Weekly recap

Wow, time has flown by. It's been so busy - basically I've come home, eat dinner and go to bed. Three main events have occured since my last post.

1) TAST: Cretan stitch
I played with curvs on this stitch - everytime I look at this it looks like a spine to me. I also like the hexagons that I made - I think it would be an interesting overall effect.

For the overlapping stitch, I think a hoop would have been really useful (and using all 6 strands to fill in the stitch more).

2) I finished a quilt top. This is my miniature bargello quilt (about 9 x 14"). It got a little warped and I'm probaby going to make another one with a slightly different technique (don't worry I'll finish this one too).

3) If you look back in my archives, I entered the Northcott Quilt for a Cure block challenge. They annouced the winners quite a while ago (which I didn't win), but they were also featured in the current edition of The Quilter magazine. I went to my local bookstore to check it out and what did I see. My block. It was apparently a finalist! I was in shock for a little bit and I kind of hugged the magazine in the bookstore (I then bought it). Here's the picture (my block is in the bottom row, second to the left - the hexagon flowers).

Also one quick question for the quilters out there. The mister keeps calling my bargello quilt a bordello quilt so I told him I'm going to make him one (a bordello quilt) for work. I'm thinking it needs to be red. Does anyone have any suggestions?

TAST: Detached Chain Stitch

Sometimes I read a bit quickly. This week, when reading Sharon's TAST post I missed a not so small word - detached. So I happily went about chain stitcheing away (a stitch I really like). Upon realizing that I missed a word, I started again. Don't worry - I save the other one for when chain stitch comes up - it will come up? Sharon? It will come up, right?
Look I clumped stitches together!

Other than that I've been getting over a killer cold. I had no voice for about 5 days (if someone else says I sound terrible...)

A new quilt top will be shown soon (hopefully this weekend).

TAST: Buttonhole stitch

Thanks all for letting me vent. I have restarted my quilt and things are going smoothly (if not carefully).

I was competely blown away by everyone's work last week for the herringbone stitch. Many pieces, including some of the samples were stand-alone pieces of art. I didn't really consider mine in that calibre, but this is a process and I know what I can strive for.

For me doing the stitches and combinations isn't horribly difficult (although there are so many variations that amaze me). So instead I think I'll use this project to interpret stitches differently that things to do on a seam/straight/curvy line (although I may still do some of that).

For this week I thought I would use buttonhole stitch to interpret an image. The first thing that popped into my head were the aurora borealis (northern lights). Here is the result.

I like to work small (see my previous post) so this is about 3 x 3.5 inches. I am completely in love with Sharon's use of overlapping stitches, but to be honest, doing it myself scares the crap out of me (who knows why). I guess you could consider this a baby step in the process.

Grrr...

So I designed a quilt. It was going to be a bargello, a miniature bargello quilt. The bargello part was going to be 10 x 12" plus a border. Anyways, over Chrismas I started making my strips. I cut them, sewed them together and made a tube perfectly - easy peasy. Then I started to cut my strips to make it an actual bargello.

I have a philosophy when making quilts. I can do anything with only a bit of patience and the knowedge that I may have to rip something out every so often. When I started this project I knew it was ambitious - the 1/8" strips made most of my friends cringe. When I got to the third strip (so the middle one is 1/8") things went wrong.

Apparently I can't sew a straight line on 12" of fabric which is almost entirely a seam allowance. That's fine I decided to rip out the part (in the middle of course) to fix that area. By this time, I freaked right out about the size and so now it's going to be about 7" square (a much more manageable size in my opinion).

So now I fixed that 1/8" strip I went onto next piece. Fortunately, it's a bigger piece, I thought I knew what I was doing so I went on with confidence. I cut my next piece, started to place it and what did I see. The last piece (the one I suffered with) was upside down.

TAST: Herringbone stitch

My stash of embellishments doesn't include a lot of different threads, most embroidery floss - so I'll definately make my samplers colourful!


I played with the sizes, number of strands of floss, weaving other floss in, couching down ribbon, different double herringbones and adding different accent stitches. Some stitches are still looking a little bare - I may go back and add more.

I'm already looking forward to the next stitch...

Holiday Recap; Looking Forward

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. My holiday was filled with parties with friends and family at our house.

I got some lovely presents this year. I received two crazy quilted hearts in the mail from Susan from South Dakota (USA) and Kate of Denmark.

The mister and I only exchanged stockings this year but he managed to fill it with all sorts of sewing notions. There was also this book.Rather than doing a Dear Jane quilt, I've been thinking of making some diamonds instead. We have a trip coming up so some hand piecing is needed.

As for this year coming up, there's a lot of thing I'm excited about. Take a Stitch Tuesday starts tomorrow which is about experiment with embrodery stitches. With this, I'm wanting to expand my repertoire and get some more inspiration for my projects. I'm also planning on finishing some projects (aren't we all) and starting some quilts that I've been thinking about for a long time. I've already started in on some of these plans.