playing catch up with TAST

Hi all, I'm still off work with the nasty cough and cold thing. So I've been tucked up with a hot drink, paracetamol, needle and thread.

Here are four more of the Take a stitch Tuesday ATCs, knotted buttonhole stitch. shisha stitch, satin stitch Yuk,Yuk, and buttonhole wheels.

I will announce the Monster winners tomorrow as soon as Biker Ted gives me two numbers between 1 and 39 so keep your fingers crossed :-)

spinning

A week or so ago I posed the following question to my friend on Stitchin Fingers

So my question is, although many of you have tried many different fibre techniques, Is there one that you have never tried that keeps calling to you. You know, the one that gets you watching every time you see someone demonstrate it.

For me, it's seeing someone sat at a spinning wheel, my fingers itch to have a go. Closely followed by those big looms that bang and clang :-)

Spurred on by this, I had a rummage in my cupboard and found a drop spindle purchased in Scotland several years ago, played with once, failed to make anything that stayed together and promptly abandoned!

I then hunted down video clips on You Tube, adapted the method so that I used my bad arm as little as possible and played,and played, and played...................

So take one spindle



add fibre




make some wonderful texture



eventually something that resembles wool



knitable



try again and again, eventually a little more control



produced this




thanks to my friends for replying, many of them also had ambition to spin-) Abigail, Hanane, Tatting Chic, Sita,Pam,Jenny,Helen Suzanne, Neki,Ati, Pippa and Margaret

So, what new craft would you like to try?

Where in the world would you want to study stitch?

Embroidery from the Adithi Collective Bihar, India ( own collection)

Earlier in July, I posed this question to friends on the Stitchin Fingers Forum

“Hi everyone, Now, if you had the chance to visit any country of your choice to study/learn their embroidery/textile techniques, Where would you go and why? “

Now, living in the Uk I naively thought that places like Africa, India, China would get the vote. I was unprepared for the number of people who suggested The UK, Wales, Europe in general.

The list included India, Japan, Guatemala, Vietnam, Wales, Native American, India ( many votes for this one) Peru, Japan ( very popular) Hungary, Italy Norway, Russia Morocco, Panama, Middle East, North Africa and the UK.

My thanks to all my friends who took part and if anyone reading would like to suggest a country or has any interesting links, please feel free to leave a comment.

Stitch along

Over on Stitchin Fingers there is a group called hand embroidery who have a thing called stitch a long- no deadlines just chose your stitches from the list and do your own thing. You can attempt all of the stitches but no one will shout if you don't. Many are doing band samplers but I quite fancy doing small books of some kind ( I have an idea based on this post on Jacquelines blog but I'm not sure if it will work)
Anyway, I have started with an easy one - back stitch. Ohh I do intend doing more than one stitch in most of the samples.

design 3.5 inch across

fun question

I'm getting some interesting replies from my latest Stitchin fingers fun question so I thought I would throw it open on here as well.

Now, if you had the chance to visit any country of your choice to study/learn their embroidery/textile techniques, Where would you go and why? I suspect I know which country will come out top but I will try and put them in to some sort of league table.

If you have any suggestions, please add them.

Also if you are visiting my blog and fancy saying hello, please do so- always good to meet new people.

Felting Fun

This is scary, July already, where is the year goimg? This month I have TIF, TAST revisited and now Stitch a long
to work on. On the biker side of life, we have had to cancel our trip to the Snowman Rally next weekend due to ongoing electrical problems with the Guzzi but have a short trip to Northumberland planned for later this month. We also have a house guest for one week which means finding a home for the junk/stash in our spare bedroom.

So determined to make a head start and taking advantage of Ian being out,I took the opportunity of turning this

into this

and this

Felted silk and wool fibres with a bit of angelina thrown in, ready to be stitched as I owe a couple of ATCs this month as well.
I seem to had a large stash of little bags of colourful fibres picked up a shows without thinking what I would do with them. Does this mean I have some sort of addiction?

Questions for friends

If you have visited the Stitchin Fingers network, you will notice that each person is able to nominate others as friends. I have listed both fellow bloggers and people I have met through the stitch fingers group.
A useful tool is the ability to sent a message to all friends and I have recently been using this to ask fun questions just to find out a bit more about the. So for anyone who may want to play or just see my answers, read on.

Question 1. what do you do whilst you are stitching, do you listen to music, TV silence? do you match the music to what you are stitching?

I am currently listening to an audio book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the CD in the machine is Aboriginal Beats

Claire of Pinky and Boo has recently posed a question as to what is on your Ipod? why not pop over and have a look and also check out her embroidery from vintage embroidery transfers

Question 2.What is the first thing you can remember stitching? I remember sewing cards which had holes punched round a picture to thread cords through then stitching on felt.

I also remember having a small weaving loom which sort of leads me to the photos in the post. Over the last few years I have bought Spears Weaving Looms at car boots sales and put them to good usehere are looms 1-4 not sure if they ever made a bigger one

this is the one that usually gets the most use, size one, great for small background pieces. ( present sample worked by a friend whilst demonstrating weaving to her young daughter)
This is more my style, weaving with torn fabrics.

I also found this version of the old stitchin cards- does anyone one else remember using cards to practise tying shoe laces?

This arrived in the post yesterday so if I go a bit quiet, this is the reason.

TAST revisited, week two

On Stitchin Fingers week two means buttonhole stitch, not my favourite but frquentley used especially when stithing the felt dolls together. This sample is stitched on handfelted wool and silk fibres in wool and embroidery cottons. I am trying very hard to stick to using just items from my stash for this and as many other projects as possible this year.