Life’s too short to work a moss stitch – or is it?

Posted on 10th February, 2018 by Flights of Fancy

The craft room was never meant to be a room to spend a lot of time in, despite the desk – when putting it together I thought of it more as a handy way of storing all my stitching stuff in one place. But a few days ago I went in there and sat at the desk, with a lovely view of the snowdrops in the garden, bird song coming in through the open window and the early morning light streaming in, and as I set about putting a kit together and mounting a small goldwork project in a card I realised that everything I needed for these two tasks was in the same room as I, mostly within reach from where I was sitting. Bliss!

So I may be spending more time there than I thought, and one of the things to do there is try out stitches on my doodle cloths. When I went to my stitching group last Monday, we were told a lady had donated two boxes of stitching supplies to the Guildhouse (the local adult education centre where we meet), and would our group like to have a rummage; anything we didn’t want would then be offered to the beading class. Well! Who would say no to the chance of rummaging through two boxes of stitching books, fabrics, ribbons, beads, scissors and other bits and bobs? This is what I eventually went home with: beads, two pendants for mounting embroidery in, and The New Anchor Book of Crewel Stitches and Patterns.

One of the stitches mentioned in the book is moss stitch, and from its diagram it looks very attractive, and very symmetrical. I should have been warned by the fact that the ones in the accompanying photograph of an actual embroidery were rather less clearly defined…

After having produced a number of less than uniform moss stitches I tried to work out what the problem was. Well, one of them was the fact that as I pulled the working thread through on the last step, it invariably got itself knotted, and so it wouldn’t pull snugly around the base cross. Looking at the diagram again, I realised I was following it almost exactly, but not quite: I didn’t anchor the thread loop with my finger! Perhaps that was where I went wrong. Tried it again, with the loop duly anchored while pulling through. A bit better, but still nothing like as tidy as the diagram. Eventually I found that tightening the working thread around the needle while it was still inserted under the cross, and only then pulling the needle through, produced a reasonably neat result.

Pulling the working thread tight against the needle

So is moss stitch like a stuffed mushroom – something that life is too short for? It rather depends on how attractive you think the stitch is, and how much effort you are willing to put into what will mostly be used as a scatter stitch. Once you get into a routine it should speed up the process, and having the hoop on a stand so that you can use both hands (which I didn’t) would certainly help. But whether I use it a lot or very rarely, it’s a new addition to my repertoire, which is always welcome.

Applying appliqué lessons

Posted on 2nd August, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

You may remember that my first appliqué bauble suffered from a few flaws, most notably visible attaching stitches. A second bauble was called for, with two changes: the thread used to attach the patterned fabric would match that fabric, not the calico it was being attached to; and the embroidery stitch covering the edges (in this case heavy chain stitch) would be worked in perle #5, not perle #8. Together these measures should make the stitches pretty much invisible. So I set to work.

So far so good; the thread I’m using is variegated so it doesn’t match the fabric everywhere, but as the fabric is patterned it doesn’t matter too much. Yes, definitely pleased with that.

The next bit is unchanged from the first bauble, because I quite liked it as it was – two lines of Kreinik 1/8″ silver ribbon couched with the same variegated stranded cotton I used to attach the coloured fabric.

Now for the second change, working the border stitch in perle #5. Well, the stitched circle itself looked fine (it is my firm belief that very few things stitched in Anchor’s Blue Hawaii shade could ever look bad) but I noticed something that had occurred in the previous bauble as well: the appliquéd fabric seemed to pucker as I covered the edges.

I held it up to the light at different angles; I pulled the calico tighter in the hoop; I squinted at it. None of it was any good. There was no doubt about it, it puckered.

So there we are. Using a matching thread to attach the coloured fabric and a thicker perle for the border did solve the problem I’d set out to solve, but the problem I hadn’t really thought much about was, if anything, worse. When I noticed it in the first bauble I rather thought it was just one of those inexplicable things that sometimes happen in embroidery and it would be fine in subsequent projects – after all, there had been no puckering in the appliqué Christmas tree. It now seems that it may be a direct consequence of the border stitch I chose. The Christmas tree was worked in raised chain stitch, most of which is on the surface; only the foundation stitches go through the fabrics, and there isn’t much strain on them, whereas the heavy chain stitch pulls quite strongly at the fabric.

So it seems there will have to be a third bauble, bordered in perle #5 raised chain stitch! One advantage of that stitch is that it takes corners better than heavy chain stitch; not crucial in the bauble design, which is perfectly circular (or as perfectly circular as I can make it), but I have other ideas…

Twin butterflies (continued)

Posted on 31st July, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

A few months ago I wrote about a butterfly sketch which I intended to turn into two versions, Beginner and Intermediate, possibly to be used in workshops. My first stitched version showed up a few things that needed attention, and so I decided to stitch two models of each of the versions – one each at the original size I printed it at, using special threads (respectively silks and variegated perles), and one each at a slightly smaller size, using coton à broder #16 (slightly thicker than the more usual #25).

And here they are! The Beginner butterfly had its body stitch changed from the initial sketch, but as that was done before I stitched the first model they both use the interlocking buttonhole/blanket stitch. The stitch for the head was changed between models; the buttonhole stitches in the first model simply wouldn’t behave and make a nice, neat oval. I changed it to a “spoked” arrangement consisting of straight stitches only. The wings are whipped running stitch in both models, but in the second model the running stitches are shorter and closer together, to give a smoother line. I could have used whipped backstitch for an even smoother effect, but decided to keep that for the Intermediate butterfly.

The first version of the beginner's butterfly

The second version of the beginner's butterfly

I really like the look of the interlocking buttonhole stitch, but I resisted the temptation to re-use it in the Intermediate butterfly and instead used what I had envisaged in my original sketch, buttonhole stitch closed into segments by straight stitches, each segment decorated with a French knot (there were one or two segments that had come out too small to accommodate a knot, so they were left empty; as they were fairly symmetrically spaced – at the ends of both models and in the middle of the second – it doesn’t look too odd). Incidentally, I did wonder whether to call it buttonhole stitch or blanket stitch as many books and other sources seem to use the terms interchangeably. My personal understanding is that it’s buttonhole stitch when it is very densely worked (as you would around a buttonhole), and blanket stitch when the teeth are more widely spaced as they are in these butterflies. But I must admit to being a bit slap-dash in deciding what I call it in any given design.

The two lines of Mountmellick stitch in the top wing were meant to have their pointy bits together at the body end, but in the first model I started from the wrong side. It looks fine that way too, it’s just not the effect I had in mind . The second model shows the stitches worked the way I intended them to be. I like the look of the communal starting point, and am using something similar (but with the two lines back to back along their entire length) in some of the experimental leaves for the Tree of Life.

Finally a note about the antennae. They are couched pistil stitches, and I added the couching as an afterthought because I wanted a nice elegant curve to the antennae, and pistil stitches don’t curve. But I’m not sure I like the look of the couching. No, that’s not true. I’m sure I don’t like the look of the couching, it just looks clumsy. So the final version of the Intermediate butterfly will have straight antennae, unless I (or any of you) can think of a different way of introducing the desired elegant curve.

The first version of the intermediate butterfly

The second version of the intermediate butterfly

And that’s it as far as the butterflies are concerned for the time being. I haven’t got any firm plans for Butterfly workshops at the moment, as there are four K&S ones plus probably some more Church Building Fund ones to prepare for first. The Beginner and Intermediate butterflies will hibernate in my project folder until the time is ripe for them to stretch their wings and become a stitch sampler for some Beginning and Intermediate stitchers!

Doodles and the start of a leaf project

Posted on 26th June, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

In trying to decide which stitches I want to use for the Tree of Life my doodle cloths are invaluable. Not only are doodles great for showing the texture of stitches in a way diagrams never can, they also give me an idea of how easy or difficult it will be to adapt a stitch to the leaf shape. Accordingly I worked some doodles for Ceylon stitch, and to be complete I did some detached buttonhole stitch filling as well, even though I had pretty much dismissed that one from the possibles list already. And then it turned out that actually I liked the latter better after all! Ceylon stitch has quite an attractive knitted look, but unless I choose to stitch it quite densely it may be difficult to get it to look even. The buttonhole filling looks nice even when worked (as it is here) with quite an open texture.

While checking my stitch book for another stitch, I came across Vandyke stitch. I thought it might work as an edging stitch for one of my appliqué projects, but as I tried it on my doodle cloth it struck me that, if stitched a bit more neatly than I had here, it looked quite leaf-like! The loops form a nice central vein, and if the arms are angled they will work as the minor veins. In order to make neatness easier while experimenting with this stitch, I tried it on my counted doodle cloth as well, in both perle #8 and perle #5; with the latter I tried to get the arms to slant more, but it’s not easy – the stitch seems to have a tendency to straighten itself out. Still, there is a bit of a slant there.

As I was on a roll with all these doodles, I thought I’d give loop stitch another go, if not for the Tree then it might do for one of the appliqué baubles. But I couldn’t quite remember how it went, and in fact on the internet you can find at least two different descriptions of this stitch – one where the working thread is simply hooked around the previous stitch, and one where it it looped around.

What I eventually ended up with appears to be a cross between coral stitch and loop stitch which, for want of a better term, I’ll call knotted loop stitch. It looks quite effective and with shorter arms would make a good border stitch, while with longer arms it would fill a leaf and create a vein. Because of the way it is worked, however, it’s not possible to slant the arms. Be that as it may, it’s another possible filling to consider. I may have to work a veritable forest of leaves before I actually start on the tree proper!

The needle knots around the first stitch

The completed line of knotted loop stitches in perle #5

And here is the first leaf project ready to go – the outline has been traced together with a very faint inner line (to indicate the length of the up-and-down buttonhole stitch), and the crewel wools have been chosen. Originally the leaves of the autumnal tree were designed to be yellow, orange and green, but as I’ll be using some yellow to stand in for gold on the green leaves, and I won’t be stitching the trunk and stems, I decided to use the warm browns originally intended for the trunk to work what would have been the two yellow leaves. After all, as long as it shows the effect and texture of the stitches, it doesn’t really matter what colour I use, and the browns are rather attractive.

A mysterious scribble

Posted on 25th May, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

In a folder with some old sketches (the same one in which I found the Beginner’s Butterfly, in fact) I came across a quarter of an old letter, on the back of which was an intriguing doodle and the words “shuttle stitch?”. It was obviously an idea for a stitch, but I had absolutely no recollection of drawing it and couldn’t make head or tail of it. Was it meant to be a needle book? It vaguely looked like two square pages with the shuttle stitch (whatever that was) as the hinge/spine. Then I thought the rectangles surrounding each of the squares on three sides looked like they might be Kloster blocks – but they were marked “g” or possible “9”, not “K”.

I still can’t remember when or why I drew it, but after some more observation and interpretation I think it represents two cut areas surrounded by Kloster blocks consisting of 9 stitches each, with a woven bar in the middle and a buttonhole arch on either side, with letters to indicate starting points and how to get from one bit of the stitch combination to the next. It is still a mystery to me why I would want to call it shuttle stitch. If anything it looks rather more like a belt buckle. Or is shuttle stitch an existing stitch and did I copy it from somewhere? If you recognise it from a book or a project, I’d be delighted to know!

Change in progress (III) – Twin butterflies

Posted on 1st May, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

While I was on a roll with the tulip-and-some-other-flower designs last month I took the opportunity to tidy up a drawing I did some time ago; it’s not dated but from the surrounding scribbles it seems to have been intended as a freestyle project for beginners.

But not just for beginners – there are stitch suggestions for what might be called an intermediate version as well. So when I edited the sketch on the computer I created two versions, one with basic stitches as a project for people with little embroidery experience, and one with slightly more advanced stitches for those who are familiar with the basics and would like to branch out.

Having tidied up the two butterflies I was looking forward to trying them both, especially the second version which promised to be quite interesting texturally. But I decided to take them in order and begin with the basic butterfly. I’d printed both butterflies at a little under 9cm high, transferred them to Rowandean’s embroidery cotton and picked some lovely Splendor silk threads (the same ones I used for my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday present). True, if this ever makes it into a workshop I won’t of course be using silk threads, but why not give myself a treat while model stitching? Well, the threads were indeed a treat but as I was stitching I soon found that even a basic butterfly may need to go through quite a few changes during the design process!

The first thing to become obvious was that the butterfly’s size meant I’d have to work with four strands to make the stitches stand out and fill the space sufficiently. This worked all right in most cases but combined with the very soft nature of Splendor silks it didn’t look very good in the chain stitch part; the stitches just blended into each other, the loops didn’t show their open centres, and the whole thing lacked definition. So my next version will smaller, worked in standard cottons, and use a maximum of three strands.

The buttonhole wheel I had planned for its head turned out lumpy and awkward. That will have to be changed in the new model, probably to backstitch with straight stitch “spokes” for the Beginner version, and whipped backstitch for the Intermediate one.

For the wings I’d chosen whipped running stitch, and I will keep that, but I will definitely have to make the stitches smaller – my rather hasty ¼ version doesn’t make for a nice smooth outline…

And finally there was the butterfly’s body. It was charted in both versions as buttonhole stitch with a line of backstitch to close the teeth end, and each of the sections adorned with a French knot. But then I though it would be nicer to have two different types of body for the two different butterflies, and I also decided to leave French knots for the Intermediate version. So the Beginner body got changed to two opposing lines of buttonhole stitch, with the teeth interlocking. I like the effect of it and will keep that in the final design, but I must remember that for the teeth on the second line to be centred between the teeth of the first line, it is important not to bring the needle up centrally – because of the way buttonhole stitch works, this actually pushes the teeth off-centre.

It sounds like not a lot is left of the original idea, doesn’t it? But I do like this butterfly, and most of it will actually be as originally planned. When I’ve stitched the revised version you’ll see it hasn’t changed that much from the first try – well, except for the difference between soft shiny silks and thinner, sharper cotton threads, of course!

And talking of threads, as the butterfly is meant to be usable for a beginners’ workshop I felt it might better not to use a stranded thread at all, but something indivisible. Perle #8 is one option, and I’ve got quite a collection of it, so I will probably try it on one of the smaller butterflies. It can be quite twisty, however, which might be a problem. The other I will work in coton à broder #16 – a little thinner, but easy to work with. Unfortunately I only had two of those in my stash, so I treated myself to a small collection of useful colours. Don’t they look inviting?

Coton a broder wound on bobbins in a project box

More suspense (well, suspension)

Posted on 25th March, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

Some time ago I showed you a filling stitch which consisted of a sequin suspended in the centre of a cut area by means of a sort of spider’s web stitch without the woven spider’s web bit. When I showed it on the Cross Stitch Forum without adding a description of how I had done it, one lady commented that she liked the way it was suspended using a square filet. This was interesting, and it made me look at the suspended sequin again. Yes, it could probably be worked that way – and that would be rather nice because it would mean the pair of designs in Heart’s Treasure would both use a variation on the square filet (the other one being the two-coloured variety).

So I set to work trying out various ways of suspending a sequin by means of a square filet. As the original spider’s web method I used was rather fiddly, one of the square filet ones was a very straightforward method of every time coming up through the sequin in the cut area and going down into the fabric in a corner, but that produced rather spreading holding threads instead of the slightly cord-like look I was aiming for.

That method didn’t work because there was no twist to the stitch, none of the “catching the loop” that is so characteristic of the square filet. But for reasons I won’t go into here doing exactly what you would do in a standard square filet didn’t work either; it needed an extra twist.

First bring the needle up in one corner of the cut area and thread on a sequin (picture 1 below), then take the needle down into the fabric into the next corner (picture 2) – this, by the way, can be either clockwise or anti-clockwise; either is fine, as long as you consistently stick with your choice throughout the project. Bring the needle up in the cut area in the second corner and catch the loop (picture 3), then take the needle over the loop and down into the gap again (picture 4). Don’t pull the thread too tightly at this point, and you will have to stabilise the sequin with your non-stitching hand during the first part of the stitch.

Bring the needle up in the cut area and thread on a sequin

Take the needle down into the fabric into the next corner

Bring the needle up in the cut area in the second corner and catch the loop

Take the needle over the loop and down into the gap again

Now bring the needle up again through the sequin (picture 1 below), then take the needle down into the fabric in the next corner (picture 2). Come up again in the gap in the same corner, catching the loop (picture 3), take the thread over the loop, go down again into the gap and come up through the sequin (picture 4).

Come up again in the gap in the same corner, catching the loop

Take the thread over the loop, go down again into the gap and come up through the sequin

Continue like this until you come up though the sequin from the fourth corner, then take the the needle underneath the very first part of the stitch before going down into the fabric in the corner where you started. Hey presto, a suspended sequin in a square filet! Incidentally, this example was worked using two strands of stranded cotton, but one strand works equally well – it just shows a bit more of the sequin. Floche or another thin indivisible thread like #12 perle is also suitable.

Colour squared

Posted on 1st February, 2017 by Flights of Fancy

This

doesn’t look much like this

does it? And yet that’s where it started, with a midnight idea and a scribble in thick and thin pencil lines. The idea was as follows: when working a square filet, unlike with a dove’s eye, the thread goes down into the fabric. And if one colour goes down into the fabric, a different colour may come up. Furthermore, unlike for example the spider’s web, the square filet is made up of equal “passes”, so that any colour changes will result in a regular, symmetrical pattern.

As the square filet consists of four passes, in theory it would be possible to work a single four-coloured one:

That would take rather a lot of fastening off and on, however. Perfectly doable, but much easier and more efficient to get the effect when working a set of them. The scribble was based on a cross shape, simply because of the design I was working on at the time. The four passes in this case would be four V shapes of incomplete square filets. I was working in two shades of the same colour, and started with a dark pass.

Fasten off, then pick the sequence up with a light thread.

Then another dark pass and finally a light one to complete the cross shown in the very first picture. I could have used four colours, in which case the central square filet would have shown all four and looked like the diagram above. To have four colours throughout would necessitate taking the needle through the intervening woven bar between every pair of square filets, and I’m not sure the effect would be worth the effort! However, it is possible to work sets of square filets in straight lines in four colours relatively easily.

I may try this out one day. If I do, FoF will have the pictures!

Suspended animation

Posted on 19th December, 2016 by Flights of Fancy

You may remember that some time ago I was finishing off some half-completed small projects, among them some Shisha tiles. They use sequins. I’d also been stocking up on sequins for kits (and being seduced by those floral gems). Consequently my mind was in sequin mode, and as it turned out my subconscious mind was as well, as I actually dreamt of sequins one night. Could you, I wondered as I woke up at 2am, suspend a sequin in the centre of a Hardanger cut area? I’ve done it with beads, both single and multiple, so why not sequins? I grabbed the little notebook that lives on my bedside table and scribbled down a few ideas. The following morning it still made sense (not all my night-time scribbles do) although I did realise I’d have to work it slightly differently from my first idea.

Off to my doodle cloth I went, with some floche which happened to be in the needle and a sequin. Here’s what I tried: fasten on and come up in a corner of a cut hole, then thread on a sequin. Down in the fabric at the opposite corner and up in the cut area in the same corner, then take the needle over the diagonal thread.

Go down into the fabric at the opposite corner

Come up in that same corner in the cut area

Go underneath the diagonal, then down through the sequin hole from above. Wrap around the diagonal towards the first corner and go down the fabric. My wrapping wasn’t very even so the sequin isn’t centred, but that’s a matter of practice, and anyway, we’re not done yet . Stretch a thread across the other diagonal (up in the cut hole in one corner, through the sequin and down into the fabric in the opposite corner).

The sequin isn't centred, but all is not lost

Stretch a thread across the other diagonal

Back along the diagonal as before, wrapping around the thread and going through the sequin, then down into the fabric in the corner again. Voilà, a suspended sequin! And the second diagonal has helped to centre the sequin, even though it was quite a bit off on the first diagonal. (Apologies for the optional cat hair that has enveigled itself into the stitch; I didn’t notice it until I saw the photographs at full size…)

Wrap along the second diagonal, going through the sequin

Depending on the size of the sequin this would work on various counts of fabric, I expect. This is a 3mm sequin with 25ct Lugana – 22ct Hardanger would give it a bit more breathing space. With fine fabric you could use a 2mm sequin, I suppose, although I have some in my stash and there isn’t a lot of body to them, so they might get rather lost in the holding threads. 4mm would probably work with 22ct, but as I’ve only got cup sequins in that size I can’t try it out; you really need a flat sequin for this to work. But it needn’t be round, although I would expect it to look most effective with a regular shape. However, if you’d like to try it out with a heart or crescent-shaped sequin do send me a picture to show how it turned out!

Stumbling across a new old stitch

Posted on 9th November, 2016 by Flights of Fancy

Do you know how sometimes things turn up in a book that weren’t there the last time you read it? (It works the other way round as well – things you are sure were there last time have suddenly disappeared.) Some time ago I was leafing through one of the embroidery books in my collection and came across Pueblo stitch, which I have no recollection of ever seeing there before. It’s also known as Pueblo backstitch, and gets its name because it is (was?) used by the Pueblo people. It looked interesting – it seemed to use two colours to create a twisted sort of look by bringing the needle up between the two working threads – so I got out the doodle cloth and two shades each of stranded cotton, floche and perle #8 and got to work. And I just couldn’t get it to look like the diagrams.

In fact, after a while I felt almost certain it would be impossible to make it look like the diagram because of where the threads were meant to go up and down into the fabric. Then I realised that I had completely misinterpreted the diagram and that the twisted look is actually achieved by, erm, twisting . In between stitches, that is, not while making the stitch. So the two working threads are twisted at the front of the fabric and travel a long way, while at the back of the fabric there is very little thread indeed. This also explains why it was described as a good stitch to cover a lot of background quickly, which my first attempts would definitely not have done. I’m not very happy with the Pueblo stitch I eventually produced, but I daresay with more practice I’d get it to look more even.

Now as I was first trying this stitch in my misinterpreted way, I appear to have inadvertently discovered (or more probably rediscovered) a different stitch altogether (and what I should call it I do not know!) which is very decorative and capable of all sorts of variations. So what did I do differently from the proper Pueblo stitch? Well, I didn’t do the long twisted bit in between stitches. Here are the variations I came up with, on counted and non-counted fabric.

First I tried to recreate that twisted look by swapping over the two working threads every time I brought the needle up between them. That does result in an “alternating” line, but it looks rather bitty, the more so when using thinner threads.

I then tried bringing the needle up between the two working threads as before, but without swapping them over; colour A was always above the needle, colour B always below. This works rather well in any thread (although again the thicker threads look better to my mind) and creates what looks almost like a line of chain stitch with the two halves of each link in different colours (unlike in chequered chain stitch, where the entire links alternate in colour).

And finally I played with the stitch length at the back; in the original Pueblo stitch there is a lot at the front and very little at the back, and in first my two variations I likewise kept the thread at the back of the fabric to a minimum, even though my front stitches aren’t nearly so long as the original twisted ones. What would happen, I wondered, if I treated it a bit like stem stitch? Bring both threads up through the fabric, go down the desired stitch length further, then come up halfway along that first stitch, between the two threads. Again go down a stitch length further, half of which will cover half of the first stitch. Come up at the end of the first stitch (which should be halfway along the second stitch), and so on. In theory that should give a line of stem stitch and a line of outline stitch facing each other, in two different colours. To my delight it did just that in practice!

You can even swap over the working threads in this stem stitch version for yet another effect.

So now I’ve got three useful stitches in search of a name. Something with Pueblo in it to reflect their origin, I think, but then what? Well, the last one simply has to be called Pueblo stem stitch, and I think Pueblo split stitch would be quite good for the middle one (even though the thread isn’t really split, the effect is much the same); any suggestions for the first one will be gratefully received. But wasn’t it serendipitous, discovering a new stitch by misreading an old diagram?

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Stitches