Thread Stories

Yesterday burning logs kept us warm

and a sun began emerging on this piece.

If you look carefully you'll see 

She's surrounded by a few black holes

where stitches were tried and rejected

or perhaps burnt to a cinder!

Perhaps because it was so cold

 I decided on a bold warm sun.

Trouble is I decided not to remove

the background fabric under the sun

and the combination of these two cottons

is tougher than I thought to stitch through.

I can feel my median nerve feels very tender

so I'll move on to gentler stitching for a day or so.

I've had carpal tunnel before and it's no fun for a stitcher!

Having worked all day on a sun

I decided to stitch a moon for my daily scratching

but what I visualized didn't occur at all, at all

and it looks more like a Catherine Wheel!

And so the day was spent with my basket of threads

in front of the fire.

Three

Three little maids from the land of the Incas.

Sometimes Things Work and Sometimes They Don't!

Daily scratchings are more to my liking this week.

After the disappointment of that many coloured first week

a snippet of college day memories came back.

Using many different stitch types

keep it monochrome

or perhaps analogous

with just a few surprises.

Using the same stitch

lay colour upon colour.

Not necessarily a rule to follow

but worth remembering

if something's not working for you.

And so a change after only one week...

Wonder what week 52 will bring!

What I wanted to play with

was the difference between the dangling brown cat-tails

and the horizontal lozenges of the water reflections.

Didn't work

The water is confusing!

Whittling Doodles

And sometimes a sketch might be

just me learning more about my ipad.

Way back in the days of being a young mother of miniature men

we explored whittling.

They did branches

I did a tiny piece of driftwood.

It became something like a worry bead

and has travelled with me ever since.

On the other side Mother Nature had whittled herself

a face with a beautiful head of curls.

Birds of a Feather

Amid the snowflakes.

And to my amazement the heron is still here.

He blends in so well against the woods that sometimes we don't see.

A bit of whimsy

Just because I love eagles

I have a little friend to sit among my cloth.

Squeeze tummy and he cries out just like the real thing!

Edging Towards The Finish Line

Edges are always last.

When you reach the edges

and actually decide on how to finish them...

...there is another surge of energy

and you know it will be completed within a week.

You leave the top layer frayed

and turn the backing in so that a narrow line of muslin

peeks out beyond the piece.

You've turned the corner and you're coming down the home stretch.

Daily sketches still proceeding

but they take me away from my stitching.

I need more hours in the day!

Daily scratching from the weekend.

It's beginning to look like a sampler.

Not what I want!

Will aim for more consistency this week.

A First 'How To' For Me

All fluffed up on a winter's day.

Not a typical Blue Jay stance

so I had to colour inside the lines to remind myself!

The background of my original photo was blurry blobs of white and green

so I put in snowballs!

A knotted blue feather stitch seemed appropriate.

And here's how it's done if you're interested

Think of the three points of a V.

Bring needle up through the top left point of that V

Take the needle down at the top right and up through the base of that V 

 making sure you hold the thread under the needle as it emerges.

and voilà first step done.

Now wrap the thread around your V once.

Make sure the needle travels under your V but over the trailing thread.

Oh, and don't take it through the fabric at this point.

Et Voilà a knot appears.

Then you start a new V to the right...

add a knot...

then go leftwards for the next one!

and so on and so forth.

Liked the look of this stitch so much

I thought you might enjoy trying it.

Let me know if this was of any interest...

or indeed of any use!