Spring Cleaning Halted

Oh Dear.... I am meant to be spring cleaning, but it all came to a sudden halt.

I was clearing out old stuff to make room for a son who is coming home for a break. 

"His' bedroom was being used to store rather a lot of my quilty/crafty/arty stash. Well you can probably guess what happened....lol.

At the bottom of an embroidered bag that I used to take to quilt class, I found

.......(drum roll please)....... 

three skeins of my hand space-dyed cotton thread.

Oh it is so yummy. Almost Pastel rainbow colours. I love it, and can't believe I'd forgotten about it.

It was dyed a few years ago, around the time that I was dyeing everything in sight. When I ran out of fabric to dye I'd pop in socks, threads, trousers, skirts, t-shirts, tablecloths, and whatever else was within my reach, into the dye bath it would go.

Anyway, this thread is so going to get used now. After my hand niddy-noddy action to gather it into more usable balls, and my dear hubby's offering of his feet too hold the skeins (but too late because I'd almost finished by then, but I'll remember that for next time).

I have now stitched a sample of it on my stitch journal cloth, and I am in love.

Photo's will follow soon (don't worry, I won't show you my hubby's feet).

Spring cleaning can wait ..... I'm having some fun.

It's ok, the son that is coming home is the one who once gave me a beautiful china mug that says 

"Only dull women have tidy houses".

That mug still has pride of place on my Welsh dresser.

That's my boy!!!!

TAST Week 5 - Herringbone Stitch

TAST Week 5 - Herringbone Stitch

Herringbone stitch has many variations and it is very popular on Crazy Quilts. 

It can be used as the base stitch to 'build' many designs on and in this way can be combined with many other stitches to make very interesting patterns for seam treatments.

Here is the unstitched hand dyed evenweave panel that I am starting for February's stitches. 

The working area is 9 inches square and will eventually be put in a journal book along with the other 'pages' of stitches. There could be any number of different stitches on each panel. It all depends on how much time I have for stitching and whether I experiment lots or a little with the various stitches.

 

The Basic Herringbone stitch worked in DMC stranded cotton floss.

 

Stacked Herringbone

 

 Rows of Overlapping Herringbone

An experiment with curved edges

This was meant to be Long and Short Herringbone stitch, but I think I ruined it slightly by trying to do it on a curve. I probably should have at least drawn a guide line for the curve first, but I hardly ever plan ahead. Free Form Stitching is the name of this blog for good reason, haha!!!

Now this next one is actually called Ladder Herringbone, but I think it is very like a 'laced' Cretan stitch.

I really should not have used three different colour threads in my needle at the same time as it is very difficult to see the stitch. Sorry about that.

And here is a Closed Herringbone stitch.

Started off a wee bit uneven on the left for a couple of centimetres, but then once I got the hang of 'what-happens-where' things got neater.

And to experiment some more with the Closed Herringbone stitch .....

(I like the solid look of this stitch)

I wondered what effect a variegated thread would have with this stitch.

I rather like the result. Only problem was that it uses up a LOT of thread, but sometimes it is necessary to use quantity just to get the right look to a project.

I shall definitely be using this textured stitch in my CQJP.

So here is my Journal Page so far with all my TAST week 5 stitches.

Happy Stitching

TAST Week 1 - Fly Stitch

TAST Week 1 - Fly Stitch

I have decided to do my TAST stitches on 9" x 9" squares of recycled even-weave linen that I have hand dyed. These will then be made into a stitch reference journal and added to throughout the year.

I shall also be using these TAST stitches on my CQJP but my Crazy Quilt blocks will get many other stitches too, because I want to use more than the 4 a month TAST stitches on each block right from block one, so I shall be creating two separate challenge projects. 

1. TAST - a stitch reference journal book
2. CQJP - a Crazy Quilt Wall Hanging incorporating some TAST stitches.

I am expecting to get at least 4 weeks of experimenting with TAST stitches on each square, but I may alter that if I get carried away with some stitches.

I shall mostly be using up my stranded cotton thread stash 'left-over' from other projects. It's amazing just how many colours one person can collect, and it's even more amazing how many knots and tangles just suddenly appear in the threads in the bag.

It must be one of life's little mysteries - who puts the knots in the bags?

Anyway - on with TAST 2012.

Here is the first of my hand dyed 9" linen squares before the needle got to it.

And here is a bunch of threads from my stash bag (just a small handful of them).

You can see I tried to keep the threads in order on the project cards, but it seems that someone threw a bunch of knots in the bag too. Ah well, I'll untangle that lot as I get to it.

The purple thread in the following pic is where I randomly started stitching my fly stitch. 

I won't be using a doodle-cloth as my stitching samples will all go straight onto the linen so that I can keep track of any bloopers I make too.

And Finally my "play-piece"................. all my fly stitch samples for TAST 2012 Week 1

Bring on week 2

.