Top line is Beaded Back Stitch…
The middle line is Pekinese Stitch.
The bottom line is Double Pekinese Stitch
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running out of back stitch ideas I remembered that when Elizabeth at Quieter Moments experimented with back stitch I was impressed that she could even make the humble back stitch exciting so I went back for another look.
I found another Threaded back stitch variation which is the top line…well I thought that it was until I have just looked again while getting the link, Elizabeth 2 rows of back stitch have the stitches lined up and she has threaded through every second stitch, I did double back stitch which has the stitches in the 2 rows staggered, my stitches are longer and I threaded through every stitch.
The other stitch that I found was the double back stitch which is the second line and I liked that she had what the stitch looks like on the Back which is the bottom line.
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The top line is Threaded Back Stitch.
The second line is Threaded Back Stitch which I have threaded back around each stitch to make a loop.
The bottom line is a back stitch pattern that jumps out at me every time I see it on Sharon’s sampler, I think that it is simply beautiful Sharon drafted it from a 16th century Italian sampler at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
I am finding that as time goes by I am writing more notes on the lining of my sampler…My notes are a little cramped and some of them may well need a little deciphering but I like that the information is recorded with the details.
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 The first line is Threaded Arrowhead Stitch.
The second line is also Threaded Arrowhead Stitch but using a smaller stitch which doesn’t look as different from the first line as I thought it would…this is the last line of Arrowhead..
The Third Line is the Start of Back Stitch…and no I haven’t flipped the image by mistake, it just appealed to my sense of humour to stitch back stitch backwards.
The 4th line is Whipped Back Stitch…the first have of the line shows the bigger back stitches that I did, the second half of the line shows how whipping the back stitch with the same colour makes a more solid line.
The 5th line is back stitch whipped with a contrasting thread, I have also done a couple of different lengths of backstitch along the line to show how the shorter stitches alter the look of the whipped backstitch.
The 4th line is also the finish of my Take it Further July colours (I am stitching a foot on my sampler with each of the take it further colours)
and the 5th row is also the start of my Take it Further August colours…Sharon has made the thread selection of threads for the August colours very easy for me, on the last wed of July she gave me some of the threads that she had recently bought, the next week I found out that she had used those threads for the August colours.
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 I did a quick sketch of my idea for the first line and then it twisted my mind until I figured out that some of the arrowhead stitches (turned out to be every 4th stitch) have to be bigger than the others, it was worth working out because it makes a lovely seam.
The second line is the arrowhead variation that I did last year for TAST.
Line 3 is a 2 stitch Variation of the second line, when I realized that it was a row of upside down hearts I mirrored it with a second row so that I could do a single row, the bottom line, the other way up to show the hearts.
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Line one is a row of alternating small and large arrowhead stitches
Line 2 is groups of overlapped reducing sized arrowhead stitch…the line is unfinished because that is where the length of thread ran out and the unfinished line will remind me that this variation uses a lot of thread.
Line 3 is side by side arrowhead stitches and I did a row in each of the TIF July colours.
Line 4 is 2 rows of side by side arrowhead stitches both worked in the same colour to create a zig zag line.
Line 5 is a row of different sized arrowhead stitches worked side by side and then a second row mirroring the first.
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The first way that I played with Arrowhead Stitch was to overlap rows.
The first line is a row of arrowhead overlaid with a second row worked in the opposite direction.
 The second line is a pattern formed by doing groups of 3 arrowhead stitches overlaid by a second row of groups of 3 worked in the opposite direction.
The 3rd line is memory of a wonderful night at the theater…a friend rang on Friday night, he had spare tickets for My Fair Lady on Saturday night and would I and my sister like to go…we loved to go…The hats where magnificent and I am looking for a hat charm to put on the edge.
The bottom line is a pattern formed by doing groups of 2 arrowhead stitches and overlaying them with a second row worked in the opposite direction…I cropped the image below slightly larger than the seam so that you can see the tacking stitches I do to keep the rows straight and the pencil spots I use to mark the spacing when it is to hard to count the threads.
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The Stitchinfingers Hand Embroidery group have started a Stitchalong…I have recorded the stitch along on my sampler with the stitching fingers URL and because this is a world wide Stitch Along I thought that it would be nice to use the globe bead that I bought at the craft show but the bead is a 1/2 diameter, a little to bulky to roll into the sampler, I pinned it to the edge while I thought about it, I liked it on the edge and I have a few more ideas for charms that I can attach on the side after I put the binding on…Adding charms to the side is a new design element for me to play around with, when I showed Sharon she called them Tags.
As I have now joined the Stitch Along I am changing from following the Take a Stitch Tuesday list to the Stitch Along stitch List. The first stitch on the List is Algerian eye Stitch, which is the last stitch I did, next stitch on the list is Arrowhead stitch which I have started with a row of the basic stitch.
 This is also this start of my Take it Further July Colours
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This year I found myself watching a lot of the Olympic Games, to record it on my sampler I have combined several elements, as far as I can work out from Googleing Chinese symbols the Chinese character is that for Olympic games…The blank space is where I was going to embroider the Olympic rings but when I came to do them I remembered that there are strict rules as to when the rings can be used and I decided not to use them without permission, for now I have left the space blank although after the closing ceremony I thought that if I can find a small enough one, a Red London Bus would fit well, the colour would round out my design and it also links to the next games….I finished it with a scroll because I liked the way they used the scroll theme.
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 One night in July 2005 I chanced to go into the room where my son and a friend were watching Le Tour De France, I stood watching it with them for a quite a while before sitting down and watching the rest of what turned out to be stage 3, I was addicted, I watched every night of the rest of that race and each year since I look forward to July when I can watch ‘my race’ again…I am not generally a sport watching person so my absolute fascination with the race is a bit hard to understand, what is somewhat easier to understand is that I love the old towns they ride through and the country, cathedrals and chateaus that the cameras fly over and when I showed Sharon the bike I was doing she told me that I also needed a chateau…I didn’t end up doing a chateau but in my search for a pattern I found a tiny photo of a street of houses on an old sampler, I photographed it to get a bigger image of the buildings from which I took the outline and then I experimented with different ways to fill the roof and wall areas and was happy with the finished effect.
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