WIPW - Necklace

Work In Progress Wednesday report:

Freeform Embroidery
I added Threaded Cable Chain Stitch and Twisted Lattice Band.

Tvistsöm Cushion

I have completed row #36.

Necklace

I made this necklace from scraps of fabric. The beads are part of a broken string of beads my Mum once had.

I bet they are happy to get a new life here!

Birthday Cards

I made two simple birthday cards.

Later I decorated the oval window frames with fancy tape.

WIPW - Scraps and Plans

Wednesday, time to publish this weeks Work In Progress Wednesday report.

Freeform Embroidery
I added a line of Spanish Feather Stitch and another one of Triangular Buttonhole Stitch.

Tvistsöm Cushion

Just started on row 35.

Hina Dolls

As I blogged about yesterday, I have completed three new Hanging Hina Dolls.

Scraps

At the quilt show in Tokyo Dome I bought some plastic cupped discs and will use them together with fabric scraps to make a necklace.

Birthday Cards Plan

I have also started preparations for two birthday cards that need to be stitched up asap.

WIPW - Three Cheers for TAST

Work In Progress Wednesday no longer includes the HC (Himeji Castle) quilt as I completed it last week. This will give me a chance to speed up progress on Trinity Green - I thought. There was another birthday, though, and I made a card.

Trinity Green
I added another 270 triangles and the total is now 4,752:

Fabric in Focus
I don't know if you can call this 'designer' fabric, but it is sold at IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant whose shops pop up like mushrooms all over the world.
Typical for Swedish prints, and maybe especially IKEA, is the large scale of the design. It makes it hard to use for small pieces in patchwork. So I fussy cut the green areas, ignored the cute animals and just salvaged the green.

Birthday Card

I wanted to make a simple birthday card and picked a few of the TAST stitches I have recently been having Second Helpings of.
Three Cheers for TAST!

Light blue is #95 Linked Chain Stitch
Turquoise is #14 Stem Stitch
Blue with orange links is #104 Buttonholed Cable Chain Stitch
Blue with beads is #26 Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch
I also added an appliquéd dot (with a plastic cup inside)

WIPW - VL

There is Very Little Work In Progress Wednesday to report. The reasons? A forgotten birthday, a visit to the hospital and then a wake to attend.


Trinity Green
I started cutting new triangles.

I did not, however, have the time to stitch any of them. The total number of sewn triangles on the paper strips for the Trinity Green quilt thus remains at 4.401.

Fabric in Focus

Why is it that we love floral prints so much? I have shown some of these prints before, but you will notice that seen together there are many different shades of green, various styles and different scale, and the impact of the addition of colour.
The fantastic print in the left foreground with both tiny leaves and larger spotted leaves and grey-green flowers is a print I was given by Julie of My Quilt Diary. As soon as I saw it, it just popped up and begged me to be added to Trinity Green. Julie kindly said Yes. Thanks, Julie.

H C Quilt
I am beginning to run out of time and have worked hard to make the cherry trees, which to me looks more like plum trees!, blossom.
French Knot and Colonial Knot Stitches

 I also quilted some lines for the greenery in the foreground.

A Birthday Card

Birthdays at the beginning of the month are so easy to forget. On September 1 I turned the page of the calendar and saw that there in the beginning of the month was a birthday I should have prepared for weeks earlier.
It was a rush to stitch up this card and have it in the post before the last collection. Letter boxes are emptied four times a day on weekdays, and two or three times at weekends, here in Tokyo. It is a blessing, especially for the forgetful Queenie! Viva Japan Post!

I tried to add several TAST stitches: Stem, Fly, Feather, Chain, Cretan, Detached Chain, French Knot, Whipped Running and two coloured Berry, for which I got the idea from KippysSoMature. Blogging is a blessing, too! 

WIPW - The Usual + A Birthday Card

What news is there for Work In Progress Wednesday this week? Well, there is the ususal stuff:

Trinity Green
The addition of 270 triangles makes 3780 the total number in my collection.

Fabric in Focus

Last week I told you about the popularity of Laura Ashley in Japan, and I added a 'show and tell' of how I have used her fabric.

Laura Ashley is classy, but William Morris is classier! Of all the beautiful designs my favourite is Golden Lily. Do you know that there are two versions? I have some curtains in the traditional green and gold print

  then bought the minor version (Golden Lily Minor) in a shop in London.

 I had a wee bit left and as the material is much thinner and more suited for patchwork than the original cretonne it was sacrificed for Trinity Green.

H C Quilt
I have completed almost all the quilting on the line drawings on the castle. I'll do the windows later.
Next step is the stone blocks.

Stumpwork Portrait
I had another birthday card to make, and once again it became a stumpwork portrait.

Who Harvested the Carrots?

Do you remember World Embroidery Day, July 30th?

I wrote a blog post about harvesting carrots and showed this detail of the stumpwork portrait I made on WED:

As it is a birthday card I did not want to show the full view then. Today is the 'gardener's' birthday so I can now show you.

 

I don't often make male portraits so it was a challenge, but most enjoyable.

A birthday card

I made another embroidered birthday card.

It was nice to work with other colours than green!

Two cards

I made two more birthday cards. One is embroidered and made without a plan, but I used Sharon B's crazy quilting templates (well worth investing in, and enjoyable to use):

The other card was another stumpwork portrait:

I haven't made a stumpwork portrait in a long time and it was, as always, so interesting to see it grow. 

The veil is made of a stretchy fabric, and if the pin is removed the lady's face, and hair, will be revealed 

WIPW - Pile 'em On is Completed

Thank you for kind comments and I am sorry I have been too busy to answer them.  I hope my work situation will allow me more 'blogging time' soon.

In this week's Work In Progress Wednesday report I can show you the completed

Pile 'em On

 The background is made up of blocks of Canvas work, the flames of Pulled work and the circle is filled with 'any stitch' piled on top of other stitches, and made of 'orts' (short lenghts of thread). The border is crowded with linear stitches

and the 'icing on the cake' is a braid made of messy thread and beads

Now I want to start a project of neater stitches!

.............

Extra! Birthday Cards

I also made some birthday cards:

WIPW - Making Cards

Work In Progress Wednesday, oh it comes along so quickly! What have I achieved during the week?

Pile 'em On
Layer upon layer of thread in the circle.
A new flame of Diagonal Drawn Filling Stitch. I found the instructions in A-Z of Embroidery Stitches 2.

TASTy Beads Galore
Some kind of strange growth has emerged from the stem I stitched last week.
The stitch used was TAST #113 Beaded Feathered Chain with bugle beads.

New and Completed
Three cards were made.
1) Swiss machine lace that I cut apart and assembled into a 'propeller', topped with a machine stitched shisha and then fastened with some simple stitches.

2) Painted heart shaped wooden buttons on felt with stems of Twisted Chain, TAST #73 Portuguese Stem, Whipped Stem and the leaves are #1 Fly- and Back Stitch

3) Painted star shaped wooden buttons on felt with stems of TAST #55 Buttonholed Herringbone and #105 Alternating Buttonholed Cable Chain (or rather Alternating Buttonhole Chain - there is no cable link)

Conveyor Belt Wool Embroidery Needle Case

No progress what so ever!

TAST #130 Double Lock Stitch - turns into a birthday card

TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday.
Sharon teaches you a new stitch on her blog, Pintangle, on a Tuesday. You learn it, photograph the result and post it on your own blog. You then leave a comment on Pintangle with a link to your blog so other members can see how you interpreted the stitch. Why don't you join in?

Having said all that, I must admit that for TAST #130 Double Lock Stitch, I felt like not blogging about it at all!
It is a version of #129, and equally hard to get the tension even.

On Aida, using yellow Cotton a Broder and blue Perle #8.

Here is a strange thread combination, black Perle #3 and variegated nylon thread, or is it string? It is something I picked up at Festival of Quilts some years ago.

I thought that one day I will try these stitches again, and hopefully they will fall into place in my mind and hands!

Well, that day is already here! Thanks to encouragement and inspiration from other TAST members (read the comments on my previous blog posts and you can see how much support I get from my online friends) I decided to put in some more work into this stitch.

Annet, always a source of knowledge, advice and inspiration, mentioned that she prefers doing the second part of the stitch from left to right. So I gave that a try, hmm, yes, easier but still the tension was not good, and I was using a hoop.
Then suddenly the name struck me, Lock Stitch, of course that could mean that you 'lock' the stitches by pulling tightly on the thread!
After looking through my library of embroidery books I finally found one that contained the Lock stitch; the Danish Jytte Harboesgaard's Brodera - Stygn, sömmar och tekniker (Swedish translation). She stitches from bottom to top, like this:

See how the direction of the needle moves and that the thread is always behind the needle.

I think my tension was poor because I was confused about the direction of the needle and the thread!

Chitra is often using a paisley design, or making flowers or curves for her TAST samplers. Maureen made some fantastic Christmas wreaths. It was time for me to try some other shapes and different tension.

In the green hexagon shape I worked two rounds of white thread. Instead of Straight stitches I tested the stitch on orange Buttonhole stitches. By pulling the thread tightly, 'locking' the Lock Stitch, you get almost an Up and Down Buttonhole look like in the variegated circle. However, can you spot the mistake I made?

Then I felt I wanted to use the Lock stitch in a project and made this birthday card for my uncle:

Check out the flowers made up of orange and yellow Lock stitch, and the green leaves! Are they all the same stitch? YES!

Isn't it great when a stitch you did not like becomes something you love? NEVER give up!

Fore more fantastic Lock stitch eye candy, have a look at six days work of Quieter Moments.