TAST 38, Molly & Slippers

Take a stitch Tuesday - Drizzle stitch. This one is a bit like casting on in knitting and involves a lot of threading and un-threading needles. I've used it to add more flowers to the ongoing picture.

I have been looking after Molly this week while my son was on holiday in Rhodes. She was helping here with my craft work!

I bought her a new dog toy which I gave her on Thursday. After ten minutes the arms, one ear and half of its body were gone. On Friday it was like this..

My son came back and brought me a gift of handmade slippers - better not let the dog near them!

WIP Flower Embroidery

I wasn't sure whether to include this in Take a stitch Tuesday or Work in progress Wednesday, either can be found on the pintangle site. It is work in progress but also includes some TAST embroidery stitches and this week is a catch up week on TAST. [we can create an interesting visual piece using 3-6 of the stitches already used]. The yellow stitches on the top right have been shown last week but the other yellow ones are new, a variation of sheaf stitch which we did last week. The purple are lazy daisy, the orange are French knots and ?, the blue are fly stitches.

The purple are fern stitch

and the orange ?- like two fly stitches joined together

All parts of a bigger piece which I will reveal at a later date.

Cushion and TAST 15

I've been making a cushion this week for my new conservatory. I didn't want to buy any new fabrics so I used fabrics from my stash. The background fabric is quite old but the patterned fabrics I bought a couple of months ago from Fat Quarters,  a dream shop for quilters [hard to resist buying something even though I'm not a quilter]. They were just a small pack of coordinating fabrics and they go really well together. I appliqued the fabrics together using 'heat and bond' and then stitched around the shapes using the machine. Hand embroidery and beads came next before making up.

click on the images to enlarge

The stitch for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge is stem stitch. This is another of the stitches that I'm not really keen on and I don't much like the sample that I have done either. On the sample there is ribbon, transfer printed ribbon [the patterned one under the felt], needle felting, a slice of organza bag and a slice of painted/stamped paper. There is also decorative machine stitching, running stitch and the stem stitch and it will be another page for my fabric journal.

One of the first embroidered pictures I did, many years ago, had a lot of stem stitch on it and it took me years to complete. Maybe that is why I'm not keen on the stitch?

It was a kit from a magazine. Sorry about the poor quality of the photo, it has been a dark day. The bright circle of light is the flash from the camera.

TAST 14 and Whitework Tablecloth

Take a Stitch Tuesday - the stitch for week 14 is Satin Stitch. This is not one of my favorite stitches, I find it hard to make it look neat. I've used it on the sample above in various places and also for couching. This will be another page for the fabric journal. As well as satin stitch there is running stitch, dyed lace, transfer printed ribbon and lace, decorated paper tag, plastic ruler, ribbon, applique. The background fabric was a sample of patterned upholstery fabric. Click on the images to enlarge.

The small whitework tablecloth below was made years ago for a City and Guilds project which included lots of satin stitch. It can look fairly neat on an evenweave fabric like this.

Machine Embroidery Book[2] and IF[Stripes]

Above - my entry for the Illustration Friday challenge - stripes

Below - more images of the C&G Machine Embroidery Book

The embroideries below were stitched on hot water soluble fabric