Stitching Skills-in-Progress

Last year about this time, I was struggling to be happy about doing the stitching for an embroidery group I had joined. I was having some serious pain and attention-span-draining effects from the meds I was taking for a back problem… (although “back problem” seems far too benign a term for what it felt like. I’m sure any of you who have suffered through anything with intense pain know what I mean!) I finally gave up on the stitching then, but not the dream or the plan to become a  Crazy Quilter. Insert “crazy” Gail quilting jokes here, you have my permission ;)

I want to be able to do this, and this, and this someday soon! And this!

This year, I started over and picked up the Take-A-Stitch-on-Tuesday Challenge from the beginning. It is not being run again this year; rather it is continuing with additional stitches which are more complicated.

Fly Stitch experiments

But I really have this need to go through the stitches in the order they were introduced last year, starting at #1 and building on basics — some of which I am already proficient at; expanding my stitch repertoire as well as getting in some good practice and experimentation.

Since my comfort zone for embroidery stitches is based on basic doodle-stitching, crewel work, and cross stitch, many of the stitches *and threads* used for crazy quilting seam embellishing are new to my fingers and thread stash!

There are endless versions of Buttonhole Stitch to play around with.

Making a stitch sample with each week’s featured stitch, with NO artistic goals, lets me get comfortable with how the stitch brings itself together and how it may be adjusted to get different results.

Feather stitch is fun, and used a lot in Crazy Quilting especially with beads.

I just got a shipment of a different kind of embroidery thread that I haven’t used before, and it looks great! Smooth and fine and colorful! Meet DMC Coton a Broder, aka Broder Special in the topmost picture. It comes in different thread sizes, but is only available in colors at this size. No more separating out (and keeping tamed) 2 or 3 strands of embroidery floss for a finer look.

Cretan Stitch experiments

So today I’ve shown you my stitch samples from the past few weeks. I plan on making a Fabric Journal to contain all my samples, with a monthly (or so) crazy quilt block featuring the most recent 4-5 stitches. I’m due to start that first block now since I didn’t plan to do it on my vacation to Arizona!

I will show you what I’ve been doing with this TAST stitching challenge now and then here at 2create, but if you want to check up on me or even JOIN me, you’ll find all my stitching action at TAST2012ReRun.wordpress.com. Pop in and say Hi!

Gail