 Feather Stitch, an all time favourite stitch, it is delicate and pretty and ever so versatile…On tuesday I showed you the Visual Journal Page where I played around with ideas, it was the sketch at the bottom right of the page that I chose to stitch. The seam to the left is my second attempt, for my first attempt I used a pearl twist thread and I overlapped the stitches a bit differently and the resulting seam looked rather messy (unfortunaly I had unpicked it before thinking to take a photo)…for my second attempt I used stranded embroidery thread which is softer so the overlapping stitch has blended with the stitch under it instead of sitting up on top looking bodgy. Once I had the right thread for the job the seam came together nicely…To complete the seam I added green Detached Chain Stitches and red beads arranged to look like flowers.
 I have done this weeks TAST challlenge stitch on a newly pieced block for my mum’s memory quilt which has made the transition from UFO to WIP…
I have been scanning old photos, printing them onto T shirt transfer paper and ironing them onto fabric ready to make more blocks…I am delighted with how well the newer technology for putting images onto fabric has blended with the older method that I was using when I started this project.
Now that this project is a WIP again I have pinned the UFO blocks, the new block and the new images onto my pinboard and have started pulling possible fabrics from my stash.
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Some time back, when I saw my blog on a friends computer, I was stunned by how good my images looked, images that were dark and almost blurry on my monitor looked bright and crisp on my friends monitor. I went home and tried to adjust the brightness etc on my monitor but it made no difference, my monitor was old and being unable to afford a new one I would just have to accept it…Since then whenever I have had access to another computer I take a peek at my blog and have a little dream about how lovely it would be to have a good moniter on my computer, in the meantime I have been saving to buy a car, a high priority as Canberra is not an easy place to live without a car…
That is how life was but after a visit to the optomitrist on yesturday I rethought my priorities, as inconvient as it may be not to have a car I can live for a while longer without one but I can’t live without my eyes, these are the only 2 I will ever have which means I can’t afford NOT to look after them which makes a new monitor a necessity rather than a luxury.
 …Today I have struck while the iron is hot, before I could change my mind and decide that a car really was more important, I got a friend to drive me to the shops where I have purchased a BenQ 19″ LCD Moniter.
In all likelyhood dear readers of my blog won’t notice any difference but their is a huge difference between what I was seeing on my old monitor and what I can see now…It looks so good I am doing the Happy Dance and Singing with Joy.
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This is a combination stitch with Herringbone on the top and Creton stitch on the bottom and I have added Detached Chain and beads to finish it.
Partial Herringbone stitch….start on the seam, do three herringbone stitches and finish on the seam, repeat…for added effect do a small straight stitch over each cross.
Flower Trail…the little flowers in this trail are cut from lace, I coloured them with fabric paint and added beads and Colonial Knots
This block, with my Nana and Grandfather on it, is the ninth block for my mum’s memory quilt and the last of the UFO (UnFinished Object since 1994) component of this project…stay tuned as it mutates into a WIP (work in progress).
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Wheat Stitch variation with beads…Wheat stitch is 3 straight stitches of the same length pulled together at the center, I saw it in a book and went home and stitched it from memory….when I saw the stitch again I was amused by how bad my memory was as I had stitched it with 4 straight stitches of different lengths….I liked the variation and have continued to do it this way, looks good running end to end along the seam too.
Cretan stitch with straight stitch stars on one side and detached chain on the other….you will notice that the stars are only in every second space, I like the secondary pattern formed by doing this.
Herringbone stitch done in a lovely (it was very expensive) gold and black metallic thread and trimmed with beads.
Feather stitch done in a silk buttonhole twist thread and simply trimmed with groups of 3 Colonial Knots.
The image on this block is my youngest brother.
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Closed herringbone stitch worked with one side forming a straight line and the other side forming a curved line, the curve is then echoed with a row of stem stitch and again with a row of buttonhole stitch.
I was taught this stitch as a variation of Cretan stitch but it is easier to describe as a herringbone stitch variation…when working the stitch instead of taking the little stitch parallel to the seam angle it back towards where it has come from…for this seam I have trimmed it with seed beads and straight stitches.
Herringbone stitch whipped with buttonhole stitch…when you do the buttonhole stitch you will find that it twists, you can either go with it and let it twist or you can anchor it with a stitch to the back at the top and bottom of the herringbone stitch.
Ruched ribbon stitched on with beads.
Revealing a secret….when you peek under the ruched ribbon you can see the original yellow colour of the fabric patch, I think that I must have been trying to pick up the yellow tint in the photograph but it didn’t work and the yellow clashed with everything else….solution: Bronze coloured fabric paint applied with a paint brush…
This seventh block for my mothers memory quilt is an old block and white school photo of my second oldest brother.
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Feather Stitch is one of my favourite stitches, it is delicate and pretty and very, very versatile in the way it can be used…I didn’t get to do any stitching today but I did play with ideas in my visual Journal.
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Commercial Braid stitched on with Colonial Knots…bring the thread up near the edge of the braid, form the knot and put needle back through the fabric beside the braid.
Double Feather Stitch Variation with Beads.
Fly stitch…do 2 fly stitches side by side and then join them with a third fly stitch, repeat along the seam.
Double Feather Stitch ….work a row of Double Feather stitch then working from the other end in a different colour shadow the first row with a second partial row of Double Feather Stitch.
And this is the sixth block for my mums memory quilt…it is on of my younger brothers.
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As I was typing the information under the stitches for this block I realized that I had done 3 Buttonhole stitch variations on this block without noticing, that is how different stitches can be made to look.
Buttonhole stitch half circles with beads…turned up the other way they look like little fans…when I do this stitch I find it helpful to use a coin or other small object to draw the half circles on the fabric.
This is a metalic, tubular cord/braid that I have held in place with beads….I like the way it forms irregular edges, this is a good way to brake up a long straight seam.
Another Buttonhole stitch variation set off by Bugal beads…for this variation do 3 stitches on one side then cross and do 3 stitches on the other side…then repeat with a second colour weaving the thread over and under the first row (I see in the photo that I missed doing that on the middle stitch).
And another Buttonhole stitch variation…this long and short stitch variation with beads is a very simple yet very effective stitch.
And this is an Ooops….forgot to tell the photocopier to reverse the image…I decided to use it anyway because when I made these life wasn’t as simple as grabbing the digital camera, snapping off a photo, connecting it to the computer and clicking print, I would have had to make the trip back to the photocopiers and colour copies where expensive back then…and most people don’t notice it…and I like to stitch little oddities into my crazy quilts for those that do look closer to find.
This is the fifth Block for my mothers quilt…the photo is an old black and white one of mum and her brothers in front of there dads work van…
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 Rain has been a rare occurence for the last few years and then this afternoon it poured…There was more water than the stormwater drains could cope with and I tried to take a photo of the water that was flooding the back yard but besides poor light it was still raining and the photos where blurred with rain drops on the camera lens, whilst they where not good images of what I was photographing I liked the effect of the rain drops and I cropped this bit of image to show them to you, it is my garden frogs who where singing in the rain today.
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 Algerian eye stitch is not a stitch that I will do often, partly because I find counted thread work hard on my eyes and partly because it needs a hoop and I don’t use a hoop for crazy quilting…but for the TAST challenge I found an orphan block that I could get a hoop onto and Sharon gave me some waste canvas so that I could do the stitch on a crazy block…
 To remove the waste canvas damp it slightly which softens the fibers and breaks the bond holding the fibres together so that you can use tweezers to pull the threads out one at a time.
I had stitched a heart shape but after removing the waste canvas I thought that it looked to squared off on not well defined so I used a metalic thread to do a buttonhole stitch which I worked between the spokes of the Algerian eye stitch.
I liked the way the buttonhole worked but it still didn’t look finished to me…
 
 I thought I would try a heart shaped bead in the middle…as it turned out I decided that a tiny red crystal finished it off nicely.
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