Something new and TAST 26 Half Chevron

Well, I finally did it, I tried making felt. We had some roving from a needlefelting kit, and since the kids just wanted to make dogs, I decided to use the other colours to make felt. The photo above is the front (or at least the side I decided to use) and the photo below the back, which is also quite nice. It was a fun experience and my younger daughter also tried her hand at is and enjoyed it as well. Of course our pieces are only about 4" x 5" so they are only useful for so much. And they aren't thick or strong. We'll continue working but in the meantime, I had a new medium for my TAST practice.
Here is what I have done with the half chevron, including two beaded curves, also something new for me. I'm very pleased with this since this type of embroidery is such a new thing to me. It was very nice working with the cotton floss on wool felt, and the beads weren't as tedious as I expected. I just sort of followed the shapes in the felt and tried not to make the colours clash. All in all, a very fun experience.

TAST 25 Long and Short Stitch

In my stumpwork projects I often use long and short, or at least a reasonable approximation, for shading and filling petals and leaves and such. So I thought I'd try doing counted long and short to get a real feel for the stitch. I also wanted to experiment with colours and shading so I made a rainbow band of sorts. I had a harder time than I expected getting four shades of the same sort of colour, I guess that means I need to add to my stash:-) But it was very interesting to see how the shades worked together or in some cases didn't - although I guess it would depend on the look you were going for. The small red sample is done with 2 strands of overdyed silk. I love this colour and I love the way the shading works. It would be quite different with satin stitch covering the same area so I can see the use for this stitch with overdyed threads as well.

Below is a stumpwork version of the watercolour 'portrait' of Jane Austen done by her sister Cassandra. which I have stitched using long and short.

Stumpwork project done!

Back at TAST22 Satin Stitch I showed a leaf and some petals that I was working on for a new stumpwork project. It all started out with my trying to figure out what I could do with Altoid tins, other than a tiny sewing kit, since I've become very fond of the chocolate coated Altoids and have a few tins lying around. I came up with the idea of making a book, sort of. The outside shown above is supposed to look a bit like a book, complete with gilt page edges. Instead of pages inside, I have put a stumpwork Virginia rose.

In my new spirit of creating for art's sake, this piece has no purpose and will not be a gift. I am just going to enjoy it.

I would love to hear from others who have done stitched things with Altoid tins (since I have more). I did do an online search and found all sorts of things, but most weren't stitched and I really don't want an Altoid tin mouse for my computer or an Altoid tin wallet! I am also interested in how you stick things to the tin. I have used double sided tape and some Heat n' Bond for my projects so far because I hate liquid glue.

TAST 24 French Knots

Even though Sharon gave us leave to mix French knots with other TAST stitches, my personal challenge is to try and use only the stitch of the week with maybe a bit of another stitch. I've used French knots in many things, especially since they are quite useful when doing flowers. This week I decided to try French knots with as many types of yarn as I could find, and with different numbers of strands. I've used tapestry wool, DMC cotton floss, DMC linen floss, rayon floss, silk, silk ribbon, and Krenick braid and blending filament. I learned alot. Using blending filament (4 strands) to make a French knot is like trying to herd cats. Silk ribbon doesn't make a French knot different enough to make it necessary to use ribbon. Rayon is almost as bad a blending filament. And as always, I love silk!!!
For those who are wondering, I was thinking of the parterre garden at Hampton Court Palace when I drew this design. As usual, it ended up lopsided, although the initial drawing didn't look quite so skewed. I must work on symmetry!

A Book Review of Austenland

Last week I learned about a new book, 'Austenland' by Shannon Hale, when a short description was posted on the Janeites list.

Yes, I'm a fan of Jane Austen. I'm not obsessive, and I'm certainly not a scholar, but I do enjoy reading all of her work and some of the biographies, comments and critiques. I also enjoy reading sequels and other related books, although I don't necessarily like them all and I rely on my local public library for many of them for that reason. But I won't be reading the new book that suggests that Mr. Bennet had autism!

Anyway, Austenland seemed like nice, fun reading. Here is the blurb I saw.
"Diane Hayes seems to be a normal young New Yorker, but her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in "Pride and Prejudice," is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. On a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane' s fantasies of meeting the perfect gentleman suddenly become more real than she imagined. Shannon Hale's bestselling young adult novels (Goose Girl, Princess Academy)portend great fun for readers - Austen fans or not - of her first novel for grown-ups."

At first I was thinking I would rush out and buy it, but a quick look at the Amazon reviews made me think library instead, and sure enough it was in processing and I put it on hold and had it in my hand within 4 days.

To start with, if I had bought it, I wouldn't have been upset. It was a fun read thatI was able to finish in one day (with the usual family interruptions). It was quite funny to read the lines the actors at the resort were given to create the Regency feeling for the visiting women. The author was obviously familiar with Austen's work because many of the characters, scenes and plot stories were based on things from the novels. It was a fun challenge to be able to pick out the Austen novel or character that was the inspiration.

While there were many enjoyable and silly parts to the story, it was also interesting to follow the main character, Diane, as she wrestled with what was real and what was fantasy. As Diane comes to grips with what it might be like to live at the time of Jane Austen and what she wants from her real life, you get the sense of personal growth that Austen's characters actually go through in the novels (Even Fanny Price grows a bit, thought many critics don't agree).

All in all, I would recommend this book if you enjoy Austen sequels or Regency romances. If you don't like the Kiera Knightly P&P, you probably won't like this book.

TAST 23 Wheatear and Plimoth Jacket sample

I'm afraid after my excitement over the Plimoth Jacket project sample that I wanted to mail off as soon as possible, I had little energy left for wheatear samples, but I did manage a nice row of strawberries. The funniest thing about the wheatear, after seeing the amazing things people have done with it, is the comment in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Needlework "Works best in straight rows, but may handle gentle curves."

This is what occupied my time, the stitch sample I'm sending off to Plimoth Plantation in hopes of participating in their jacket project. My favourites, which ktj concurs with, are the Ceylon stitch worm and the Spiral Trellis circle. The bottom sample is not in my test sample below, it is Detached Buttonhole Needlelace. The bottom right section lifts up.

I Couldn't Wait

How many of you knew I wouldn't wait until Wednesday to try out the Plimoth Jacket stitching? Well, you were right. Despite the silk calling me, I sensibly decided to try out the stitches and especially the shapes first with some perle cotton. So top left, detached buttonhole with reverse chain outline. Middle is trellis stitch on a backstitch outline. The worm is Ceylon stitch, very, very fun. The circle is spiral trellis which was a blast and the line is knot stitch which took a few stitches to get into. There is one more thing, and outline with detached buttonhole needlelace that I will try tomorrow. I am very happy I tested things first since all but the detached buttonhole and backstitch outline were new to me. It really helped to get the feel of the tension and size of the stitches. I can hardly wait to try it all with linen.

In case you are missed my original mention of the blog about this jacket, here is a link to the first post on The Embroiderer's Story blog that has a picture of the jacket.

Plimoth Plantation Jacket Project

MY KIT ARRIVED!!!!!

I am so excited. I can hardly wait to get started with this project. For those of you who haven't seen the information about the blog and the project, go to http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/

The instructions are excellent plus there is a CD with colour photos. And who can resist 4 new spools of silk. I'm trying to figure out when I can start, given that I must get some things done for work this week. I'm thinking I'll read over the instructions while I watch the kids ride, and then wait until Wednesday and Thursday when I have long stretches where I can really get into the stitching. I've used many of the stitches in stumpwork, but then there is this great spiral trellis that I can't wait to try. For those who like to look at stitch instructions there are pdfs of all the stitches in some of the blog entries.

TAST 22 Satin Stitch

I use satin stitch heavily in many of the pieces I've been working on lately, especially stumpwork. But since I slacked off last week by using what I had been working on, I thought I'd do something just for TAST this week. The inspiration for this was a fill stitch gone bad, done by somebody else, and while it didn't work for that piece, I thought it would be perfect for this. The leaves and flowers are also satin stitch.

Since I've mentioned recent projects with satin stitch, here they are. These two are petals and leaves for a wild rose stumpwork project. I'm planning a special finish for these so I'll post more photos soon.

This is the tail of a dragon I'm putting in the center of a CQ pillow for my daughter. I started the dragon back in February with the tail and discovered I needed more floss but I could no longer find the DMC colour variations I had started with. They had stopped making the all dark blue and now only had a dark blue with purple. So I blended it in by adding some purple to the tail and then getting on with the rest. So far I am happy and so is my daughter. She likes the scale effect of the chain stitch in the body. I love the way the satin stitch reflects differently with the different directions.

Finally, here is the Virginia tapestry project finished and framed. Most of the motifs were made with stain stitch because that was the easiest filler for the designs the kids drew. Some, like my daughter, thought about the direction of the fur or petal growth while stitching, others went higglety-pigglety but they still look good. This was displayed at a county festival today and well received by those who saw it. It looks like a local museum wants it for the summer, but afterwards the principal wants to keep it at the school - she even paid for the framing!

Stitching kit done

Despite having a few other things to do, I managed to finish the stitching kit I'm giving to the art club teacher who supported my VA tapestry idea. The last meeting is today after school and I'll post the finished tapestry tomorrow. For the top of the tin I decided on a real sampler of stitches so she would have a small reference library in hand. Being a part of TAST made this an easy project, although choosing what to do was a bit hard. The top row is cross stitch, the next a blackwork lozenge motif, both done with cotton floss, then Queen stitch, which is done with flower thread. The initials are cross stitch again, but this time in Vicki Clayton silk. The chevron stitch is done in linen thread (you may recognize this from my TAST work). Next Algerian eye done with Gumnuts Poppies wool/silk thread (really fun to work with). The up and down buttonhole variation is in floss again (this was from Elizabeth at Quieter Moments) and finally a row of flowers with herringbone leaves done in flower thread (remember TAST week 1) and French knot flowers in floss. The border is the crossed buttonhole from TAST last week.
Here is a side view show the ribbon I used to cover the tin. The lid has had dyed silk ribbon wrapped around 3 times. The bottom is some new Martha Stewart ribbon from Michael's. It is self adhesive and fit perfectly around the bottom of the tin. I used the same ribbon and a couple of the others in the pack to cover the bottom as well.
Inside is the biscornu and scissor fob, on a new pair of scissors. I put a magnetic bottom in the box, and included some gold plated needles and a needle threader. Below is the finished scissor fob since it wasn't completed in the last post.
I really had a great time doing this. I always wondered about people who specialized in 'smalls' but now I can really see the appeal. It was just so much fun deciding what to include and stitching up these things, and the change from stitching to finishing keeps the interest going. Mind you, I think I need to read up on how to finish tin tops. I sort of fudged it with some double-sided fusible interfacing and double-sided tape and I'm sure there must be a better way.

TAST 21 Crossed Buttonhole Stitch

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to devote my stitching time to making a small sewing set for the art club teacher who didn't think I was crazy when I suggested the VA tapestry project to her. So while I don't have a neat little picture or interesting set of variations, I do have this week's TAST as a nice border on a biscornu and scissor fob. This is the finished biscornu (can't begin to list all the sites I have seen this at, as well as seeing a couple done by an EGA chapter member at a meeting, just Google the word and you'll get instructions).

This is the top of the scissor fob. Both of these will fit in an Altoid's tin, so I'm also going to stitch something for the lid. I'm not sure what yet, but it will have the same blue crossed buttonhole border.

I'm using 28 count Monaco cloth for this project and it is the first time I have used this type of cloth. It is quite nice for the over one work I am doing on these pieces. One of the members of my EGA chapter did some hardanger work with it and she thought it worked quite well for that. Having recently done a pilot class for a pulled work project I think it wouldn't be very good for that, a bit too stiff.

Needle felting for fun!

Last fall we went to the Fall Fiber Festival of Virginia and saw some wonderful needle felted figures. My daughters and I fell in love and one of them decided she wanted a needlefelting kit, so we bought one. But no instructions! So I looked and looked for the perfect book to get us started and then one day at a friends place I saw what we needed: Fleece Dog: A Little Bit of Magic Created With Raw Wool and a Special Needle by Nobuko Nagakubo. I couldn't get to the quilting shop where my friend purchased it (good thing because I would have bought lots of fabric) but I did order it online. And this is what I've done

The dogs my daughters have made are adorable but they are waiting for glass eyes - I was to impatient! When they have eyes I'll post photos.

Aside from the expected needle pricks to the fingers this was a surprisingly easy and fun project. Not outrageously expensive either. Now I'm thinking of other things I could felt. Luckily there are great things to view on the Internet like Mandy's felt and Dy's felt box

Along the same lines there is silk paper at Calidore but I'm getting ahead of myself. This weekend I'm devoting myself to a small pincushion and scissor fob for the art club teacher who has been so wonderful to take on my crazy tapestry idea. She now wants to do more stitching and is going to work on a stitch book! I'm such a bad influence.

TAST 20 Butterfly Chain

As I was thinking about what to do with this stitch I was also reading a book I received for Mother's Day, Medieval Gardens by Anne Jennings. It is a lovely book and one of the garden features it covers and gives instructions for is a turf bench. There was one picture in particular, which I can't find on the Internet to link to, that shows a woman reclining against a wall that seems to be set into a hillside. There is grass with flowers under her and extending out from the top of the wall as well. So I thought that closely packed butterfly chain would look like the wall, and then spaced butterfly chain would be the flowers on the lawn. I had no green linen for the lawn so I got out my trusty watercolours and made some green linen. Instead of plain butterfly, I tried a sort of weaving butterfly, hoping to get the effect of bricks, but as you can see below, it doesn't look at all like bricks. But it sort of looks like trellis work, so I changed my idea, but kept the green linen.
So I made really long foundation groups, with four threads to make trellising easy, and came up with this.
Then I decided to play around and this is what happened. Once again, if I was going to do this on something I'd plan a bit better so things weren't lopsided, but I really like playing around with weaving the threads under and over the foundation stitching.
Maybe I need to think about getting a loom!

New Blog - The Embroiderers' Story

Dorothy just posted to the EGA group about a wonderful new project to recreate an amazing embroidered jacket. The project is being done at Plimoth Plantation and they are going to keep us up-to-date with a blog http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/. It looks like it will be a very interesting project. Now there is something that will take a long time!

Inspiration and Creativity

I have so much to think about this week that my brain is racing faster than I can really think - and it's not just the tea and coffee I've been drinking all day. Rather, it is all the interesting and inspiring blogs I've been reading. Add to that the new things I've been reading up on for work, and well, you have one busy brain.


To start with, I've noticed that since I started my out-of-the-house part time job I've had alot more mental energy. I've had to read up on lots of new technology and start using it as well (Sharon B's Mindscape blog has been helpful for this). And I've had lots more face-to-face interactions as well, which has been nice. Despite lots of professional reading, I'm actually feeling more creative.


So then Sunday I see the most amazing piece of stumpwork imaginable. It is a large alphabet sampler by Donna at By the Bay Needleart. First she teases us with a few shots for Mother's Day. But after I wrote wanting to see more, she posted a photo of the whole piece. Donna has been working on it for a year and as well as the inspiration of seeing the beauty of her piece, I am inspired by the time she has taken. I mentioned it to a couple of members of my EGA group last night and they said they had pieces that have taken longer - in rotation with others. I have often slipped small pieces in with a larger piece, but my one big piece was not rotated with much of anything. I've been thinking of doing another big project but I felt I didn't have the time, but I realize now that maybe I just need to be willing to rotate and not set a deadline or deny myself different things while getting one thing done.


Elisabeth at Sew in Love had this problem a while back with her dog needlepainting and I voted for the finish is and get it over with plan, although she decided on the rotate it with other things plan. And now I'm thinking that maybe I was wrong.


Which leads me to one of the gapingvoid tips: Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually. If I worry too much about when to do something, I won't be ready for inspiration.


Sharon B, crediting Serena of Layers of meaning , pointed us to this wonderful list of tips from 2004 (before I was blogging). I like Sharon's choices, but I also enjoyed reading Sarah E's list because I too have times when I want to ignore everybody.


I think, given my own experience, my favourite one is: You are responsible for your own experience. There have been times in my life where I just did what had to be done because it seemed so overwhelming to take care of everyday life. I started to make time for needlework and then my husband gave me a classical guitar which brough music back into my life and it was funny how I was able to do those things and still take care of everything else. I can't say the cleaning suffered because I was never really cleaning all that much, so I'm not sure where the time came from. And of course now I feel better as well.


Just to give you an idea of where the inspiration and creativity can all lead, here is my crazy idea for this year (last year it was having every child at the elementary school plant a plant for Earth Day - it worked, but was exhausting). This is a map commemorating Jamestown's 400th anniversary. It was inspired by Catherine Jordan's Jamestown map and the EGA National Tapestry I saw at the National Seminar in October . The version done by my daughter's art club has a painted map with embroidered motifs designed by the kids (done on muslin and then stitched onto the map) and satin stitch lettering. Very little work has been done by the adults (the art teacher, my EGA chapter president Wendy who has been helping, and me).

TAST 19 Basque Stitch

I've been waiting for just the right stitch to do an underwater scene. The Basque stitch reminded me of seaweed and polyp corals. We have two in our tank, so I have put them here; green button coral and yellow polyps. We have live rock in our tank too. The Hawaiian rock has lots of red algae and the Tonga rock is pale with green and brown algae on it. We don't have a clown fish yet - we will need to get a tank raised one because we don't have anemones. The background fabric is marbled in blues and greys - I thought it would be interesting for this project. Would you believe I found it at Hancock Fabrics?

TAST 18 Woven or Whipped Wheel and finished knot garden cross stitch

For this week's TAST I combined weaving and whipping to make a knot garden - literally since I added a knot when I went around threads. I first did the black for paths, going under all the light brown base threads and knotting on the vertical and horizontal threads. Then I started with the green, making knots in a square for the boxwood edging in each quarter and weaving in between to give the idea of leaves for the roses. Then I went around with each pink making knots for the flowers. I am happy with this one except for my choice of path colour - I should have made it a dark brown. The green and pinks are DMC linen thread which I just purchased Thursday and had to try out. As you can see, I've gotten over the idea of saving threads for some important project! I really love the texture of the linen. I used 4 stands of the green and six of the pinks.

I was inspired first by the radially symmetrical pattern of the wheel, and I thought there was potential for multiple rows creating an interesting pattern. Then, as I finished off the knot garden from the Museum of Garden History below I thought a knot garden would be perfect. I did make an attempt at a more complex design but it was not to be, so I stuck with an easier plan.

TAST 17 Running Stitch

For some reason I had a different idea about what to do with the running stitch this week. I like all the patterns and ideas from Sharon B and Elizabeth at Quieter Moments, and we even had an darning pattern sampler class at one of my EGA chapter meetings. But I kept seeing something that was sort of like Assisi work in my head. I wondered if running stitch could be used for something more organic. So I drew a design from a Persian carpet book I am reading on some 18 count aida cloth and filled things in. I like the effect although I would use linen so I could do more threads per inch to get more dense colour for the background. It would also be easier with a higher count to pull out the details of the design. And I think it would be better to actually plan the design on graph paper, especially since Susan at Crazy Quilt Susan has provided a link to make custom graph paper. I'm sure you can see it is more than a bit asymmetrical.

One of my other distractions

As well as work and vacation distractions over the past month, we also have the distraction of a new marine fish tank. This has been a great experience for the whole family. A new pet store had marine kits on sale and we have always wanted a marine tank - we gave away our freshwater fish tank when we moved in 2004. We decided we really wanted a reef tank because of all the beautiful corals so we picked up a couple of books when we purchased the tank. My older daughter has read the books through a couple of times now so she is the expert in the house.

The first thing we learned was that making space in one place requires moving many other things when your house is at capacity. The shelf we moved to make room for the tank stand had to go in the guest room/library and the desk from that room had to be moved to the art studio/garage for the sewing machine, and the shelf for backpacks that was displaced by the desk had to move to the other side of the doorway where it displaced a metal shelf which was moved to the attic where it displaced a small chest of drawers which luckily fit in the guest room/library that really did need a chest of drawers anyway. This all took several hours to accomplish since drawers and shelves had to be unloaded and loaded.

The next thing we learned is that marine aquariums require patience, lots and lots of patience. After conditioning the water we put live sand in the bottom of the aquarium which had to sit for a few days. Then we had to get live rocks (from Tonga and Hawaii) and let them site for a while - luckily this was while we were on vacation so it wasn't too bad. Otherwise we would have been watching this for a week.
Then finally we put in a few corals and a shrimp and hermit crabs and two snails and a fish. Later that week we added another fish and then later another coral. Now we have to let things balance again before adding a few more corals and one or two more fish. We also put a blue backing on the outside of the tank to highlight the colour.

As you can see there is now some colour and movement in the tank.

I'm very fond of this rock with yellow polyp and green button corals.
This is Zipper (I know it is blurry but it is really hard to get a photo). He is a six lined wrasse. We also have a Hippo Tang (blue fish like Dorey in Finding Nemo) and of course her name is Dorey.

They sun polyps aren't open much yet and the Kenya Tree leather coral is sort of floppy although the polyps all come out each day. We are now getting some algae build up on the glass and rocks but I understand from the books that this is all part of the mini-ecosystem we are trying to create. Luckily there is a very good marine aquarium shop nearby that has been most helpful in answering all our questions and recommending the easiest and heartiest fish and corals. It is fun to visit the shop with all the beautiful aquaria filled with colourful and amazing fish and invertebrates. There are a couple of giant tanks, one with a giant clam, that are truly spectacular and I can't even imagine how much they would cost to set up and keep. For now I am quite happy with our 29 gallon tank and the interesting creatures we have so far.

TAST 16 Palestrina knot

Another new stitch for me this week, which is always fun. I've cropped out my boring learning rows and just put out the good stuff. The purple lavender flowers are closely spaced knots in linen thread which makes a great texture. The lavender leaves are a version of Palestrina from my old favourite, Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Needlework, called Palestrina knot with legs. I used two strands of perle cotton that had the right shade of greyish green. The trees are the opposite, tops in Palestrina with legs and trunks in close knots, all with 6 strands of floss.

With so many of the stitches we are learning I find it amazing that thread and spacing can make a huge difference in how a stitch looks. And it is nice to experiment on something small - I've never been a doodle cloth person and now I see that you miss something when you don't play around with a stitch. Thanks Sharon!