Embroidered Collage

I added variations of cretan stitch to my sampler for the Take a Stitch Challenge, but I can't really claim I played with it.  I'm still stuck on what format I want to use for some looser explorations, a subject which is playing into some other things on my mind right now. 

The more unusual variations on my sampler are actually from the book Creative Stitches by Edith John published in the late sixties.  She did some pretty interesting things with stitch structure.  For example, in one cretan variation diagram she pulled the thread back and wrapped it around the previous three stitches and, in another she alternated three stitches horizontal, then three vertical, with a smooth transition between them.  I have another interesting book by her called New Stitches for Needlecraft, which focuses on fewer stitches in even more unusual variations.  Both are Dover Editions.

All I completed for this week's Take a Stitch Challenge - Detached Chain Stitch was a bit on my counted thread sampler.  I especially like my little flower bush on the left.  I do hope to do something off the grid in surface embroidery soon.  I really want to try it as a couching stitch and see how it looks nestled in each other, although I suppose I could do both of these on the quaker cloth below, instead....

I've been feeling artistically muddled most of the week.  Between completing Jasper (I'll post as soon as I have a sunny day to take pictures in) and realizing that my four-sided figures for TAST turned out funny, I've been doing a lot of staring into space and scribbling words down.  I do think I at least know which Footstep I'll be going for next, so that's good, but I'm afraid to say anything before I actually start it in case I change my mind!

  Buttonhole can be used in some wild ways, so Sharon only played with the basic stitch this week, and I followed her lead.  I did a couple of interesting patterns on my counted sampler and then used the stitch to good effect on a fabric piece.  I don't feel like I really pushed my boundaries this week, but I don't recall every having tried to make patterns or waves with buttonhole either, although I've certainly used it to outline shapes and in hardanger and as a detached stitch.  I actually did a little of that last onto the edges of my fabric piece - my length of perle cotton wasn't close to being used up after I laced it between the two stretches of buttonhole in white and it just felt like such a shame to cut it off for later when I could use it now. 

This week's lesson focused on the effects that an embroiderer can achieve by varying such things as spacing and thread type.  I played with some of Sharon's suggestions with the buttonhole stitch, one of those she featured in the class write-up.  My favorite part is the first row.  It makes me think of doing a sampler of squares filled with such patterns and seeing the different textural ways that I can achieve the same value of light or dark by varying stitch spacing.

  For some reason the line stitches of this week aren't exciting me right now, even though the little bits I did turned out well.  I really like what some of the other students are doing with them and I should probably try some free hand instead of on a counted ground and see if that gets me further into the theme.  What I really want to do is get this month's calendar pages out of the way, some more cleaning done, and move onto another canvas piece...

I became enamored of structure working on these variations of fly stitch and therefore played very little with either texture or color.  I just loved the way the slight variations in lengths and widths and branchings built up an intriguing pattern.  I started with single stitches and then intended to make lines from points, but somehow that first line became layers of stitch on top of each other, forming a surface.  I added a few queen's stitches because I was very taken by Elizabeth's realization that the queen stitch is a specialized subset of a combination of fly stitches.  Then I tried some individual stitches in which the tie was more dominant than the U portion.  In the last few lines I turned the fly stitches sideways for two of them and tried out couching for another.