Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
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    This is Annie Whitsed's Crazy World a world where I stitch the joys and chaos of life into beautifull crazy quilts. email annie@loopylace.com
March 2024
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My Band Sampler 08 – Herringbone Baskets – Details 513 to 515 February 3rd, 2008

herringbone basketBefore silk ribbon was available I had worked out a way of stitching baskets using Herringbone Stitch, visit this past post for what lead me to think of the idea and the first basket I stitched. (My photography skills have improve since I wrote that post.)

The Basket on the left is a sample that I stitched circa 1987…The Thread is 4 strands of a varigated stranded thread which I have seperated and put back together with 2 of the strands reversed so that I got a mix of shades along the length of the thread…Looking at the flowers in the basket I must have been using scrapes of thread and experimenting with combing different colours of thread to get the colour variation in the flowers.

I draw the basket shape that I want on the fabric and then fill the shape with short wide apart herringbone stitches that are closed on the bottom and spaced at the top…A line of Stem Stitch across the bottom to give it a base and across the top for a neat rim for the basket…The handle can be done with stem stitch, Chain Stitch or Coral Stitch, I like Coral Stitch myself because the little lumps of the stitch have the texture/look of the knobby bits on cane.

Now if you look at the basket on my sampler you will see that it looks quite different, part of the difference is the thread (size 5 cotton pearl) the other difference is because I didn’t look at the older ones first and instead of doing small spaced stitches at the top I did bigger stitches and closed the herringbone.

My Band Sampler 08 basket

basket in progressFor the flower arrangement in the basket I do leafy looking stitches with a mix of green threads and then put the flowers in on top of the green background, I filled this basket with Gathered Silk Ribbon Roses… I got a little carried away and just about covered most of the green background, so I used a thick size 3 green cotton pearl thread and added straight stitches around the edge and a couple of loops amongst the flowers.

Either side of the basket I did a pattern of 3 individual, overlapped herringbone stitches that use the same hole at the bottom but different entry and exit holes at the top…For the left hand pattern I used a Linen thread and the soft thread combined with stitches that are a little to long caused the pattern to be floppy and I had add a stitch over the cross point to hold it in place…For the pattern on the right I used a stiffer cotton thread, did shorter stitches and spaced the entry/exit points further apart.

One Response to “My Band Sampler 08 – Herringbone Baskets – Details 513 to 515”

  1. Susan Says:

    Even when I make silk ribbon flowers, I make a thread basket. I haven’t used herringbone for it, though, or made a wide basket, so I liked looking at how you did this, and the way you filled it with flowers and greenery. I’ve been going by the seat of my pants. =)

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