Friday Homework for Lesson 352: Battlement Stitch

 It is easy to fall in love with the basic Buttonhole Stitch, after all it is commonly used, easy, attractive and a great building block to add other things to. That is why it is so popular for Crazy Quilting.

So if you like the Buttonhole Stitch, you will LOVE the Battlement Stitch. Pile 'em on!

Aida Sampler

Sunday Stitch School Reference Chart

Red Kimono Silk Scribble Cloth

WIPW - Almost Ready to Gallop Away

Here is the report for this week's WIPW - 'Work In Progress Wednesday':

Hexablooms

Here are two before-and-after pictures.

November 2025. There were 204 blocks.

January 2026. There are now 292 blocks.

The Year of the Horse

The saddle now has its fenders, and the horse most of its hair. 

The Dalecarlian Horse is almost ready to gallop away. I think this decoration for 2026, the year of the horse, will be ready by next week's WIPW.

Sunday Stitch School - Lesson 352: Battlement Stitch

The Battlement Stitch, today's new stitch, must not be confused with the Battlement Filling Stitch or the Battlement Couching Stitch. Those latter names are for a laid stitch pattern in which long straight stitches are laid horizontally and vertically, then couched down. We will eventually learn it, but for today, let's concentrate on the Battlement Stitch. It's easy-peasy, just stagger Buttonhole Stitches.

I found it in Pintangle's Stitch Dictionary.

Please also have a look at my photos:

Change the colour and add a new

row below, offset by one or a few holes.

Add another row in a different colour.

OR, work every row in the same colour.

Homework:

Add here, 

Friday Homework for Lesson 351: Twisted Chain Stitch

 For every stitch I add to Sunday Stitch School, I learn something other than the stitch itself. 

Last week, I understood why the Twisted Chain Stitch felt so familiar. In 2012 I learned it while taking part in TAST, Take A Stitch Tuesday. The stitch was #12 Barred and Alternating Barred Chain, where the 'arm' is long and sticking out like the spike in barbed wire. 

This week, I discovered that when you make the Twisted Chain Stitches short and place them close together, you get another stitch - the Rope Stitch, which was also a TAST stitch, #110. Here is a link to the blogpost of May 5th 2014.

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Now for my homework.

Aida Sampler

Sunday Stitch School Reference Chart

Red Kimono Silk Scribble Cloth

The last four stitches would technically be Barred Chain Stitch, wouldn't they?

WIPW - Saddling the Horse

Wow, how fast can a week go? Time and its various speeds never cease to amaze me! Here is my Work In Progress Wednesday report.

Hexablooms

I didn't work on the flimsy itself,  but made a few new hexagon blocks and then basted more of those white 'in-between-the-blocks' hexagon pieces.

The Year of the Horse

I managed to saddle the horse with a colourful seat. Can you see that I made use of a recent Sunday Stitch School stitch? The Over-Under Cross Stitch.

Sunday Stitch School - Lesson 351: Twisted Chain Stitch

Let's start this set of five new stitches with a stitch that should have been included LONG ago - the Twisted Chain Stitch.

I was convinced that I had already worked it on my blog while doing Take A Stitch Tuesday or in the Sunday Stitch School series. It turned out that in 2012, I used it in TAST #12 Barred and Alternating Barred Stitch, as it is the first part of those stitches, but I never used it as a stitch in its own right. It is high time to rectify that!

You can find the instructions at Pintangle or the video at Needle 'n Thread.

Here is my Twisted Chain Stitch photo tutorial:

Homework:

Add here

Embroidery Exhibition in Ueno

Last week I had the opportunity to visit an embroidery exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo's Ueno Park.

Actually, there were two exhibitions included in the price of one ticket.

The first show featured five Japanese embroidery artists, each with a unique style quite different from the others.

Mr Toshitaro Hirano studied under his father, who was an imperial embroidery artist. The strict training of elegant silk shading for exclusive kimonos can be seen in every one of his exhibits. In turn, he taught Mr Mitsuo Akiyama, also an imperial embroidery artisan. Handing down one's knowledge and skills to the next generation is a very important part of the Japanese culture of artisans.

In this exhibition, we could also see how Toshitaro Hirano gave a modern touch to silk embroidery, which is another example of how apprentices try to expand or vary what the previous masters have done.

In the picture below, you can see that Mr Hirano has meticulously appliquéd pieces of gold coloured leather and included blocks of mother-of-pearl for these abstract flowers.

Ms Masano Onoe enjoyed painting in her childhood, and influenced by her grandmother, she learned traditional fibre crafts. After getting married, she picked up Western traditional embroidery techniques from books. 

She later developed her own unique style of needle painting - by using the Straight Stitch and wool yarn on coarse hemp, she 'drew' pictures as seen in the picture here.

She held her first solo exhibition in 1966, which led to annual shows, creating designs for women's magazines, publishing books and founding the Onoe Masano Handicraft Research Institute, where she mentored the next generation of embroidery artists.

Ms Mika Okada faced difficulties with oral communication with others from a young age. Instead, she has learned to express herself with embroidered pictures.

Her motifs are a mixture of real memories and imaginary settings of landscapes and set tables, often with detailed dishes. This is said to be a diary or album style. Ms Okada mostly uses the Straight Stitch.

Picnic in a Field

Bluebell Path

Window with View of Pool

I was happy to see my own coffee pot in this scene. 

I, too, used it in a piece of fibre art, Kafferepet, in 2014. 

Isn't it wonderful to see connections like this at an art exhibition?

Mr Yohei Fusegi also seems to use only a single stitch - I venture to guess it is the Seed Stitch. But there are trillions and trillions of them. The thread is thin, probably #50 machine thread, and the stitches piled one upon the other. 

If I have understood it correctly, Mr Fusegi sees the stitching as a meditative action, adding one tiny stitch after another while eating or talking, without looking, just relying on the sensation in his hand, "he works with the thought of giving time to retracing an image of something he remembered at some point," quoted from the artist profile sign.

The titles are difficult to interpret for onlookers but probably very important for the artist.

Ribs on the Left Side

In the next piece, the stitches are much longer, forming tangled loops of thread. Mr Fusegi uses plastic and bubblewrap to stitch on.

Three Holes in the Lungs

Ms Mari Mochizuki accompanied her husband on his assignments abroad and thus lived in various regions of the world.

In India she got to know 'Kantha'. This form of layering old saris or household textile items, then quilting them together with a Running Stitch is a beautiful form of recycling.  

Ms Mochizuki first copied the Indian style of depicting various shapes, plants, animals and people, then she let her own style take over.

Here are some examples:

Kantha Created for the First Time

Elephants are the Kings of the Forest

Memories of Four Generations of Parents and Children

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The second exhibition was more academic. Its title was "When Embroidery is Born" and was devided into four sections:

1. Embellishing and adorning with embroidery.

Here we could see photographs of young trainees bent over embroidery on kimono silk stretched over frames. 

Kimono fabric is sold in a roll (tanmono) of appr. 13 m x 40 cm. This long and narrow length of fabric is traditionally embroidered or painted before the parts of the kimono are cut out. Precision of where on the lenghts the various motifs should be is vital. One roll of fabric will make one kimono and there is only a few cm of remnant.

This section of the exhibition also showcased a few beautiful items. However, taking photographs was not allowed.

2. Studying and learning embroidery

There were old black and white photographs here too, of classrooms with girls learning stitching in 'Home Economics' lessons.

3. Guarding and praying with embroidery

On display were several white (though soiled with age and hardship) long and narrow towels (tenugui) and 'haramaki', which is a kind of bellyband resembling a cummerbund used for a tuxedo. These haramakis were worn by soldiers during WWII for warmth and protection.

On them were 1000 stitches. Female relatives would ask neighbours, friends and relatives, as well as strangers in the street, to stitch one Running Stitch each along a long line of stitches until there were 1000 stitches in total. These stitches made by 1000 individuals were supposed to offer protection to the men who were sent to the front.

Of course, there were also old photos in this section.

4. Considering & thinking with embroidery

This section housed modern works. Among them was this embroidered paperback book

Naoyo Fukuda

and a black and white photograph of a lady stitching. The work in her hand has been stitched with real thread and tiny stitches.

Satoru Aoyama

Friday Revision Homework - Stitches 346 - 350

Here is the Sunbonnet Sue sampler for stitches 346 - 350.

It was #349 Lantern Stitch that set the theme - Sue as a teenager, snogging her boyfriend Sam under a street lamp.

The two cross stitches, #348 Freeform Cross and #350 Over-Under Cross, were useful for a starry sky. 

The Canvas stitch #347 John Stitch turned out to be great for Sue's winter coat, a quilted down coat.

I also like #346 Double Lazy Daisy Stitch for Sue's wavy hair. Believe it or not, but Sam's shaggy hair is made up of a staggered mass of #348 Freeform Cross.

Other stitches are the Stem Stitch and Whipped Back Stitch.

WIPW - Colouring the Horse

 This week's Work In Progress Wednesday report is here.

Hexablooms

I selected, found places for and marked a number of new blocks.

The Year of the Horse

I have stitched some of the paintwork on the Swedish wooden horse.

Sunbonnet Sue Stitch Sampler

I have worked hard to complete the stumpwork finish. You can see the result on Friday.