I have laced the panels together so that they are securely joined but can be unlaced and seperated for display and relaced for security
To Join the 2 panels I a row of Buttonhole/Blanket Stitch, trimmed with beads, along the bottom of panel 1 and the top of panel 2, I attached silk ribbon to each side of the top of panel 2 and laced the 2 panels together by weaving the ribbon through the buttonhole stitches and tying the ends with a bow (the bow was Sharon’s idea).
On the Back I used a black thread and big visible stitches to hold the ends of the seam together and wove it through the buttonhole stitches from one side to the other….On the back I have also written the start and finish dates for each panel.
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Today all my sitching time went into stitching the binding on the edges of Panel 2 but I also have the 3rd Panel ready for stitching
The Fabric for Panel 3 is a tighter weave Linen, I backed it with loose weave cotton fabric the same as I did for Panel 2, this time I basted the 2 layers together more thoughly with a 5 lines of basting (blue is the centre line) running the length of the Panel…I hesitated in using this fabric because it was a little to white but decided that over the years I will use many different fabrics and they will all be different so this one will blend in with the rest but when I had it all prepared for stitching I really didn’t like the whiteness and remembered what I used to do with white lace before the ready availability of dyes and coloured lace, I dyed the lace with coffee and I plunged the Linen into a bowl of strong coffee, much nicer…I don’t know how archival coffee is but the laces I dyed more than 20 years ago show no sign of deterioration.
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I have finished the second Panel of my Band Sampler…I have photographed it with the first panel so that you can see how there lengths differ, the second panel is 33 inches long making a total length of 63.5 inches.
My next task is to bind the edges of the panels…originally I was going to bind the panels with black but when I went to purchase some ribbon I thought that the dark red looked much nicer…I am using 5/8th inch Satin Ribbon, using running stitch done with a matching thread I stitched the ribbon to the back of the panel then folded the ribbon to the front and stitched it in place again using a running stitch done with a matching thread.
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These 3 seams are based on one by Lin Moon.
Top row…With this seam I put the beads on the stitch as I worked it instead of at the ends of the stitch.
Middle row…the top row looked so different from Lin’s that I thought I would do it again with the beads on the ends of the stitch but after doing the row of flipped buttonhole stitches I thought what if I did a second row in the spaces of the first which gave a nice centre to put the long beads….2 strands silk floss and 2 strands of cotton floss.
Bottom row…trying again, this one is very similar to Lin’s but only has 5 stitches on each side because I was at the bottom of the panel and didn’t have enough space for the swing of the 7 stitches….Rayon Thread.
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All of todays details are based on stitches on skybellarts buttonhole stitch sampler.
Top row…The arms of the Buttonhole Stitch are sloped with 2 or 3 arms sharing the same hole at the top to form triangles….Rayon thread.
Second row…This seam uses the 3 arm triangles which I elongated and flipped from side to side…silk thread.
Third row…2 rows of Buttonhole stitch, with their arms faceing each other and threaded together forming the geometric design…2 strands cotton floss.
Bottom row…2 rows of Buttonhole, the top row with alternating long and short arms, the lower row with very short arms aligned with the long arms of the top row and then threaded with the contrasting colour…Cotton Thread.
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Top 3 rows are from Sharon’s Sampler
Top Row…Alternating pairs of short and long Buttonhole Stitches, worked with 2 strands of cotton floss.
Second Row…staggered Buttonhole stitches flipped from side to side , worked with 2 strands cotton floss, it looks different from sharon’s because I have used a finer thread, less stitches in each group and the stitches are shorter…I like the way the detached chain stitch (3 strands silk floss) and beads fit into this variation.
Third row…Buttonhole stitches, staggered on both sides and flipped from side to side, worked with a fine silk thread.
Bottom row…Is from a stitch by stitch1peta, I liked the border formed by adding the narrow row of buttonhole to the top of the scollop topped row and the overall fringe looking effect of the combination. Worked with 2 strands of a varigated cotton floss.
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The Take it Further February design concept is What are you old enough to remember…I interprette that to mean not my oldest memory but the oldest memory that would be shared by others, so from my First Thoughts I have taken the local memory of the New Ballina Catholic Church or more specifically the closeing of the Old Church which I also link to a family memory because my sister was the last baby to be Baptized in the old church in 1962…
The old church was a tall narrow building with steps up to a small porch at the front and painted brown, to me a much nicer building than the modern, blond brick, building of the new church.
Umm, I think that I should have done more experiments with how the fabric pens worked on the linen and then
not coloured the building…it looked a lot better as an outline than it did after painting.
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The Take it Further Design concept for February is What are you old enough to remember…I remember my aunty taking me to the Lismore Agricultural Show when I was 4 years old (1960), I remember boats floating around in a tank of water, I remember performing bears, dressed in cloths, riding bikes and pushing prams, I remember fairy floss and I remember being car sick on the windy road home…and I still have a silhouette that was cut that day
Today I went to the Royal Canberra Agricultural show, on the way in I was telling my friend what I remembered and when we came across the same guy that had cut the silhouette in 1960 and couldn’t resist having him cut another one.
Without kids we had a lovely day, we wandered around at our own pace, checking out the animals, looked at the crafts, we watched the family circus and had a ride on the ferris wheel (the capsules were air conditioned with piped music), we watched demonstrations, we sampled products and sat in the massage chairs and on the way out I bought some fairy floss.
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My intension for this seam was a couple of buttonhole staggered likc bricks…Once I had Bricks on my brain I couldn’t resist doing a extra rows to make a brick wall.
Bricks are 3 strands of cotton floss, 2 strands of dark brown with 1 strand of light brown, mixing the colours gives more txture to the bricks.
The grass and Flower stems are Random Buttonhole Stitch with 3 strands of cotton floss.
This brick wall completes my 12 inches of stitching with the Take it Further February Colours.
The green at the bottom is an overlapp onto the Feb colours but also if I was working with these colours on a crazy block I would just about always allow myself to use green with them, for leaves and grass.
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I thought that I was recording known variations of stitches on this sampler but it appears that I am also experimenting with them too…while using Detail 115 as the model for the top stitch I saw several other ways that it could be arranged to form different patterns.
Top row…uses buttonhole stitch worked with an angle, is stitched with ribbon floss and trimmed with beads,
second row…reverses the direction of alternate groups of 3 stitches to give quite a different look which is further emphasised by the addition of Detached Chain Stitches and the arrangement of the beads..Both threads are 6 strands of cotton floss.
Third row…work a second row, which mirrors the first row…the uses of 2 light strands and 1 dark strand of cotton floss gives an extra texture to the stitch.
Bottom Row…work the second row in the opposite direction to the first row…2 strands cotton floss.
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