Back to Stitching

When I was asked to take part in the Quilt Group Open Day,(The link will take you to the Toowoomba Quilt Group Blog where you will find lovely examples of the quilts the ladies have made),I was very flattered. 

I don't quilt now myself  but I  was to have a display of my embroidery work, (which you can also see on the Quilt  Group Open Day link, and demonstrate some stitching throughout the day. 

The Club had a very successful day, with lots and lots of visitors.   Our organiser Ineke did a wonderful job with the Club getting a lot of positive feedback.

Needing something to stitch on, I made up a couple of little sample kits to use, and have now been able to finish these.

This first one is demonstrating some Mountmellick style stitching, and the second I have used to show bullions and woven picots which are used a lot in Casalguidi work.   Of course, being me I have not done things in the traditional manner but put  a creative twist to the designs.

The last of the first batch of cushions is ready to post when the rain stops, and now these will all be subjected to being thrown into the washing machine to establish how everything stands up to being laundered in this manner.......fingers crossed!   DIL wants to ensure that they will do what the label says they will do, and we can eliminate using any threads that are not colorfast.

In the photo the G looks crooked but on the piece I could not see that, so in future DIL is going to do the attaching of the letters because she has a better eye for a straight line than I do.  Although I think it would be pretty good if all the letters and hearts were crooked.

When I was stitching last week I was having trouble seeing the work, and not at all at night so on the advice of my good friend Dianne went to the website of The Scissorman and found myself a floor lamp. Check out the website it is very interesting and tempting.

Yesterday this box was left on my doorstep .  Inside was another box

And inside that were the makings of this.

I am so proud of myself I was able to put it together without the help of any man and did not electrocute myself when I plugged it in and turned it on.   No doubt many of you will already have one of these or similar and know what a difference they can make to being able to see your work clearer.   It even comes with a magnifying glass.  Sorry about the poor photo

and I went shopping.....and stitched!

Remember those shoes that I threw in the bin in Melbourne, the ones that gave up the ghost after 25 years.....well I went shopping and bought a pair to last me for the next 25 years.

I'm going a bit tarty in my old age with all this bling. Well when we get old we have to replace what we lose with something eh.  Here's hoping that I don't topple off those heels.

I have been thinking of practising some "Gangnam" style dancing for the wedding, but not sure whether those heels would be suitable.   Just might have to kick them off.....old ex ex  husband won't be at this one so I can have a good time!

My outfit is one I wore to the Dunk Island wedding and it has some bling too.  Photos will be seen after the wedding.  

AND  I HAVE been stitching in between doing other stuff like getting rid of all the grot I had allowed to accumulate since returning home.   It gave me a good feeling to have my unit all neat and tidy and clean again.  I felt very rightious but the truth is my friend Di was coming for a sewing day so my guilt got the better of me.

I even sat for hours winding off all the scattered mess of threads sitting on my table so I could have a little skite, and create an impression of being a bit of a neat freak.

Firstly I managed to finish the Bonnet stitch for Tast.   Added just a couple of cast on buttonholes, and a couple of pistil stitches, and one cup stitch which now leaves me almost up to date.

I think if you click on the photo you will be able to see it larger, and if not, when you click on it and get the new one up hold down the ctrl key and scroll with the mouse wheel to make the photo larger.

The lovely piece of tatting on the bottom was a gift in a bag of tatting pieces from my friend Sue of Suztats.   I have been holding on to these, and this embroidery  was the perfect place to use it.

The next piece of embroidery is for a bag I am making.    First I painted the design using my inktense blocks. Because it turned out a bit dark I rinsed out some of the colour then ironed it dry to set the colour.  I have embroidered over the design, and added some beads.   I have cut out some nice blue waterwave taffeta to line it with, and when it is sewn up I will add some buttonhole keepers for the drawstring........will post a photo of the finished project when it is done

It was really satisfying to finish these two projects as they have been sitting round for ages.   All I have to do now is to get on the sewing machine and complete the bag and I can move on to more things that need to be done.

So there it is not one post, but two.....gradually catching up.

Back to Memory Lane Monday

I know, I know not the damn reef pictures again!  but  since starting Tast again I have been looking at my Reef Embroideries, to see how I used some of the stitches, and realised that I did not have any of them here on this blog.  So thought I would go back to Down Memory Lane Monday and  include them.   Followers of my old  Twisted Threads blog will  recognise them.  There is one new one though ..called my latest.

buttonholes bullions, feather, wrapped bars bullions, knots and found objects.

 First of all I will start with different stitches that I used to create  depictions of the various life on the reef.  There is not a lot of variety in the stitches, just different ways of using them.

feather, buttonhole and cretan pistil stitches couching

feather and buttonhole, detached chain and knots

buttonhole stitches bullions and beads.

buttonhole, wrapped feather stitch, pistil stitch and cretan

sword stitch and wrapped bars silk ribbon knots

Wrapped  feather stitch, fly stitch.

feather stitch, fly stitch, cretan, buttonhole, knots and silk ribbon

Woven bars, couching, feather, fly, knots,  buttonhole

Many of the same stitches are used but in different ways, and with different threads a stitch can look very different.

Right hand end of large reef

Left end of large reef

Full Reef emb which I had as my header at one time.

Now other  Reef Embroideries from which the sample stitches are taken. 

My latest. It has a garden scene on one which is not finished so I did not show it yet.  I have called this Land and Sea

I hope it has been a pleasure to revisit these reef embroideries and stitches with me.

"Splash". Week 7 and 8 Tast and print on fabric

The last two weeks of Tast have been detached chain and running chain stitches.  I have combined these on a fabric page  I have called "Splash".  There have been so many wonderful examples worked once again for this weeks Tast but I think my favourite of all is one stitched by Luiz called Good morning Maharani.  Click on the link and have a look at his wonderful and creative stitching.   Also hop over to Sharons Pintangle and read more about the Tast adventure.

Some time ago I was playing with the Gimp programme and produced what are called nova circles.  Then I discovered these could be printed onto linen, however, I was unable to get the placement on the linen right and ended up with two overlapping pictures on the one piece of fabric, which has languished in a box ever since.

At the time I did print one correctly on the linen and turned it into my piece I called "Carnivale" 

This piece is called "Splash"  I again used a variety of threads and included some gold thread in the needle.   The 'scales' of the fish on the right are all detached chain, and the fish on the left is filled with running chain.

Here is a closer version as well.

The Nova circles look like bubbles to me.  Below  is  a photo below of the original piece of linen that I  printed with two overlapping designs.

For those who have not seen it here is a picture of "Carnivale"  firstly the greyed picture and the completed one.

This has actually photographed darker than it really is.

Carnivale

Book pages

My friend Judy sent me some lovely deep pink velvet ribbon in a parcel of goodies before Christmas, and i just want to show her what I have done with it. The ribbon was just perfect for a surround for this.  I have pinned it onto some blue wool, and now it is ready to become a cover for a journal...if and when I will find the right size book.  So I wanted Judy to see what I had used it for, and to show her ET as she had not seen it.

Some may remember this embroidery which I nicknamed ET....cant you just see the big "eyes" it turned out that way purely by accident.  This cover is for a journal of some of the general embroideries I have done over the years.

I have also made a page from my buttonhole stitch sampler.  I placed the sampler and the and the edgings diagonally on the page, and added some more samples of the buttonhole stitch.  I also used some more of the threads that Judy sent me...see the golden yellow on the length of blue ribbon.

The blue edgings are from the stash of laces I received from my neighbour.