Merry Christmas

Wishing you a happy and joyful holiday.

Melissa

Tutorial: Slanted Buttonhole Stitch

or how to make the butterflies in my last heart (the green one).


Step 1) Pull needle out at point A.
Step 2) Take a stitch from point B to point A.
Step 3) Take a stitch from point B to point C - make sure that the loop of floss is UNDERNEATH your needle (similar to a blanket stitch).
Step 4) Pull triangle to desired tightness.
If you want to continue making triangles, go back to step 2. To finish, take a stitch over the floss to secure the last point. Here are some more variations of the slanted button hole stitch (sorry about the glare).
This is a page from Crazy Quilting by Christine Dabbs.

Nine people for dinner...

equals one big mess in the morning.
And this is after a load of dishes.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

A new challenge

Wow a blog in the week (I know it's almost the weekend).

I just thought I would plug the challenge that Sharon B has make for crazy quilters. It's called Take a Stitch Tuesday.

"Each week I am going to work a stitch and experiment with it, and blog the results. What does it look like worked in different threads? What happens when you change the size? How does it behave on a curve or can it be stacked to create patterns? What happens if you work it in a free form manner? What are the inherent design possibilities of this stitch? Anyone who wants to join in and blog their discoveries is welcome."

I'm quite excited about this project for a number of reasons. This challenge will push me to be more creative with my stitches, I may get a few more hearts done for swapping (I'm thinking of experimenting on hearts) and last but not least I may actually post during the week. We'll see...

Balls and Books

Wow, so much has been going on this past week. I really should try to post more often - maybe that will be a New Year's resolution. There's been some decorating going on in the house.

I love my antique glass balls. They're really fragile and I'm so afraid to pick them up since I can almost feel them shattering in my hand.

In other news, I went to check out the Japan Foundation library. From what I can tell, the Japan Foundation promotes Japanese culture to the masses. There was an art exhibit by non-Japanese artists who are influenced by Japanese art. Among those were some great pieces using shibori (a tye-dying process) and sashiko (similar to quilting which is quite popular). I don't think I've mentioned this but the mister is Japanese, so I'm familiar with both these methods (although I haven't done them).

Now, I've heard about the greatness of Japanese craft books in blogland, but I've never experienced them for myself. I have to tell you, all the pictures that you see don't do them justice. There were a few books at the library, so I signed out one not to be greedy. It was about embroidery and here are a few of my favourite pictures.


Cute crickets!
I love how they show you different techniques with the same design.

In the future: some more about shibori, and a tutorial for a stich on my last heart I made.

Preparing for Christmas - mentally at least

Winter (and Christmas) is fast approching. There's been a smattering of snow flakes but nothing that accumulating. I'm really looking forward to the first real snowfall. I love the great big giant flakes that just glow at night - hopefully they'll arrive before Christmas. Our Christmas ornaments aren't quite out yet but I've been decorating in my head, thinking about where to put different things around the house. Hopefully I'll manage to put some decorations up this week. I'll keep you posted.

I have however been able to finish two more hearts to swap with the Chain of Hearts. I've started to do some stitches with beads which I really like the effect of.


From my travels in blog land, I think I'm going to have to take Sharon's on-line embroidery class. The samples are amazing and I would love to get the confidence to combine stitches to create a whole new layer to my work.

P.S. Can anyone tell me if Blogger beta has most of the bugs worked out of it. I don't think I'll be able to hold out for very much longer.