It’s amazing how quickly we’re creeping towards the halfway point of the TAST 2012 challenge! So, it’s now week 20 and this week we’ll be doing bullion knots. I’ve seen this done in lots of places and tried them once or twice myself so I’m interested to place with this stitch and see what I can do with it. I have a feeling I may need to pull out the old faithful Constance Howard book again!
Well I was kind of wrong about the quieter bit! This week has still been pretty crazy but I did manage to get some stitching done on week 19‘s stitch for the TAST 2012 challenge. I just did a few simple samples of half chevron because I’m not familiar with the stitch.
I like the motif created by stitching 4 half chevron stitches at right angles to each other although my aptitude needs a bit of improvement if I’m going to use that for anything special. The top row of stitches reminds me of people. Maybe dancers of ladies doing a yoga pose. That could be an interesting use for this stitch.
Ok, on to week 20 and hopefully more time for sewing (and I’ll show you my new toy 
).
The latest issue of Making Jewellery hit the shelves last week and I’ve got 2 articles in it this month. Cathy Newell Price is the featured artist in my regular Inspirations article.
I’ve also written a tutorial on 3 styles of earrings based on 1 design. It was a really interesting brief – to come up with 1 design that could look very different depending on the beads used but didn’t involve lots of different techniques. I was actually quite pleased with my results – simple but pretty.
Only 1 style is shown here – you’ll have to buy the magazine to see the other 2!
Well, now that things are a little bit quieter in my life I’m looking forward to getting back into a stitching routine and learning more about each new stitch that we’re doing for the TAST 2012 challenge. This week we’re working on a deviation of a stitch that we’ve already covered: half chevron stitch. It looks interesting and I can see my being a bit fingers and thumbs to start with. I reckon it will be a nice stitch to do once I find my rhythm, though, and some of the samples that Sharon shows look really interesting.
After a week of work, rehearsals, hairdresser appointments and finally a fashion show I haven’t got around to much stitching. I finally did a little sample of this week’s TAST 2012 stitch last night so that at least I had something to show. I must admit that I didn’t really get into this stitch and I’m not sure how I would use it so I wasn’t too bothered about not having more time to play with it. I like Sharon’s suggestion about using it for couching but other than that I can’t see me coming back to this stitch very often.
I did 2 lines of the basic stitch with slightly different sizing then I tried doing a bit of irregular stitching but I think it just ended up looking messy. Hopefully it won’t look too bad with all the other stitching around it
Ok, I’ve got myself all out of synch this week due to a horrible virus and a feeling of complete exhaustion so I’m going to show you the results of last week’s TAST 2012 stitch at the same time as letting you know what this week’s stitch is.
For week 17 of the TAST 2012 challenge we were given Wheatear stitch. I’d never done this one and never even heard of it but it turned out to not be that difficult. I did find it hard to keep everything in proportion with each other and sometimes veered to the left slightly, but my last attempts were purposely curved to use that tendency in a positive way. I can see how this stitch, when created in a casual style, could be used to represent a lot of foliage and natural forms – especially fields of wheat, of course!
There’s a small sample of Wheatear stitch in the bottom left of this picture before I created some lines that joined near the centre, then did more ‘relaxed’ stitching towards the top.
I love how the whole thing is progressing. It’s going to look amazing at the end of the year.
So, on to TAST 2012 week 18. This week Sharon has given us Crossed Buttonhole stitch to work on. Another one that I’ve never heard of so it should be fun learning how to work this stitch.
The weather is decidedly inclement today with crashing wind and pouring rain. Definitely a day for snuggling up with cats and browsing the numerous lovelies that can be found on the Internet. So, I’ve created my first ever Etsy treasury based around ‘wind’.
This is all new to me but it was certainly fun typing in a search term as broad as ‘wind’ and seeing what pretty things I could find. Take a look…there are some amazing things on Etsy.
I’m currently sitting in bed feeling awful and suffering from a fluey-cold so I thought I’d post something nice and colourful to brighten up my day! I’ve recently been dyeing more silk scarves, some of which I will post on Etsy and others will go into local galleries.
I’ve been playing with tying techniques and mixing colours and it’s always exciting to see what the results will be.
It’s only once the scarves dry that I can actually see what they’re going to look like so it feels quite mysterious.
And it’s difficult to get the same results twice in a row which makes dyeing a bit unpredictable but also really fun
Seeing as I dyed a series of scarves I thought I would put together a collage of different ways to wear them. I think it looks cute.
On to week 17 of the TAST 2012 challenge and this week we’re working on wheatear stitch. I kind of know this stitch but it’s not one that I’ve really used so it will be great to practice it and find some creative ways of using it.
First though it’s off to work then I can start practising when I get home tonight.
A quick update on week 16 of the TAST 2012 challenge. Although I was quite confident about this week’s stitch it’s been a bit of a hard one. I started off with my normal stranded embroidery thread and created a batch of knots. Then I moved on to a silky, rattail-type thread – good grief, what a nightmare! Every stitch I tried to take it knotted up and I felt like I was going backwards with the amount of unpicking I was doing. That’s why I’m late in posting about this week’s stitching because it’s only today that I’ve managed to get into a rhythm with this thread and got anything done.
It takes a long time to make anything substantial looking with this stitch but it is very effective for texture and it a great knot to know. Here’s hoping for a week that goes better for week 17!