Double knot stitch Done with 8 strands (so that it would be thick to make big knots) of Madeira Silk.
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I have got my Box Top restarted, for one of the seams in the centre where I am doing cream on cream I chose a thick rayon thread that stitches up with a lot of texture and then looked back through my sampler to find a stitch that would suit the thread, I chose Detail 592 which is a detached chain stitch variation.
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Last night I said that I had found a couple of seams on my box top that I hadn’t blogged…I photographed them today and had the images ready to write the post but something prompted me to do an extra search and I found that I had blogged them (they are Detail 12 and Detail470), I hadn’t checked the box top category which I have now corrected…but it leaves me without a prepared post for tonight so I have filled in with a photo of a Cosmos flower flower from my garden.
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My New Years Resolution was to finish my Box top, I thought a good start would be to get it out and see where I was up to so that I can start thinking about it…It is further along than what I remembered, which is good and there is a couple of seams done which I haven’t blogged but they will have to wait to be photographed in daylight because the velvets that the stitching is on does funny things under the flash.
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For the last 2 years I have resolved to blog regularly ALL Year and have successfully kept that resolution…I thought about making the same resolution for this year but really I think that my blogging has become enough of a good habit that I don’t need the resolution to continue regular blogging…So what to resolve to do, I have had lots of thoughts of grand things that I would love to achieve but I think that a resolution has to be doable, if it has any chance of being kept, so I thought a bit more about the more modest things that I would like to achieve, amongst them is a project that is well started but untouched for more than a year, I do think that it is time it was finished and I hereby resolve to FINISH my Crazy Quilted Box Top before the end of 2009.
My Garden has provided me a lovely new years day treat with this, the first of my Lilies to blossom.
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I have pulled my Box Top out again…A good thing about not working on a project for a long time is that when you come back to it you have fresh ideas and see it through different eyes…
when I was last working on the box top I had a long seam that I wasn’t having any ideas for, I had put a black and gold ric rac along the whole seam but didn’t like it, when I got the box top out again today I immediatly saw what I could do to break the seam up, I unpicked one end of the ric rac and looped it back on itself similar to what I did for detail 424 and sprinkled a scattering of beads along it.
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 This sketch in my visual jouranl is of a seam on one of Sharon’s Blocks.
The first seam below is how I interpreted it on my Box Top
This second seam is how I interpreted it today on the birthday block.
The Fan is woven over 7 spokes…To get the spokes of the fan even I draw the fan on the back of the block…Bring the thread up close to the bottom of an edge spoke, rethread with a tapestry needle (if you don’t have a tapestry needle use the eye end of the needle for the weaving) and weave over and under to the other end.
Go around the end spokes so that the weave is reversed in the opposite direction…For a tight weave use the needle to push the woven rows tightly together…Continue weaving until there is no more of the spokes showing and take the thread through to the back…Note varigated threads with quick changes between colours work better than the one that I used for this sample.
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 I had an old visual journal out to look up some notes and while flipping through it, this sketch that I had made as an idea for a seam on my Box Top, jumped off the page, it is dated 9 may 2002, a combination of 2 rows of long zig zag chain stitch, Oyster Stitch, straight stitch and pistol stitch…The first seam below is how I interpreted it on my box top.
On the Birthday block I did the oyster stitch across instead of along the intersection, added beads along the edges and a flower bead with detached chain stitch leaves in the centres of the diamonds.
On mum’s memory quilt I located the zig zag chains across the seam and replaced the oyster stitch with coils formed by wrapping metalic thread around the anchor stitches at the intersections, black rice beads in the diamonds and seed beads on the points along the edge finish this seam.
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  This seam treatment is one of the ideas for feather stitch in my visual journal forTAST week 7…
When I looked at it again it had me confused as to how I had overlapped the stitches and I had to draw it again in 2 colours to figure it out.
For best results choose a stranded thread so that where the second row overlapes the first row the threads will blend softly together and not be obviously double…I used pearl twist thread for my sample so you can see how the threads sit side by side so the overlaps sections are more visible.
Start by working a row of Double Feather Stitch then turn the work around so that the second row is worked in the opposite direction over the top of the first row…orientating the first stitch of the second row was a bit tricky and hopfully my samples illustrate clearly how to get that second row started…once the first stitch is in place the rest of the row is easy.
I like this seam treatment so much that I have also done it on my Box top.
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I already had one of these lace motifs on and have added another one to lead the eye across the seam, which is yet another way of breaking up a long seam.
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