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I liked Susan’s suggestion of an elf in the net at the top of the stocking…I did look to see what elfs I had, even though I knew I didn’t have any small enough…as it turned out I didn’t have any elves of any size but I did find a red bead doll that looked a bit elfish, to big to put in the net but he could sit on the flower at the bottom but I thought that he did need a hat…and as I thought it I remembered my miniature frying pan handle made from Finger Nail Acrylic…He now has a lovely Santa Hat.
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On the bottom of this stocking I needed things that would move the red on the heel and the toe into the next patches…The bird button does it on the heel side but I have been at a loss as to what to do on the toe because my tree idea, which was going to have a trail of buttons leading onto the toe, didn’t work and none of the buttons I have was big enough…
 Tonight I went to my friendship quilters group, I took the stocking and my sewing box which had some charms and a few bottles of beads in it, I didn’t think that I had enough to do anything with but I never stitch much at meetings as I usually spend most of the time talking…When I opened the sewing box to see just what I did have in it there was a 4″ piece of dark red lace which I had picked up of the floor and tossed into the box earlier in the day…Ummm it was the right colour, I gathered it into a circle and with the addition of a few beads and a couple of leaves I had a flower which has done just what I wanted it to do…I often amazes me how inspiration works, at home with a vast stash to choose from I was unable to find what I wanted and then away from home with only a 4″ piece of lace and a few beads to work with I found the inspiration for what I wanted to do.
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The trim looking crooked last night wasn’t my photography but a crooked trim, I corrected it a little but it still has abit of a bump….I beaded across the top and around the edges of my fly stitch shape and added a straight stitch tassel at the bottom…I think that it does still need a charm or button but no inspiration has as come.
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I got the new top on the stocking and have stitched the braid on (the photo looks as if it is stitched on crooked but I think that it is just my camera angle)…I wanted to add some embroidery that would give the bottom of the braid and uneven edge but didn’t want what I did to carry around to the back where I won’t be able to sew the braid on till after I construct the stocking and extra embroidery would be awkward to do, so I have done rows of Fly stitches that don’t go all the way to the edges and tapper of more sharply on the right side than they do on the left side so that I have ended up with an asymetrical shaped net…what I am going to do with it next I don’t know but do know that it will include red beads because now I have used the darker red top the upper area of the stocking now needs some brighter red.
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 In Theory my fabrics are stored in boxes, sorted by colour…In practice they are crammed into baskets that I tip out on the floor to find what I want because for many years now I have taken fabrics out of the boxes but put non back into them.
Today when I was tipping the fabrics from one of the baskets on to the floor to look for dark red fabric for the top of my stocking, I looked at the pile and decided that it was Time that they were sorted and put away…
They are not put away yet but I have gathered up the baskets and bags of fabric and sorted them into rough colour groups which I will iron and put away one colour at a time…Actually I think it was wanting all the pink fabrics together that motivated me to get them sorted…I want the pink fabrics for an Album cover that I would like to have made by the end of September…
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 My Christmas charms and Buttons are stord in a shallow box that originally held some fancy christmas cards, I have lined one segment of it with match box trays so that I can see most of the charms at a glance.
An embroidered iron on tree took my fancy but the colours were to bright for this stocking so I painted it with acrilic paints…I like the result and it will look lovely stitched on with metalic thread and beads for decoration..but not on the green background where I was planning to put it…
 My next thought was to choose a trim to go across the top, which I did but when I pinned it in place I decided that I really did need to change the top to be a darker red to balance the colours that I used on the heel and toe of the stocking…
I have done the reverse sewing necessary to remove the top that was there but chooseing a new top and stitching it on is going to have to wait until tomorrow.
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Repetition is a way of unifying a crazy quilt block and I have used a little repetition on this the last seam on the christmas stocking…I didn’t repeat the whole of the seam but just repeating the arrangement of the Bugle beads on Detail 379 has balanced the block nicely…For the rest of the seam I did a wavey line of Portuguese Stem Stitch…I added the gold line of stem stitch because the beads are widely spaced and the seam needed a little extra to finish it.
Tomorrow I will pull out the box of christmas buttons and charms.
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TAST Week 34 is Portuguese Stem Stitch…I used Portuguese stem stitch on several of the seams joining the blocks of mum’s memory quilt and I really liked the rhythm of this stitch.
 To try something different I used a thick metalic thread, all it gave was a thick line with no sign of the lovely shell shapes it forms with some threads.
I did another row with a thick cotton thread and you can see the Pattern in the stitch…I realized that when I stitched this second stitch I was taking a much longer stem stitch so that the wraps only cover part of it which creates a line that varies in width, I think it also accentuates the shell shape that I see in the pattern.
I then tried the metalic thread with a longer stitch…It is a little better but the pattern in the stitch doesn’t seem to show with the metalic thread…Portuguese stem stitch is a thread dependant stitch and if you don’t like it in one thread it is still worth trying other threads.
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TAST Week 33 is Scroll Stitch…I started with a seam of the basic stitch.
Then I did 2 rows of scroll stitch intertwining them as I worked the 2nd row.
In the seam allowance of a block I experimented with how it would flip from side to side, twisting the needle another 180 degrees to put more wraps into the knot and with making the stitch in the scroll longer…the later ideas didn’t work as the scrolls tended to unwind but…
I did quite like this seam using the scroll stitch flipped from side to side.
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