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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Today My Quilting friendship group got together for a sewing day to make Blankets of Love…Blankets of Love are small quilts made to comfort the family’s of still born babies, a 24 inch square quilt to wrap the baby and a matching 6 inch square quilt for the parents to keep.
Jenny and I made this pair starting with a wonderful fish fabric and then raiding Jenny’s fabric stash for what would go with it.
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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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I cut the base fabric for my box top into 5 odd shaped pieces and tonight I have stitched the third join, I have photographed the back because it shows where the joins are more clearly than the front does.
At this stage the cream oval looks a bit wonky but lace will smooth out the top edge and I have a crazy quilted heart that will overlap onto the cream in the bottom left corner that will cover the irregularity of the piecing in that area
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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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Another beautiful, not to hot, not to cool day perfect for working in the garden and this morning we finished cementing the path and started washing bricks to build a garden wall around the edges.
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Double knot stitch Done with 8 strands (so that it would be thick to make big knots) of Madeira Silk.
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After a few steamy hot days we have had a cool change, perfect for working outdoors and my nephew came over to help me…Originally the garden was joined to the castle wall but I have had a change of plan, firstly I thought that a buttress would be cute, then I decided to put a moat between the garden and the castle wall with the buttress as one end and then thinking that it would be nice to have a seat beside the moat, thinking small scale secret fairy garden…
…so over the last few months I have broken out a portion of the garden wall to make a path in and excavated the area, I had wanted to be able to walk down into the area but sometimes sense prevails and a lake in the area after a thunder storm suggested that I should build the level up so that water will drain out of the area…umm that meant larger amounts of concrete than I am able to mix which has stalled progress for some time…then in comes my nephew asking if I had any jobs that he could earn some extra pocket money, he is strong enough to mix the cement by the wheel barrow full which he did while I spread and smoothed it.
After a few hours I was exhausted but I am thrilled with how much we got done and he is coming back tomorrow morning to finish the path.
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