's been done too often before", darn her! -- but I prefer to see hearts as a solidly established and fundamental part of our collective visual vocabulary. If I'm a writer, should I avoid using the words "I love you" because they're so common as to be trite and meaningless? No! I don't think so. and I won't shy away from hearts as a visual touchstone either. Touchstones of that familiarity can as easily be used for power as for triviality. I'm sure of it!)

Anyway, aside from encoding the meaning of love and romance, the heart shape also combines angularity with curves, and that is a recurrent theme in itself in these blocks and in my body of work as a whole.

By using just a couple shapes recurrently will allow me to use a whole lot more of them without overpowering my blocks. The subtlety of difference between one heart and the next will keep it interesting, and the sameness will give a sense of harmony and repetition.

No excuses

I haven't put up any updates here for awhile. Not offering any excuses, just picking up today and moving forward.

This week my stitching was almost entirely devoted to one of the four CQ blocks I made for Sharon B's online cq class. I call this block "Patchwork" because it is composed of 4 sub-blocks that were created through the foundation piecing method.

This block is for a larger project I'm calling "Roses" because each block features an image of the valentine roses I got from my husband this year. (I printed the images onto ready-to-print cloth with my inkjet printer.) There are 4 8-inch blocks for the Roses wall quilt, and so far I've done embroidery work on just one of them-- on "patchwork".

Since the block's construction has so many straight lines and sharp angles, I am using a lot of curves in my embroidery to add counterpoint and to soften the flow of the block.

close-ups (including the stitches from last week):

Algerian Eye

Buttonhole wheel

Up-and-down buttonhole

Basque and chain in a serpentine pattern

Heringbone

Fly stitch with a bullion tail (couched into a curved form)

Continuous oyster, with long float couched down

Up-and-down buttonhole with the float picot buttonholed, and bullion buds

Feather stitch, detatched chain, bullion buds (pair of tornado-shaped bullions)

I say my stitching time this week was almost entirely devoted to "Patchwork", but I still managed to find some time to slip in a couple other stitches on a couple other projects.

I added two seam treatments to "Peacock":

continuous oyster stitch in hand-dyed DMC floss

buttonhole picots

The buttonhole picots are not cast-on stitch, though the effect looks much the same. I worked them a little differently, is all. Cast-ons would work just as well.

Unfortunately, I ran out of the blue-purple variegated thread before I ran out of seam line! Ack! I'd like to continue the same seam treatment, but I've searched all through my thread supply and can't figure out where the rest of it would be (I thought I should still have some.. hmm.)

And I did some catch-up work on the fabric ATCs and postcards for the 2012 birthday exchange:

blanket, detatched chain, up-and-down buttonhole, herringbone, straight stitches

blanket, chain, laced herringbone, up-and-down buttonhole, twisted chain, feather, and herringbone couching a ribbon.

Up-and-down buttonhole, chain (in metallic thread), Algerian eye

up-and-down buttonhole, feather, Pekinese, Casalguidi over blanket, knotted stem

Casalguidi over blanket

Pekinese heart outline (the looping thread is one of my handspun yarns), knotted stem numbers

These ATCs and Postcards need to be pretty quick and brainless in order to get them finished and out into the mail, so, with a few exceptions, I tend to use the stitches that I feel most comfortable with-- the ones that I know how to do without looking up a tutorial, or the ones that I just plain enjoy doing. Pekinese made it onto the pc because I needed to do the TAST stitch, and the pc was what I was working on at the time! heh.

Up-and-down buttonhole has definitely found its home in my Go-To stitches! Blanket, feather, and chain were already there. Herringbone isn't exactly one of my Go-To stitches, but it shows up pretty often nonetheless. bullion is slow, and it takes up a lot of thread, but I enjoy doing it, so it also claims a spot in my Go-To list.

To catch up on my TAST stitching I still need to do some cast-ons, and I'd like to do some better Algerian eyes. ... and then, at some point, I'd like to go back through some of the earlier stitches and refresh my working knowledge of how to do them and what their names were. I think I've forgotten most of them already! ack!!

Tuesday Stitchers import: this week's progress

This week my stitching was almost entirely devoted to one of the four CQ blocks I made for Sharon B's online cq class. I call this block "Patchwork" because it is composed of 4 sub-blocks that were created through the foundation piecing method.

Since the block's construction has so many straight lines and sharp angles, I am using a lot of curves in my embroidery to add counterpoint and to soften the flow of the block.

close-ups (including the stitches from last week):

Algerian Eye

Buttonhole wheel

Up-and-down buttonhole

Basque and chain in a serpentine pattern

Heringbone

Fly stitch with a bullion tail (couched into a curved form)

Continuous oyster, with long float couched down

Up-and-down buttonhole with the float picot buttonholed, and bullion buds

Feather stitch, detatched chain, bullion buds (pair of tornado-shaped bullions)

I say my stitching time this week was almost entirely devoted to "Patchwork", but I still managed to find some time to slip in a couple other stitches on a couple other projects.

I added two seam treatments to "Peacock":

continuous oyster stitch in hand-dyed DMC floss

buttonhole picots

The buttonhole picots are not cast-on stitch, though the effect looks much the same. I worked them a little differently, is all. Cast-ons would work just as well.

Unfortunately, I ran out of the blue-purple variegated thread before I ran out of seam line! Ack! I'd like to continue the same seam treatment, but I've searched all through my thread supply and can't figure out where the rest of it would be (I thought I should still have some.. hmm.)

And I did some catch-up work on the fabric ATCs and postcards for the 2012 birthday exchange:

blanket, detatched chain, up-and-down buttonhole, herringbone, straight stitches

blanket, chain, laced herringbone, up-and-down buttonhole, twisted chain, feather, and herringbone couching a ribbon.

Up-and-down buttonhole, chain (in metallic thread), Algerian eye

up-and-down buttonhole, feather, Pekinese, Casalguidi over blanket, knotted stem

Casalguidi over blanket

Pekinese heart outline (the looping thread is one of my handspun yarns), knotted stem numbers

These ATCs and Postcards need to be pretty quick and brainless in order to get them finished and out into the mail, so, with a few exceptions, I tend to use the stitches that I feel most comfortable with-- the ones that I know how to do without looking up a tutorial, or the ones that I just plain enjoy doing. Pekinese made it onto the pc because I needed to do the TAST stitch, and the pc was what I was working on at the time! heh.

Up-and-down buttonhole has definitely found its home in my Go-To stitches! Blanket, feather, and chain were already there. Herringbone isn't exactly one of my Go-To stitches, but it shows up pretty often nonetheless. bullion is slow, and it takes up a lot of thread, but I enjoy doing it, so it also claims a spot in my Go-To list.

To catch up on my TAST stitching I still need to do some cast-ons, and I'd like to do some better Algerian eyes. ... and then, at some point, I'd like to go back through some of the earlier stitches and refresh my working knowledge of how to do them and what their names were. I think I've forgotten most of them already! ack!!

Tuesday Stitchers import: a break from the peacock

This week I had to take a break from my peacock cq. I signed myself up for Sharon Boggon's online CQ class again (I took it last year and found it so rewarding that I thought I'd take it again!), so I had a lot of homework to catch up on! It's a six-week class, and we're just finishing up week 3, so I am really far behind on my embroidery for it! ack. I blame dancing. My husband and I do swing dancing (Lindy Hop type), and we've been a bit busy with being out of town, having people visit from out of town, etc. Plus there is grandma to visit and family up for the summer... it's been hectic.

Anyway, I ended up sewing up 4 blocks for the Sharon B class, though I will probably only get one of them stitched up during the remainder of class.

"Victorian" because it required Victorian overlap-and-baste construction technique.

"Snail's Trail" from the traditional patchwork block.

"Patchwork" because this block is made up of four smaller pieced blocks.

and "Home" because it looks like it has front porch steps and a roof. :)

Originally I was only going to try one block, but I sketched up several while I was travelling (and couldn't sew), and Sharon encouraged me to make a set and combine them into a larger project. So now I know what I will be doing when the peacock is done! Ha!

The rose bouquet motifs are printed onto ready-to-print washable cotton printer cloth. I don't like it as much as the cloth I prepare myself with Bubble Jet Set, but it was there, it was quick, and it's good enough. Plus, I caught a great sale on the ready-to-print sheets and have been intending to try them anyway. good deal.

The rose bouquet motifs are also photographs of the Valentine's bouquet that my husband bought for me this year! Yay!!! I loved the bouquet, and now I love all the pictures I took of it! Who would have thought the joy could last so long!

As you can see, I barely got started on my hand stitching. I hope to make up for that today.

The weather's been really HOT here, so another thing that took me away from sewing was re-organizing my house. I took my sewing area out of the upstairs room where it has been for so long and moved it downstairs into the utility room. It is MUCH cooler there, and it is conveniently located next to the laundry. I did all of the piecing of these four blocks down in my new sewing area, and I have to say, I like it. And I am very grateful that I managed to get it all moved a few weeks ago before the heat of summer really kicked in! Now I just have to figure out what I DID with everything when I moved it! My organization system is temporarily shot!

I do have to say, I love the embroidery that I did get accomplished on "Patchwork". -- especially the feather stitch vine with bullion buds. The bullion buds are the "tornado" shape that so frustrated Nancy when I showed her how to make bullions over lunch. The "tornado" shape (bulky at one end, tapered to nothing at the other) is something that frustrated me for ages, too! I worked SO hard at getting my bullions all nice and even from one side to the other... and then I saw a vintage handkerchief that made use of the tornado shape to make realistic flower buds! Yay!! ... so I had to remember how to make the tornado shape all over again after having eliminated it from my vocabulary. ack. I think I got it, though!! Basically, once the needle is wrapped, I twist very slightly in the loosening direction and push the wraps down toward the needle eye so they bunch up on that end, then pull the other end snug when I pull the bullion taut to the ground cloth. :)

I used a single (doubled-over) strand of DMC floss to make the bullions, and used 5 wraps on one petal, 7 wraps on the other. The base end of the bud spaces the two bullions a thread or two apart to create a wider bud base, but the two bullions share the same hole at the tip end. After snugging down the bullion, I then carried the needle a thread or two further from the bud tip before bringing it to the back of the cloth to create an even finer tip to my buds. The end result is pretty close to what I was trying to achieve! yay! and anyway, I like it. :)