Friday, April 27, 2012

TAST 3: Feather Stitch

This post is timely; embroidery finished yesterday.

Feather stitch:


Bottom row - test samples.
Top row, left to right:
*spaced feather stitch would be a good border
*intertwined feather stitch would be good for plants (I have several books with embroidered gardens which are quite appealing, though I doubt they would assuage the gardening fever that hits hard every spring...somehow windowsill flowerpots aren't quite satisfactory)
*back-to-back straight feather stitch - probably could be a border, but it first made me think of a fish skeleton (vertebrae)
*closed feather stitch would be good for a palm tree trunk.

And because I've been missing her extra again the last few weeks, a bonus kitty picture of Princess happy in the sun last summer.


Thursday, April 19, 2012

TAST 2: Buttonhole Stitch

A little behind on this post - I finished the embroidery (buttonhole stitch) on April 8. In the meantime - no more embroidery, but I do have a lot of pieces of fabric cut to size (4x6) so I won't get sidetracked on that. Probably.


The colors are way off; the green should be more yellow-y, and the mauve isn't (it should be light orange). Parts of this are okay; I like the circle at the top right (I traced a thimble), and I liked the vertical embroidery on the orange rectangle until I added the darker over it. It came out kind of crowded. The patterns could work if I actually marked them instead of trying to do them freehand. Using evenweave fabric would help that,too.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

TAST 1: Fly Stitch

Last time I mentioned that I had belatedly encountered Sharon B's Take a Stitch Tuesday and felt compelled to trail along behind. Today I finished the first one, fly stitch.


It's on blue linen, two scraps pieced together and stitched with DMC. The purple really doesn't show well on my monitor (#814) and the cloth itself is really a bit darker. I think some of the pattern attempts would work better on evenweave fabric; I do like using fly stitch for plant-like things. (I opted for a slightly worse photo with slightly better color; may try re-photographing if I get energetic.)

And a bonus picture from a walk a few weeks ago - I wish the stalks/stems hadn't been in the way, but otherwise I really like the colors, especially in the ripples: