The above seam court my eye when I was looking at my second Quilt ‘Butterflies” it is a combination of herringbone stitch and twisted detached chain stitch…I chose a seam on my box top for it but it needed more so I did another row of twisted chain along one side…I really like the pattern it created but it wasn’t blending the seam in like I wanted it to, I think the mistake I made was choosing a matt thread when I actually needed a metalic thread for what I wanted…Ahhh that was the problem…
 …I didn’t choose a metalic thread because I didn’t want any more metalic because I don’t like the metalic patch, when I realized what the problem was the Fix was easy, I unpicked the seam and covered the patch with a new fabric…appliqueing a patch over the seam is a quick, effective way of breaking up long seams.
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 I have filled a small gap in the long seam, on my Box Top, with a trail of little lace flowers stitched on with beads.
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 This morning when I woke up I checked what this weeks TAST Stitch was and then went back to bed with a cup of coffee and my Visual Journal…I played around with changing the angle of the cross bar but it looked a bit higgledy-piggledy…I then played around with the idea of thread beads, either 2 seedbeads or 1 bugle bead, onto the cross bars, I think that adding beads is probably worth trying but as beads need a fine needle, It would need to be done with a fine thread…
The last sketch on the page is a row of narrow chevron overstitched with a row of wide Chevron, I like the shape of the spaces created and decided to start with that variation…as it turned out it was only a starting point as when I found the seam I wanted to do on my box top, the pink fabric on one side of the seam is to textured and bulky to stitch onto so I adjusted the stitch to be straight on one side…I chose a thread to match the pink patch so that it would move the pink into the green…I then used metalic thread to do detached chain stitchs and gold beads as a feature on the seam…The finished seam is different to my starting point which is one of the things that I love about crazy quilting.
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Today is Australia day and I have celebrated by embroidering the word AUSTRALIA as a seam treatment on my Box Top
I used Stem Stitch because it gives a solid fine line and because you can get a nice flowing line by making the stitches tiny going around curves.
I did chunky free form lettering so that I wouldn’t get bogged down trying to get the letters all the same size.
I chose a thread that matched the colour on the next door patch so that it visually extends that colour into the patch with the embroidery and thus breaks the long seam line that this seam is a part of… I have taken a photo to show how this seam fits into the surrounding patches (this view also shows the TAST week 2buttonhole stitch fan and the TAST week 4 stitch from a couple of nights ago).
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I have used the Cretan Stitch on my Box Top where I worked one row of Cretan Stitch across the seam and then worked a second row partially overlapping the first row, the second row also has deeper V shapes along the middle which makes the seam different on each side, I emphasized the difference by putting beads along one side only. I finished the seam treatment with a flower bead in each of the squares formed by the stitches.
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Have you seen
Sharon’s day 12 detail?
I have not been a speed stitcher today…Sharon showed me the block when I visited last week, I started this seam treatment on my Box top while I was there, thank you Sharon.
This is the piece that I am making to put on top of a special old blanket box.
Scroll down on my embroidery page to see details of the seams already on it.
Below is the Box I am making it for.
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Gone from my table are the sorting boxes for the laces beads, charms etc…set aside temporarily and replaced by piles of paper…This change was forced upon me earlier in the week as I was looking for a small piece of paper with a number written on it…I did not find the number that I was looking for which did cause me some stress but after much phoning and running around town I was able to do what I had to without actually having the number… although I didn’t find the piece of paper I did find another thing that I had been looking for and because I had done a systematic search and some preliminary sorting as I went at least I had achieved some progress so all is good…. and I don’t mind that it means that I deal with the papers before doing the laces, beads, buttons and charms because they are going to be the fun bit, something to look forward to, a reward for doing the boring bits…It is like when I used to do Tapestrys I would do all the background first and then when my initial enthusiasm was waning it was OK because I had the good bits to re spark my interest.
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I have photographed all the seams that I have embroidered on my Blanket Box Top and have put 23 seams on my embroidery lesson page…When it came to putting the stitch names in I was glad that I had recorded them in my Visual Journal because I had to look up what several of the stitches were called…It is not the first time, nor dare I say the last time that my Visual Journal has come to the rescue of my memory.
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Today has been very much a rest day and I have done little so I will leave you with another couple of stitches from my box top.
Detached chain stitches with a bead.
Blanket stitch half circles with a bead and detached chain to make it look like a fan and straight stitches to add extra colour.
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At the same time that I bought My Studio Table I bought this Box, a got to have at just $15. It had been a Glory Box, I have always used it as a quilt storage box, it is where those lost UFOs should have been.
A few years ago I decided to make a crazy quilted top for it and started collecting fabrics and embellishments, 2 years ago I did the crazy piecing.
I divided the 42 inch by 16 inch area into 5 odd shaped sections so that I would not have obvious blocks, 2 of the sections are embroidered and joined…I also marked onto the backing the lines where I wanted to change colour so that I would get a cream oval surrounded by the medium colours with the dark ones on the ends.
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