 Tomorrow is My Band Samplers 1st Anniversary, when I told my son he asked how long?…To wrap up the first year I have done a summary of my samplers statistics…
And how long is it? It is 22 1/2 feet which for metric users is 6.75 metres (Australia converted to metric measurements in 1970, I can work in metric but as all my Quilting rulers, imported from the USA, are imperial I tend to work in imperial.)
 The fabric that I have used for this panel was 72 inches wide so it is a very long panel which I am nearly to the end of and while I was stitching the summary I decided to cut the last 7 inches off the end because it is getting impractically long to keep in one roll and by finishing a panel at the end of the year and starting a new one I will have the option of rolling the panels in one year rolls.
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 I had to think about the date to embroider on this one because where I was watching the TV coverage in Australia it was 4 am on wed 21st but that date doesn’t work because History will say that Barack Obama was Inaugurated on the 20th January 2009 and an historic day it is, certainly for the USA and I think that it will go down as a an important day in World History which is why I have recorded it on my Sampler.
This afternoon I picked Sharon up and we went to the Botanic Gardens to meet up with Doreen who is also from Canberra and Judy who is visiting from Adelaide, we had a lovely afternoon of show and tell and chat…see Sharon up and we went to the Botanic Gardens to meet up with Doreen who is also from Canberra and Judy who is visiting from Adelaide, we had a lovely afternoon of show and tell and chat.
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Before I started doing samples of chicken scratch the only way that I could think that I would use chicken scratch would be if I wanted to make a miniature apron and before I knew it I was making a miniature apron using 1/16th inch gingham and simplifying the pattern to single cross stitches…The only model that I could find that was the right scale (5.5 inch high Doll) was dressed as some sort of super women, an outfit that doesn’t quite go with and pink apron but you get the idea.
 That is all the chicken scratch that I am going to do so I have taken a photo of the whole chicken scratch section.
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I think that I have mixed feelings about Chicken Scratch, it is not a stitch that I would have chosen for crazy quilting (and crazy quilting is my main focus of stitch chose on my sampler) and I do find it a bit tedious to work but now that I am playing with it the patterns that can be formed are sucking me in…Umm with waste canvas I could add them to crazy quilting…
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 The next obvious variation of chicken scratch for me to sample was reverse chicken scratch, the image on the right shows the chicken scratch and reverse chicken scratch together, I love how the change of thread colour has the appearance of changing the colour of the ground fabric.
I then did chicken scratch as a counted thread, next to that done on the gingham background I thought this line looked almost to perfect…If you look closely the left side is slightly different to the right side because some directions laced the thread around twice and other directions only laced the thread around once, so I just had to try both….for the first 4 laced stitches I wrapped the thread around twice and for the last 4 I only wrapped it around once, I prefer the double wrap.
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Sharon’s 2009 stitch challenge is Stitch Explorer.
The January embroidery style is Chicken Scratch, a technique traditionally done on gingham…I went looking through my fabric stash and could find 1/2 inch, 1/8th inch and 1/16th inch gingham but not a scape of 1/4 inch could I find. I thought about making do with one of them but before I explore any stitch I like to do a sample of the traditional/basic stitch so when visiting a friend on Saturday night we searched through her fabric stash for some and had just about given up when we found a small scrape of 1/4 inch pink gingham, so Pink it is.
I stitched the gingham onto my sampler and worked this first sample with a white silk thread, thank you Primrose Designs for the Chicken scratch instructions.
I have added a Stitch Explorer Category for those that would like to follow just the stitch explorer posts.
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 Last night I said “At this stage the cream oval looks a bit wonky but lace will smooth out the top edge” and that is just what happened tonight when I stitched the lace on around the top of the cream oval.
I added beads to the lace for a little sparkle.
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Last night I did a beaded detached chain stitch on my sampler, tonight I have done the same stitch on my box top.
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When I was visiting Sharon last week she had a copy of Nancy Eha’s new book Bead Creative like crazy (available from beadcreative), I only had a quick glance through it and the stitch that caught my eye was this Beaded Detached Chain Stitch…I had to guess at how many beads to use and after guessing 9 I wanted to try different numbers so I did a central feature with 7 beads on the smaller rings and 12 beads on the larger one.
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