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!)

Eek! ... I need to catch up with blogging my TAST stitches ...

... because I just realised that I am more than 20 weeks behind!

(where on Earth did the middle half of the year go anyway?!?!!!?)

I have actually kept up with doing them for most of the time (just not the last few, but I have a perfect catch up oportunity this coming weekend), but the last TAST stitch that I posted about was week 20 - butterfly chain ... and I said something about having some more photos on the camera ... not sure where though - just looked in my photos and didn't see any more ... which probably means I only thought I had taken photos of the other ones ... I actually don't remember exactly what other ones I was talking about now anyway, but there are a couple more on the same bit of felt as some other stitches ... which I have not taken a photo of yet (but I am just about to scan it, and a few others, once I work out what order they go in ;-)

Week 21 was crossed buttonhole, and this is what I ended up with for that one:

... and that seems to be where I didn't get around to taking any more photos - LOL

but I did find a photo of some work I did on another person's block from the needlecase round robin I was in (finished now - got mine back a couple weeks ago, but I plan to try and make it into something soon, then post all the photos of it at once) ...

anyway - this is my work on someone's block:

... as you can see, I did some feather stitch (which I nearly always do on stuff) and a spider/web (which I also do lots of) and some couching (which I also use a lot) ... and one other stitch that I didn't know how to do (or that it even existed) until it was the week 19 Tast stitch! (Basque stitch)

Week 22 was Satin stitch ... I must have been busy/lazy that week - all I did was add a little bit on the side of a bit of other stitching that I have already blogged about - it is on the bit of felt on the top left in this scan I just did:

mmmmm look at all those dog/cat hairs! LOL

(click on the image for a closer look and once the picture is full size you WILL see the hairs! lol)

Next to that (top right) is wheat ear stitch (week 23) and long and short stitch (week 25). Week 24 was French knots ... there are quite a few knots on my bits of stitching but I am not sure if any of them are French ones ... I think I might have done one or 2 on one of the bits of felt I have just scanned (possibly this one with the wheatear on it) - but on most of them I have done what I usually do instead of French knots - and that is Collonial knots (which I learnt to do when I did some candlewicking, because it is often used in that) ... it is a bit hard to tell them apart once they are worked, because the end result looks almost the same - unless they are French knots and I did them - in which case they either vanish into the fabric or look demented - which is why I use collonial knots instead - LOL.

The bottom 2 bits are my messing around with half chevron stitch and bullion knots (weeks 26 and 27).

Now ... week 28 and 29 were sheaf stitch and arrow stitch ... where the heck is that?

oh - here it is - on the bit of felt I did oyster stitch on (top bit in this next scanned image) ... along with some more crossed buttonhole, and the "missing" butterfly chain stitch ... the butterfly on the top left is butterfly chain with some buttonhole stitch etc, the fan on the bottom left corner is sheaf stitch and fly stitch ... the row of "butterflies" along the bottom are sheaf stitch, the white scorpion looking thing in the middle is butterfly chain with chain stitch for the tail, and the weird looking yellow bit amongst all those is my fiddling with crossed buttonhole and whatever else it kind of turned into.

the other bits of felt are the bit with curly ferny looking things that I have blogged about before (black bit on left) - but I have since added the red flowers to the "Fleur de Whatsits" on the bottom, and the yellow bit with black stitching is Buttonhole wheels, cast on stitch, (weeks 30 and 31) and a bit more arrow stitch and a few other fiddly bits that grew out of the buttonhole wheels ... and some more cast on stitch and a few other white bits around the edge. Under that (white on black felt) is a variation on the buttonhole wheel that I turned into a snail.

This bit is my playing with Crested chain (week 32) in white thread (mine look like little people with one arm in the air like they are throwing something - so I gave them balls ;-) then I did a tiny bit of each of the next 4 week's stitches (week 33 scroll stitch, week 34 Portuguese knotted stem stitch, week 35 Shisha Stitch, week 36 Cable Chain stitch)

I was a bit busy doing other things to have time to do as much as I wanted with these stitches (and a few of the earlier ones too for that matter) but I am going to the Canberra Quilters retreat this weekend and we have to take hand sewing (no machines allowed) so it will be the perfect chance to take all my printed out instructions and my felt and threads/etc and have a good fiddle around with a few of those I want to do more with, and also catch up with the last few that I have not done - once I realised I could catch up on the retreat I decided to do a few other things instead of doing the last 2 or 3 stitches ... like coming in here and posting these pictures/etc to my blog - LOL

This is all I did for rice stitch and square boss stitch (week 37) - I did a bit of one of them, on top of the other one! I like what I got, so I will have to have another play with this one too.

here is the bit of felt that one is on ... some spare space to start on the 3 stitches for the 3 weeks I am behind (and the one posted tomorrow will make it 4). There is a bit more cable chain on here too.

And now ... I think it is time I went to bed before the sun comes up!

(the time on this post will probably show up as the time I started doing it ... but it is actually about 4:25am!!! oops?)

btw, I should have been sorting out/tidying up/etc in my sewing room/the rest of the house today, but I was feeling lazy so I sat and crocheted a shawl ... start to finish! LOL ... how long did it take me? - er ... most of a one day cricket match, part of the news/etc and one episode of Mythbusters ... lol

(I will blog some pictures/etc of it later, once I have taken some ...)

goodnight ... er ... good morning?

Stitching up some more loose ends ...

Ok ... as promised (numerous times :-) here are some photos of a few more of my Take A Stitch Tuesday stitches:

Week 13 was Knotted Cretan stitch - so here is some ...

(there is also a little bit of eye stitch and fly stitch because I wanted to fill up the corner with something else to make it look interesting)

hmmm ... I didn't do a lot of knotted Cretan did I? ... I will have to do some more, because I do like that one .

Week 14 was Bonnet Stitch ...

I added a bit of fly stitch in this one too ;-)

Here is some more bonnet stitch ...

I think these 2 fern fronds were actualy my first go at bonnet stitch (before the ones in the other photo) ... funny how things just seem to "fall out of the needle" sometimes ...

I decided there needed to be something else growing on the ground, so I added a row of Fleur de Whatever they are ... I might have to add some red knots (or maybe even beads?) later ... I think they would look better if they actually had flowers on them ...

Week 15 was Oyster Stitch ... so I had a play with that one on the black felt in the photo below, and week 16 was Palestrina Stitch - so I had a play with that one on the same bit of black felt, and then on the yellow bit ...

I also did some more oyster stitch on the yellow bit of felt ... 3 "oysters" kind of turned 3 of the palestrina stitches (bottom right hand side of the yellow felt) into some weird plant or something ... and I also created a round motif thingy with a circle of palestrina stitch with oysters around it.

btw - if you can't see what these stitches look like in the photos in here, the photos are (I hope) also links to the bigger original versions - so you can click on them for a closer look - and if you don't know what some of these stitches are (I didn't know a couple of these until they were posted on Sharon's blog as Take A Stitch Tuesday (TAST) stitches ;-) then you can go look them up either in the Take A Stitch Tuesday posts on her blog or in her stitch dictionary at http://inaminuteago.com/stitchindex.html ... and if you want to see what everyone else (there are rather a LOT of us doing this TAST thing) then have a look at either the list of participants that was posted among the TAST posts fairly early in the year, or look in the comments on any of the TAST posts (the idea is that we are supposed to put in a comment when we have done the stitch and blogged about it)
Now where was I up to? ... lol

Week 17 was Running Stitch ... I have done quite a lot of this one before too, but I still had to have a play with it ;-)

I wasn't sure if I liked it better before or after adding the white rows of stitching, so I decided to leave it half and half - which I think I like even better than one or the other.

Of course I also added some oyster stitch, palestrina stitch, detatched chain and knots in the middle bit.

There are also 3 other funny things on there too - Week 18 was Whipped Wheels and/or Woven Wheels ... the 3 above are whipped wheels, as are the top 2 in the photo below, and the one on the right on the black felt at the bottom of that photo ... but the 2 on the left are woven wheels.

The photo below also has Basque stitch (week 19) and some Butterfly chain (week 20) on it ... and a few other things ... LOL

The read heart is Aida cloth, so I used it to have a fiddle with doing the cross stitch on something that has an even weave (the felt does not have any weave, let alone an even one ;-)

The cross stitch kind of also grew into bonnet stitch (I also wanted to try that on an even weave).

I worked some Basque stitch around one of the wheels on the white felt, and did a row and a couple of other fiddly things on the black felt (I kind of like the white one - I could use that idea to make some nice daisy flowers I think ;-) and I did a winding row of (uneaven sized) butterfly chain on the black felt, then dug out the red heart and worked an even row of butterflies on that.
I have had a bit more of a fiddle with the butterfly chain since then, but the photos are still on the camera, so I will post those when I blog about the stitch for week 21.
(week 21 already?! where HAS the time gone?)

I have also been doing some stitching on a couple of people's crazy quilt blocks for a round robin on a crazy quilt list ... so I decided to include some photos of the first block I got to work on (now with the next person), because I have been using stitches that have also been used as TAST stitches (some of them I already know and use anyway, and a few of them I didn't know and/or had not experimented with but I like them and will use them now I have fiddled with them for this TAST challenge thingy ;-)

One of the seams just had to have a row of Fleur de Whatever along it ...

I also put on some feather stitch with knots, and couched on some fuzzy crochet yarn (which I actualy had to crochet into chain before I couched it on because it was fuzzy bits with plain bits in between and didn't look interesting sewn on like that). There is also a flower thingy I made from lazy daisy stitch with a sequin in the middle - it was one odd iridescant sequin that turned up in amongs a whole packet of purple ones that I was given the other week - so I think maybe it was meant to be found and used on this block.

Here is a row of cretan stitch on top of another row of cretan stitch on a seam ... an interesting effect I think.

Here is what is next to that row of cretan stitch ...

blanket stitch, feather stitch with knots ... and a spider with a web - I like spiders ... I hope the owner of this block does too! (I have read/heard that it was traditional to always include a spider on a crazy quilt, for good luck - a lot of crazy quilts/etc do have spiders and/or webs on them)

It's probably a good think I don't have any more photos of the last TAST stitch or 2 ... this post is long enough already!

Couch Potato?

This is another post that I started writing, and then left it sitting as draft because I had not yet taken the photos for it ...
(I stopped writing it when I realised I still needed to take a photo, so I am writing the second half, the bit I am writing today, in yellow to match this bit ... "baby poo yellow" I call it ... think "mustard" is the name most people would use ;-)




All this sitting and stitching I am doing, for the TAST challenge thingy, lately - I think I probably do spend too long on the couch (which, btw, I call a LOUNGE ... because that is what we call it here in Australia).

The TAST stitch for week 12 is ... couching ... which isn't named after a couch/lounge/settee/whatever else you call it, even though it does involve LAYING a thread over the work and sewing it down.

I probably do spend too much time sitting on the lounge and stitching (or crocheting/etc) ... but that is not really what I came in here to post about - so ... back to the real subject - I also couch threads/etc quite a lot too.

... in fact - on Monday [some Monday about 6 weeks ago] I was sitting at a friend's place doing this:

That coloured stuff is some fancy yarn my friend had given me on another visit - she crochets and gives me her "endy bits" to use in my weird creations.
This particular bit was actually one strand of some odd yarn that had a strand of fuzzy stuff and this one both twisted around each other, and the strand I used was actually made from 2 strands - a strand of plain black twisted around the coloured bit - so I pulled the black bit to bunch up the coloured stuff to make a coloured chenille like wormy looking thing and couched it down onto the black felt hexagon that I had found lying around in my sewing stuff.

Then, the next day when I looked to see what that week's TAST stitch was - I discovered that the stitch for week 12 was couching! LOL
so - I added some more couching around the edge -

the yellow yarn is sewn on with black thread where it overlaps and on the outside loops, and yellow thread on the inside ones. I added the dotted yellow line and the 2 red knots because once I did the yellow around the edge the heart in the middle was off centre ... oops ...

Then I had another play with couching (even though I already use it a lot ;-) and ended up with this:


The red and the yellow thread are those ones I think I mentioned before - that came from an Asian grocery shop! ... the yellow is similar to pearle 8 crochet thread (but a cheapy version) so I needed to twist 3 strands together to make it thick enough for what I wanted to do here, and the red is a bit thicker - it already was three strands wound together but I pulled one out and used it as 2 ... the white bits were how the thread came - that was part of what caught my interest enough for me to buy it (after seeing how this, and the few other things I have used it for, turned out - methinks I might have to buy some more next time I am there ;-)

anyway ... I think I will put the photos for week 13, etc in a different post - I am sure you are sick of reading this in "baby poo yellow" ...

btw - if you think that is weird what about this - my teenage daughter has made some merangues (cooking in the oven right now) ... and she asked if she could put some food colouring in them ... guess what colour she used? - BLACK ... LOL
... merangues are made from egg WHITES, so you can guess what colour the mixture ended up ... black + white = a rather stange looking grey! (although it is going a fair bit darker as they cook)

Humming a few bars while you wait?

I wanted to actually post the stuff I started writing and then saved for ages before finishing and posting it on Wednesday night ... so I decided that the other bits of barred chain can have their own post ... although they might end up sharing it with whatever else i decide to stick in here with them ... LOL

btw - the barred chain on that photo (see previous post) is the orange circle thingy in the middle ... and the cross stitch is in yellow, in a line down the left hand side (I meant to mention that in the post, but I kind of forgot ... oops)

So ... where was I?

I took a pile of photos of the stuff I have been stitching, including a better one of the rest of the barred chain, during my lunch break at work yesterday ...

Here ...

... is some more barred chain.

and Here ...

are some results of my playing with up and down blanket/buttonhole stitch (with a bit of fly stitch and some knots etc)

Here ...

... is some of that interesting variation that Elizabeth came up with (see http://quietermoments.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/step-by-step-on-a-three-prong-up-and-down-buttonhole-stitch/ ) ... I just came up with a weird name for it while fiddling around with the photos ... "Fleur de Whatever" - because to me they kind of look like Fleur de Lys ...

I did the red bullion stitches on the top to make them look like those "red hot poker" plants or something ... the 2 round things on that bit of felt were already there - it is the same bit that has the fly stitch fly on it ... but I added a knot in the middle of one, and created a weird square motif with red knots etc on it too.

Here are some more -

... there is even another little variation of FLY stitch in there (well - it was meant to look like a bird!)

I also did one of those Fleur de whatsits with 5 "prongs", that also stick out the bottom a bit - so it kind of looks like a bundle of wheat or something ... looking at those knots (one each side of it) has now got me thinking too - a row of those, with the knots (or beads) between them, could look quite good along a seam of a crazy quilt ... (so would a row of the flowers - in fact I just did a row of those on someone's block for a round robin I am in ... I will have to ask the people in it if they mind me putting photos of their blocks up here on my blog ... at the moment we are all putting the photos on a members only page for the crazy quilting yahoogroup that the round robin was organised on)

I must have originally intended to put all these stitches (the ones I am just writing about in here) in with the stuff in my previous post - because for the next weeks stitch (week 12, which was near the end of March!) I have already written something about it and saved it as a draft ... but now that the photos are on the computer and I have fiddled with them, I can add some more photos to that one and post it shortly (maybe tomorrow ... because now it is time I went to bed ... if I stay up too much later it will be time to get UP again!)

btw - don't forget - the photos are clickable links to bigger versions (provided things work like they usually do in here) so if you want a closer look, just click on a picture and it should take you to a bigger version.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Crossing one (or 2) more off my list ...

Er ... this blog post has been saved as a draft since sometime in March! ... hmmm - maybe I am just a wee bit behind with posting stuff to my blog! LOL
(The bits written in this colour are what I had saved, the green bits are what I am adding now ... and before you ask about the blue bits ... they are links, and they were already saved in this post too)

so ... what was I crossing off my list back in March?

- some more ...
... TAST stitches that I have done and not yet blogged about.

Week 9 was "Cross stitch"

... it can be used for more than just driving yourself bats doing those zillions of little "x"s all over bits of aida and then framing them and hanging them on the wall
(gee how can you tell - I am not really into doing that kind of cross stitch ;-)

I don't think I have done this sort of cross stitch either, so I had a bit of a play ...






I also added some to another bit of felt I have been decorating with TAST stitches ... that is in the next photo, along with some of what I did for the next week ...


Week 10 was "Barred chain and/or alternating barred chain"





[surely I did more of that - methinks I need to put some photos on the computer]

Yes I had done more ... I think I took some photos

< feel free to talk amongst yourselves (all 1 or 2 of you who ever read this blog) while Andrea goes and looks around in her photos >

ah ... that is why I saved this photo for later ... I found a photo of the other bit of barred chain ... and it is also blurred chain - LOL

... and that is a reminder to myself that I really should take photos of this stuff in decent light, rather than at night with the flash (which tends to result in a lot of blurry and/or washed out photos).

I guess I should go do that now ... but I might post this first - that way, if anyone is actually reading this blog - then there will at least be a little bit of something new (well ... newly published rather than newly stitched ;-)

btw - yes - I have been keeping up with doing the weekly TAST stitches (just not with photographing them and blogging about it) ... I have even done some of this week's stitch, the one that was posted yesterday!

Time Flies ...

Tempus fugit and all that - yes, time does fly ... is it really half way through March already?!
... I suppose I could waste even more time raving on about how fast time goes by/etc, but I won't - because that is just the silly title I came up with for what I am really posting about, which is Fly Stitch ...


The "Take A Stitch Tuesday" stitch for week 8 was fly stitch.


ok ... how about this?





Not a very good fly is it? ... but it is done mostly with FLY stitch though!


This is what else I did on that bit of felt:





I have not used a lot of fly stitch (possibly not even any) in things I have made, I think I tend not to use things that seem to be isolated stitches, because I tend to do things in rows/etc ... so I experimented with making it into interesting motifs etc ... I like what I came up with ;-)


I also did some fly stitch on the November journal quilt that I was just finishing (I thought I had finished until I decided the red bit was too blank and needed some stitching on it ... LOL)





I have actually finished that quilt now - so I guess I should take a photo of it and post that here too (I will try and remember to do that sometime in the next few days ... weeks ... months? ... whatever ... LOL


While I was digging out the photos of the stitching on the yellow felt I also found this one (it was taken the same day)





it is a plant in my garden, with a rather interesting spiral pattern ... which has just given me an idea for another possible design for fly stitch ... so I might have to try that out tomorrow/whenever I get to do some stitching next ... except I also want to fiddle with this weeks stitch too ... I need another 100 hours in each day!

These photos were also in the same folder (taken the day before the felt and the plant ones) and the colours match the previous one so I decided to throw these in here too, seeing there are not many fly stitch photos -








they are actually water snail eggs on a bit of rather sad and sorry looking elodea (a weed that people buy for their fish tanks) ... the elodea is left over from a science lesson at the school I work at, and it and the snails were in a glass bowl on the window ledge beside my desk ... I think the weed is now in a jar with a few other bits, because another science class used it (it is good for looking at living plant cells under the microscope) ... having interesting stuff like this on/near my desk is one of the good things about being a science assistant at a high school ...

The same day I also took this photo:





- this moss/etc is also on the window ledge beside my desk ... but I hadn't noticed that a little spider seems to have made it's home in there ;-)


it is actually in this terrarium thingy that I made from a styrofoam meat tray (the trays that meat/etc comes packaged in at the supermarket) and a clear lid that I think came from somebody else's box of chocolates ...




hmmm ... it is now 1:35am where did my evening go?!!!!!
(I guess the fact that I didn't come in here until fairly late, and then spent an hour or 2 getting lost in my e-mail/etc digging out free crochet pattern URLs to put into a reply I was posting to a crochet yahoogroup might have something to do with it?! LOL)

Goodnight ...

Feather stitch, and a bag.

I have been keeping up with the stitching for the TAST (Take A Stitch Tuesday) challenge ... but, due to being back at work and all the usual things that are on during the school year keeping me busy, I have not kept up with the blogging quite as well as I did in January, when I was on holidays ...

I actually started working with most of those stitches on the Tuesday, and I even came in here and put the photos of my stitches onto the computer a few times ... along with a LOT of photos of insects and plants and sunsets and lightning and more sunsets etc etc ... but I seem to keep running out of "evening" before I get around to actually putting any photos onto my blog ...

Anyway ... week 7 was Feather stitch


(I think that was where I was up to ... that is what I said at the end of one of my last couple of blog posts ;-)

Talking about where I was up to ... this is the point in this blog post where I got called away from the computer to drop DS (short for Dear , or dratted/etc as the case may be, Son) off at a friend's place somewhere 10 minutes down the road, duck in to the shop on the way back (to buy cream for the cheesecake DD (short for Dear, or dratted or whatever, Daughter) wanted to make, then I got home in time to feed the dog and cat and take DD to Scouts ... then I got back and walked the dog, and made a tuna mornay (because DS said he wanted it for tea when he got home and it sounded like a good idea - some for my tea and some to take to work for lunch tomorrow ;-) ... then it was time to go collect DD from Scouts and DS from his friend's place ... then I had to help DD finish the cheesecake ... so now here I am trying to finish typing a blog post while eating tuna mornay ... and a soup in a cup thingy that DD made and didn't like ... (mmm potato and leek - but she put a bit much water in it ... sigh ... )

I had already been doing some feather stitch on a couple of things I was working on, because it is one of my favourite stitches ... so of course once I found out it was also the TAST stitch that week - I did a whole heap more of it ...

One of the things, with feather stitch on it, started when I found a bit of old ribbon lying on the ground, while walking the dog ... I found it sort of interesting that I was walking the dog when I found it - and the design it had woven into it was ... dog bones!

Anyway, I was sort of thinking it might make an interesting "found object" for the TASDA challenge (which I will probably write about in a different blog entry sometime in the future) and it also would go well with orange (orange is also part of the challenge) and it would go well on this bit of felt ... so I grabbed some shiny variegated thread and couched the ribbon onto the felt with cretan stitch ... and then started adding other stuff that went with it ...

Actually - I just noticed that I put that photo on my blog about a month ago - in my post about eye stitch (and I said I would post more photos later - so I guess "later" is now ... LOL ... gee - I actually did what I said I would ... amazing ... I also said, in that same post, that future postings might happen a bit less often than they were in January ... I was right there too ...

and this is what one side of it looked like at the start of the week when feather stitch was announced as the TAST stitch for that week:

- it has been folded in half and stuff worked over the edges, because by then, I had decided it was going to be a bag ...

Here are both sides, after I did more feather stitch on it ...

The bag was almost finished when I took these 2 photos ... in fact, at the time I thought it was finished, but then I added a bead and loop fastener thingy.

Actually, I might as well stick some more bag photos in here and tell the rest of the bag story now ... else it could be another few weeks before I get around to it ... and someone at work is waiting for me to give them the URL for the photos I am about to put up, so they can show their Daughter ...

But first - the other bits of feather stitch (because I did them before I finished the bag ;-)

2 weird little thingys:

- some red feather stitch turning into Cretan stitch and back in to feather stitch, with colonial knots tucked in there for fun ... and feather stitch that became double, trebble, quadruple and quintupple - I was having fun fiddling with it.

And some yellow feather stitch/etc on a black bit of felt:

I got to have a play with the stitch and end up with something interesting looking too ;-)

... my current plan for this stuff is to use it all together in some kind of wall hanging or something - which is why I was sort of trying to just stick to black and white ... then when I found that yellow thread I changed it to black/white/yellow ... but then the red/orange sort of snuck in ... LOL ... so who knows what I will end up with?!

What red/orange? - this red and orange - I put some danglies of feather stitch on this bit of felt ... then did a few more "eyes" - they make good daisy flowers:

the red and the orange are actually 2 different strands from the same weird ball of thread - it came from the same Asian grocery shop as the balls of yellow thread I have been using on here, and on the black bits of felt ... the thicker red stuff, with white bits in it, also came from the same shop (there is some on the bag - I used bits of all 2 threads for the feather stitch on there) ... I don't think it was being sold for doing stitching/embroidery/crochet etc - it was up in the back corner with the shiny paper and kits of glittery stuff for religious shrines/etc.


It isn't really ideal, or in the case of the thicker red (with white bits in it) thread - it is not at all good for stitching ... but at 70cents a ball - I just had to try it out ...


I might buy more next time I am near that shop - using things that are "not what you are supposed to use" can be lots of fun ... and leads to a lot of creative solutions to whatever problems there are with using it ... like the thick red thread that kind of frays and falls apart - works ok for some things if one is careful when stitching, and I am sure it would look good couched down with another thread (I was going to try that, but I don't seem to have got around to it yet)

Anyway ... back to the bag:

The TASDA (a textile art group I belong to, here in Canberra) challenge was to make something that is in, or is (or has something to do with) a container, and it also had to include:


The colour orange

Polar fleece

a "found object"

stripes

so ... it is a Bag - which is a container for whatever I put in it, and I already had the colour orange in it, and the ribbon was the found object (because I actually did FIND it ... and I did wash it before I used it ;-) ... so all it needed was polar fleece and stripes ... so the dangly bits of feather stitch are sort of stripes ... but then I remembered I had some bits of striped ribbon - the black and green bit I have used on the edge of the bag was just perfect! (well I think it is - gives it that bit of "zing"). What about polar fleece? - well ... what better thing to use for a lining than polar fleece?! (and I just happened to have some polar fleece that was also orange ;-)

As you can see in that photo - I like dangly bits and I like interesting yarns - so, of course, the bottom of the bag is fringed with dangly bits of interesting yarn/etc ...

Here is a close up of heaps of mostly feather stitch ... the green thread is another one of those not really sewing threads ... it is kind of like working with a thin version of that brown packaging string ... but I like how it looks when I have stitched stuff with it, and sometimes things need a bit of that colour green!

The red, red/orange and yellow bits are those threads I got at the Asian grocery shop (these photos are clickable for a closer veiw ... or at least I hope they are - that is usually what happens when I stick them in here like this - it does it automatically ;-)

Here is a photo of the finished? bag:

and here is the other side:

That photo was taken a couple weeks later - and yes - I snipped off the tassel! - I decided it didn't look right, so now I have a (sort of) matching key tag ... or something ...

Here is a closer up view:

... I think I might have to find an interesting shell or something and sew it to the end where I snipped off the tassel ... it needs something (just not that dangly tassel that didn't quite look like it belonged there ;-)

btw, this is an even better view of the feather stitch done with those 3 threads from the Asian grocery shop ... the red one with some white in it, the red one with a strand of yellow/orange in it, and the yellow one that is sort of a cheapy version of fine crochet cotton.

Anyway ... I should be asleep - I have to get up and get ready for work in 7 hours time!

I will try to find time tomorrow, or at least some time this week, to come in here, log in, and post something about the other weekly stitches I have messed around with - and today is Tuesday (well it is actually Wednesday now, but it was still Tuesday when I typed most of this stuff ;-) so we got given another stitch this morning - and I even did a bit of that one in my lunch break today!

I hope this lot all made sense ... it seems to be a bit "all over the place like a mad woman's knitting" ... jumping back and forth between all the stuff I was raving on about - just like my mind does ... LOL