The substitute

As I told you before I will be shelving my bias tape quilt for some time. No, it is NOT turning into a UFO, I promise. Simply for practical reasons I will have to put it aside and work on something else, something smaller. The substitute is this crazy quilt block:

My latest work on this CQblock is the lace in the top left corner. I will try to post the progress on Sharon's Work in Progress Wednesday every week.

Summer's busy bee

Summer is a time when I get very busy filling my social calendar. I make visits to friends and family, I  look after visitors and I travel.
This means a lot of time usually allocated for needlework, and blogging,  gets spent on other things. It is not practical to carry a big quilt, Work In Progress, with me, nor have it out when people come to stay. This means I will switch from the Bias Tape quilt to a smaller CQ block to work on for a while.
Also my TAST embroidery will take the shape of a sampler for some time. I am looking forward to doing something with the Up and Down Buttonhole stitch, aren't you?

Drawing tools at the ready!

TAST2012 Week 27

Have you heard of, or seen, the Bonnet Stitch? A lot of my fellow TAST members seem to have, and judging from the excellent work they have made, they have taken to this stitch. I have enjoyed looking at all the circles and curves used in making sunflowers, fans, Mandalas and shisha mirror work among many other innovative ways to use the Bonnet stitch. Why don't you have a look at the links on Pintagle?

So what about me? Well, I was a newbie to this stitch and didn't manage to get my head around the Bonnet for some reason. Maybe I have had too many other bees in my Bonnet (!) to sit down and work out a nice design. Or should I put the blame on the drenching humidity of Tokyo's rainy season; the thread tangles, the fingers get slippery with moisture and I've spent more time protecting the embroidery from perspiration dripping from my brow than actually stitching.

Anyway, do you remember my TAST2012 Week 26 (The Palestrina stitch)? I embroidered a leaf based on the cap of a Swedish folk costume. The cap also has a long 'beak' of lace and looks something like this:

So what is the best way to use the Bonnet stitch if not for a bonnet, ha, ha? Here was my chance to make lace for that beak!

I used an ordinary Japanese cotton sewing thread #30. Luckily, lace is often a bit uneven and 'rough', so my poor stitch quality this week will disappear in the mesh!

It is easy to see that I didn't warm to the Bonnet Stitch as I have added a lot of other stitches.

Work In Progress Wednesday or ...

I am still working on the ricrac border.
On this border there are four central blocks in grey (the yellow strips weren't long enough for the border so I added a block piece of grey). These areas stand out like a sore thumb so I wanted to add something.

Following the instructions from Sharon's tutorial I made some ricrac roses. They are awesome, but I am not sure that they belong on this quilt. Is this Work in Progress or A Waste of Time?

Are they too high? Should I make them flatter? What do you think?