For Valentine’s Day I used Feather Stitch to outline a Heart and added a red Colonial Knot to each arm of the Feather Stitch…A Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers.
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these feather stitch variations are the result of stitching 2 rows side by side.
The first row is 2 rows of the basic stitch…When I saw the heart shapes appear I stitched the 2 rows from the bottom to show the heart right way up…For the third line I altered the stitch by making the outside stitches shorter and trimmed them with beads.
The 2 rows of stitching in the last row are still side by side but staggered so that the 2 rows interlock, I also used a deep but narrow V because I only had a narrow space left to fill.
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 When I started High School one of the compulsory first form classes was craft which was an introduction to home science (cooking) and needlework, Rock Cakes are the only thing I remember from the cooking lessons but the needlework lessons I loved, the first thing that we made was a half slip, I still have the embroidery that I did on the front of it…I took needlework as an elective for the next 3 years and if I learnt nothing else at school I did learn to sew, a skill that I have used continually throughout the years since that first neelwork lesson in 1969.
When I showed this to a friend and then to my sister they both asked did I leave the ‘to’ out deliberately so that I could insert it in the school book fashion….answer is no, when I want the line of words to finish at the right hand side I embroider them backwards, for this line I started with the W of sew, when working backward I am careful to check the spelling of each word letter for letter as I go, what I didn’t check was that I was including all the words.
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I have 2 brothers and there families live near Ingham in north Queensland which has flooded twice…In Victoria I have friends and fellow country men who have faced the worst fires in our recorded history with 181+ lives lost and nearly 2,ooo homes burnt to the ground.
How do I record this one on my Sampler?…The contrast of flood and fire brings to mind Dorothea MacKellar’s Poem I love a Sun Burnt Country…I printed the words on fabric and then overprinted them with a flood photo and a fire photo, above the images I embroidered the works Dark Days as the days are literally dark as bush fires darken the sky and both flood and fire cut electricity supplies and metaphorically dark as the survivors have to grieve their losses so that they can go on living.
I was going to write some of the details beside the poem but I have left it blank, what words do I write? and the images seams to speak for itself…For the recording of the history I will write the dates etc on the back.
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Last night my feather stitch variations were mainly angle with some stitch length changes…Tonight I was working mainly on stitch length with some angle changes.
Again the first line is a control basic feather stitch with which to compare the rest.
On the second line I made the outside arm a longer stitch…it didn’t look like I had imagined it would so I tried again, elongating the stitch more as well as the longer outer arms, line 3 is what I had imagined.
The fourth line has shorter outer arms.
The fifth line has shorter outer arms as well as a straighter spine.
The sixth row is closed feather stitch.
The last line has the outer arms pointing inwards.
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This block of Feather Stitch is playing with the angle of the stitch and stitch size.
I started with a line of basic feather stitch as a reference point for the rest of the block.
The second line slopes the needle further towards the centre which makes the central spine straigter.
The third and fourth lines are from angling the needle straight down, line 4 has a longer stitch which makes a wider seam.
The fifth line has a narrow spacing at the top with the needle angled almost down making a long stitch creating deep Vs.
The sixth line has a wide top and when the needle is angled almost towards the centre it creates wide shallow V’s.
The seventh row shows what happens if the angle in the sixth row is pushed even further so that it points directly at the centre…What happens is that the stitch formed is called Cretan Stitch
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The next stitch that I am recording on my sampler is tthe TAST Week 7 stitch, Feather Stitch…Feather stitch is an old time favourite stitch, it is versatile and always look good.
The first thing that I have done with it is to work it in 7 different threads …across the top is a size 5 cotton pearl then from left to right, one strand of cotton, 3 strands of cotton, 4 strands of silk (approx thickness of 6 strands of cotton), a soft size 5 cotton, a rayon thread, a linen thread and silk ribbon…I have used black threads to show the shape of the stitches without being distracted by colour.
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 The detail across the top is Spanish Knotted Feather Stitch.
The other detail is a miniature sampler…when I cut the bottom of f of panel 6 I started playing with the off cut wondering if there was anything that I could make with it and almost before I knew it I was making a miniature sampler…it is 4 inches long, it is not very to scale but it is cute and I have stitched it down one side to attach it to my band sampler.
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