Embroidered Collage

I stitched one trading card for each of the last two Take a Stitch Tuesday stitches.  Whipping and weaving is on the left and the basque stitch is on the right.  I use the first regularly and had never tried the second.  Fabric-covered peltex was not the best surface for the basque stitch, as it was too stiff to get small amounts of fabric through the needle as in the directions.  It was still fun to work with different weights of thread and see how the thicker and poofier the thread, the better the twist of the stitch showed up.

 

I haven't forgotten about Take a Stitch Tuesday, but all I've done for the last three stitches is one rather boring line on my sampler, instead of really experimenting.  The first is knotted cretan, followed by bonnet stitch, followed by oyster stitch.  I seem to be more enthused about the different aspects of my art at different times and now much I do for the exercises gets caught up in that. 

I added to my counted sampler a bit this week.  The first line is a basic up and down buttonhole stitch, as Sharon mentioned when describing this week's Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge.  For the second line I actually stitched the little bar stitches first, then threaded the blue stitches through them.  I wanted to see if the result was different.  In some ways, yes - the tension on the threads is different because of the way they were applied to the fabric, but I do think that in most cases you're not going to notice this.  I made a little wider patterned line as well, alternating the buttonhole portion.  I like the effect, but overall this stitch just doesn't inspire me, even though I enjoyed what Elizabeth at Quieter Moments did with it.

Yay!  A week of Take a Stitch Tuesday where I actually experimented a bit...  I keep getting captured by pattern.  I love the way the cross-stitch can look when it's expanded enough that you can see it's structure.  I like how twisting it sideways into an upright cross is enough to alter it's character in a composition.  I stitched each of the four squares above separately, just for fun.  I also added two lines and four points to my counted fabric sampler.

  I've been pretty distracted this week.  I started on a little bit of stitching on Tuesday while traveling and didn't get very far along in this week's challenge.  When I returned home I realized I needed to concentrate on completing Autumn, since there's a show I want to put it in on the 3rd.  I still love fly stitch and want to play more with it, but not right now.  If you didn't catch my more extensive sampler from Sharon's class, go back and take a peek.

Even these stitch variations from my references held surprises for me this time.  I'm very familiar with feather stitch, but I'd never tried it in a straight line on counted thread.  Those aligned vertical/horizontal straight lines  give the stitch a different feel than the free-form slanted surface embroidery I've done previously.  I'd also never thought of whipping or interlacing feather stitch, but that works well.  I'm also delighted by the repeat pattern to the left, which is rows of feather stitch next to each other.