I've been dabbling with canvas stitches lately, and not achieving the best results in the world! For the TIF Challenge posed by Sharon, I thought I'd challenge myself to dabble in areas of needlework and embroidery into which I don't normally venture. Hence, the idea of a needlepoint sampler this month.

Needlepoint (or canvas stitching) is not necessarily my "thing." As Margaret, a faithful reader, put it, "I like to stitch on a curve!" And I do, too. Still, I wanted to explore outside my normal embroidery range, and so I thought I'd try playing around with canvas stitches.

Without much of a plan beyond just a "sampler" of stitches blocked out in one-inch squares, I set about stitching. I gathered together whatever threads looked remotely similar to the palette presented by Sharon for January. They range from wools, to wool and silk blends, to silk, to cotton. Watercolors by Caron, Waterlilies by Caron, Soie Gobelin, Soie Perlee, Trebizond, DMC stranded cotton, DMC perle, rayon ribbon floss - I just pooled a bunch of threads out of my stash and started.

The fabric is soft congress cloth, 24 ct. I framed it up in a 6 x 9 frame, and drew a row of four one-inch blocks to start with.

And this is all I've accomplished so far:



Now, all you Expert Eyes and Expert Needlepoint Needlers out there will undoubtedly see what I see here: bad tension, wrong thread choice, and a lack of attention to detail... (not to mention the deplorable lack of a scheme or plan!!)



The green square on the right was the first square I worked. I used Silk & Ivory (50% silk, 50% Merino wool) - a whole 3-ply strand. Needless to say, it's a tight fit in 24 ct congress cloth! The stitch is a basketweave tent stitch, and I varied the length of the stitch in certain places, going over two threads as opposed to just one. I completely messed up the lower corner of the thicker ridge in the middle. The wonderful warping of this square is not normally what one desires in a needlework project, either! It looks, to say the least, dreadful.

But I did learn a lot stitching it. The first obvious lesson was to pick a thread that fits the canvas. The second was to go easy on pulling the thread through. I liked the hard look as the stitches developed, until I realized I was pulling the whole thing into a warped mess. The next thing I learned is to pay attention!! I had it in my narrow mind that this stuff is "brainless" stitching. I was just stitching along, paying attention to every other thing around me - and then - voila! I found out that you DO have to plan ahead, especially when it comes to compensating stitches. The lower right hand corner of the square taught me that lesson!



This is my favorite square so far. It's an upright cross stitch. The top is worked in DMC perle #12, which fits really well on this canvas for this stitch. The middle is 2 strands of DMC cotton, and the bottom alternates the two. I like the firmness of the finished stitches. The thread was better to work with: there was no fraying for two reasons - the type of thread, and the fact that it fit in the holes!



I hate this square. There's nothing about it I like. I don't even want to talk about it! The top half is herringbone as a filling, alternating medium and light greens (Silk & Ivory again), and golly. That was just dumb. I must not have learned the first lesson very well, actually. The thread was too thick for this - for the canvas, for the stitch - it was just all wrong. I finally gave up and went to Hungarian filling, which is kind of an alternating cross pattern. It looks lousy, too! Oh, and let's not mention the compensating stitches that are missing On Every Side! I'm laughing....



Now, this little square is not very impressive right now, but I like the thread! This is Caron Watercolors - a 3-ply overdyed cotton, which I stripped and used just one ply. It's nice to stitch with, and I like it. The results here don't look so marvelous. It's no particular "stitch," to my knowledge. I just wanted to work rows, leaving one little place open, which I'm going to go back and fill with something else. The stitches are just straight up-and-down stitches, alternating between over two and over one.

And that is my latest dabbling. Oh, for heaven's sake. It's bad. But I'm not finished!! NO - I'm determined to keep playing (and probably making it worse!)

The reason I decided to take up the TIF challenge was simple: I wanted to have a kind of structure for forcing myself to play with different techniques or supplies that I don't normally play with. To fiddle around alone is not so fun, but to join in with other people (who are actually producing NICE stuff) and to have the loose constraints of the Take it Further challenge makes it a little more fun to dabble about.

Next month, despite my sorry attempt here, I'm going to venture into ... a Crazy Quilt square. Wow. New for me, anyway.

My plan with each little challenge episode was to produce something that I could finish somehow, rather than just scraps to store in a notebook. This piece, though... it yearns for the inconspicuous sleeve in an inconspicuous notebook. But who knows - I may save it yet.

Unless you have any ideas of what I could do with this "thing"?!

Labels: canvas stitches, sampler, stitch challenge, TIF

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This embroidery project started out as something to kill time on a road trip, but as I keep stitching, it becomes more and more addicting! My plan is to turn the whole thing into a large needle / sewing book, with space for scissors, a magnet strip, threads, and, of course, plenty of needles! I thought I’d show you my progress on the front cover…

… and eventually, I’ll share the back cover, too, which will be entirely hand-embroidered in crazy patterns as well.

Basically, as I explained earlier, my plan was just to stitch whatever stitches came to mind, using whatever threads I happened to pull out of my stash. I modified the plan only a little bit, by attempting to balance some of the colors in the larger areas. I also picked out a line I didn’t like (the puffy couching) and replaced it with a running stitch whipped with ribbon. You can see the puffy couching in this post, where I gave my last update.

Here’s a photo of the front cover, finished. You can click on the image for a close up.



So that’s what I’ve been occupying my evenings with while on vacation, although I have managed to finish and mail one embroidered Christmas present, and, in the next three days (working mostly in the wee hours, so I don’t get caught red-handed!), I have high hopes of starting and finishing a little bird as another gift. I might even be able to get it framed before Christmas! We’ll see! I’ll be sure to snap some photos before I give it away.

Back to the needle ‘n thread…

Labels: Hand embroidery stitches, needlecase, sampler, wip

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It's a busy time of year for hand embroiderers, as many work on preparing Christmas gifts and decorations - along with all the other holiday prep that goes on between now and Christmas (3 weeks from today, I might add!)

Sharon Bogan has a couple posts on her site, Inaminuteago, about Christmas preparations - specifically card making and ornament making. And in fact, these are the things that I've been mulling over lately - specifically, embroidered Christmas cards. I've got some scraps of card-making supplies around, and I even have a handy-dandy pricker for fine holes in paper stock. I'm pretty sure my stash includes some metallics that will do for the embroidery. I should be able to drum up some Christmas cards before the season is completely over!

And speaking of over, the weekend is exactly that. Unfortunately, for me, it was an off-schedule sort of weekend. We had to take a road trip, so, with a six hour ride in front of me early Saturday morning, it occurred to me that I should be able to take something productive along. Stitching in the car is generally out of the question for me - I practically always have to stitch on a frame, and my projects generally require good light and exceptional precision, not to mention the use of gold for couching and all that stuff. Not exactly the kind of stuff you can open up and spread out in the car!

But as the prospect of the drive overcame me on Saturday, I figured I could manage something - so I foraged through the scrap bin and came up with a long strip of red wool felt.

I grabbed my "class bag," which contains a good stash of disorganized thread that I use specifically for embroidery class.

And we set out.

The first thing I did with my wool felt was block out four panels on it, using a greeting card envelope. Between the four (with two on each side) I left about a one-inch strip. Think book cover. The one inch strip would be the spine.

Then I pulled a micro marker out of my bag, and scrolled off a bit of a basic design, just to get the thing going.

Then I stitched! My method was really simple: reach into the bag, pull out some thread. Using whatever stitch that comes to mind, stitch! And so that's what I did.

I didn't get that far - I figured with a six hour drive I should've been able to finish the front of a panel - but things never happen the way we expect. The finished product will have two panels stitched, and then I'll fold the outside panels under the embroidered ones, put a light cardboard insert between them and stitch them closed, and then add an inside felt page, with flanel squares - to make an extra-large needlebook.

There's quite a ways to go on the embellishment on the front. It's a bit too standard right now to be "interesting," and I'd like to play a bit with texture and shading here and there on it.

I'll let you know how it goes! and I'll give you a run-down on the stitches used once I finish the front. Here's the progress so far:

Labels: beginner embroidery, Hand embroidery stitches, needlecase, sampler, wip

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