Back to the P...ages

 "Ages" is a very mild expression for the time it is taking for the Pages.  More like an ongoing saga. 12 pair (front and back sewn together)  of pages are now complete.  7 pair are awaiting embellishing and yesterday I came across 6 more old samples of stitches which need to be made into pages.

Does anyone remember my attempt at couching for  Tast way back in week 9 of 2012.   I now have it on one of the pages for the current Tast  fabric book.  The yellow ribbon has been replaced by lilac and I have cut the piece into a circle to fit onto the background. It is called "Dancing in the dark"

I have the Gimp photo editing programme and I have been fascinated at the many designs that can be created with the stamps and processes.  I think it was in 2010 that I took a couple of designs and printed them on to fabric and embroidered over them.  The next page is one of those designs

Here is the original design. The finished product is not much like this.  I can even see better possibilities now.

Since starting the putting together of the pages part of the project I have discovered quite a few examples of me playing with stitches over time,   from when I first started embroidery in 1994 so it looks as though there will have to be another  book for these older pages I have put together.  I even have my very first attempts at basic stitches on a sampler......or should I say scrap of fabric.

Early on in my embroidery life I became besotted with reef embroideries, and the next page is a sample of what  I came up with  trying out various stitches in relation to corals and grasses that grow under the water.  

In March 1995 I commenced a correspondence course on creative embroidery. which I was enjoying until I contracted Ross River Fever and had to give it away after the first year or so.

The  next are two pages I now have ready are  from early in the course of running stitch    Although my efforts back then were very amateurish I want to include them as a step in my needlework journey. 

Now if I can get these fabric books  completed before anything happens to me someone in the family might want to keep  them  rather than find a box of "mums rubbish" which would just be assigned to the bin

Last but not least are another two pieces of stitching  worked for Tast.  I got quite behind a few times due to illness and other things, so both of these are composites of more than one stitch.

 The lace and surrounding motifs on the page above  are from my collection of antique laces.  The piece of lovely tatting was made for my by my friend Sue of Suztats . The colours went perfectly with the background fabric which I dyed at a transfer dyeing class I attended last year. The stitches are up and down feather stitch, raised cross stitch flower, buttonhole bar, herringbone and french knots. 

Finally  another composite group of stitches from Tast.  I have called this "Mother fish and her babies".  I really went to town with the stitches on this piece.  Mother fish is outlined in Palestrina or Double knot stitch.  Othere stitches are Pekinese stitch, up and down buttonhole, linked double chain, oyster stitch, algerian eye, bullions, drizzle stitch and sheaf stitch.

I loved the background fabric for the page it reminded me so much of the frolicking fish so I outlined some of the shapes in running stitch.
Like threads, one can never have enough books....well that is my excuse for another purchase anyway.

At last I have my own copy of The Batsford Encyclopaedia of Embroidery Stitches by Anne Butler.  I found it at Abe Books and it arrived in a short space of time although it and the wrapping suffered some damage where the post lady forced it into the letter box.   Needless to say I have spent hours studying the contents.

Even though these encyclopaedia may cover many of the same stitches, there is always something new to find in them.