TAST stitches

Hi People
(I am amazed - there are actually at least a couple of you actually reading my blog! ... even my Mum doesn't do that! ... but she will if I e-mail her the posts - she just never goes looking for it on the www)

anyway ...

I have had this post, with just the pictures in it and no text, sitting in blogger, as a draft, for over 3 weeks now ... and I have been home (from my 2 weeks away followed by another week away) for a few days now - so it is about time I wrote some stuff in here and posted it!

... so why have I just spent about 3 hours getting lost in cyberspace reading other people's blogs? LOL

(er ... that reminds me I have another thing on my to do list there too - I still need to add links to all the blogs I like/read onto the side of my blog)


anyway ...



Time to work out where I was up to and what was what with the TAST stitches ...


ok ... last one I posted was ... er ... [andrea goes and looks to see what one it was, and also mentally adds "Take the Christmas decoratoins off my blog" to the "to do" list ] ... week 37

Here is the bit of felt that was the last picture on that post ( here ).



... it now has rather a lot more stuff on it than it did ... [andrea goes and looks up what all of them were] ...

I didn't get around to any more of the rice stitch/square boss stitch (week 37) - there a quite a few stitches that I never did finish playing with and would like to go back to. There are also a few I liked but because I only did them once (to do my bit of stitching for that week) I have already forgotten how to do them - lol - so I am glad I have been printing them all off ... now I just have to find where I put the first few and put them all into a folder so I can look them up while I am sitting sewing - that way I might actually get around to using them on some of the other things I will be doing this year/whenever.

Week 38 was Knotted buttonhole band ... er - that is the one I did in red on the bottom of the bit of felt in the next picture ... on this bit is my experiment with stacking it up, also in red, which ended up looking like a teepee.

Week 39 was Reversed buttonhole bar - I think that is the yellow bit at the bottom of this bit of felt.

Week 40 was linked double chain - that is the yellow bit down the left hand side.

Week 41 ... is on another bit of felt (a red bit) ... the other stuff on this one is ... a weird circular motif I made up from messing around with some of the previous stitches, some cable chain stitch (week 36) in white and yellow, and a pile of "bones" made from Twisted satin stitch ... which was week 42 (and a few odd white knots that I felt like doing at the time :-)



This next bit of felt is more of my mucking around with a few of the stitches, like running stitch, and a weird idea I came up with for doing circles with one side of the stitch used for reversed buttonhole bar (week 39), and a buttonhole wheel snail that I had already done and posted a picture of ... and the bit of red knotted buttonhole band that I have already mentioned ...




the black stitching on this bit might look familiar ...


... because was already there (that was week 14/etc) ... but it looked like it needed more, so I added some yellow knots and the red flower sometime, and I also used red and white to do some more twisted satin stitch (week 42) ... that stitch it didn't really inspire me a lot at first, but then I noticed I could make it look like little bones so now I like it ;-)



The bit of red felt on the left of this picture has some more circles of reversed buttonhole bar, and some other stitches I felt like adding to it ...

... and the bit on the right has another circle, and my bit of Lace border stitch (week 41) done in yellow ... with white knots added to it and something else done on top in black [andrea scratches head and wonders what it was, then looks at bigger sized picture - which you can also do by clicking on them] ... ah - more of that reversed buttonhole bar stitch that I was doing those circles with. The bit of stitching on the bottom is another variation that came from doing those circles.

btw ... note to self: red felt isn't so good to work on when trying to scan images of it to post to my blog ... LOL




This bit has Week 43 - Drizzle stitch (the lumpy stuff on the bottom) and a couple of bits where I did a double version (with 2 threads looped over the needle alternatelay so it is wider with 2 sides) ...



... and 3 sticks/branches (well that is what they look like to me) of Week 43 - Zig Zag Spanish Knotted stitch. ... and an odd little bit of buttonhole stitch and a knotty thing, because it needed something on that side ...




This bit has Week 45 - Pekinese stitch - in white over yellow thread ... and a whole pile of variations done over one line of thread insead of 2, and a variation of that done back to back (the other yellow and white one) and also the second row was looped into the first one. I also added a couple of circles of chain stitch, etc to fill in the spaces and make it look interesting.




Week 46 was chain braid stitch ... which I wasn't sure if I liked the look of but then had fun playing with (that seems to happen with some of them - they don't inspire me ... sort of not a "me" stitch ... but then I find a way to make them into something I like and end up liking them ;-)



I did the odd thing at the top first, then decided I had better do a "normal" bit of it too ... so it became the "snow" for my Thorn stitch (week 47) Christmas tree.



Thorn stitch was fun ... lol





there is more on here too (hmmmm - looks like a feathery tail on a chain braid creature ... I might have to have a play and design some birds using that idea).
On the top of that bit of felt is Week 48 - Knotted cable chain.
(another stitch of the too many that I didn't actually DO much of and should go back to and do more).

I think that was another bit of my weird variations of Pekinese stitch on the bottom.

This bit of felt ...

... was the rather interesting result of me patting someone's (moulting) goat and ending up with a handful of hair! - yes it is blanket/buttonhole stitch and knots done over goat hair.

This was my messing around with some more couching (week ... something ... ages ago :-)

It now has more stuff on it, and I also have the last 4 weeks stitches that I have not shown you pictures of yet ... probably because I have not taken any/scanned them yet!
(I will have to do that shortly ... after I have been to the shop for bread and milk ... sigh ... )

but I did take a picture of this ...

it is a crochet drink cooler thingy I made before I went away ... (made the right size to fit nicely around the glass that is in it :-)

I think I also have about 2 too many pictures in this post ... because when I got down to writing about/around them, it started messing up ... (it might have also been why the browser crashed about then too - meaning that I had to log in again ... gee I am glad blogger automatically saves what I am doing in here every minute or so! ... I still remember more than one ocaision some time "way back when" , where I was doing stuff to my Geocities page (yes it is still there, just not been updated for several years!) and I typed a whole pile of stuff in there and then lost it all when the internet connection dropped out ... those were the days (and I am glad to see the end of them!)

anyway ... this might have to be the end of this blog post ... hopefully there will be a few more in the next week or so ... when I have uploaded more photos onto the computer (so I can blog about my 2 different back to back holidays - LOL), and scanned the last few TAST stitches/etc so I can blog those ...

of course what I want to get done and what I do get done might be 2 different things - I also still have a sewing room to finish re-organising, the rest of the house and garage to tidy up, and a couple of small quilts that I have to have finished very soon ... one is 12" quilt for a challenge, it is half done and I have to deliver it to someone by about Feb. 8th and the other one, which is not even started actually has to be finished sooner - and that is an A3 sized quilt for another challenge and I have to post it in time for it to get to Tasmania by the end of this month! ... so I really should be doing that right now!

... then there is also the Take it further challenge and the chooseday challenge and the A4 journal quilt challenge (on another yahoogroup I am in - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ )

... methinks I have plenty of sewing stuff to do this year ... especially seeing I also want to do stuff for the Canberra Quilters exhibition and the Act Textile Arts (previously known as TASDA) exhibition ... and a few other things I want to make anyway ...

but right now - time I went to the shop for bread and milk ... then when I get back I can make myself some toasties for tea ... (our old toastie toaster thingy died so DH went out and bought a new one ... but even a new one won't make toasties if there is no bread!)