TAST Cretan Stitch

I could not get excited about this stitch and wasn't going to do it at all but then decided I should at least make the effort. I think it's too much like other stitches and didn't motivate me. I also tried to embroider the kind of stitch and you can see why I generally avoid that! So hopefully the next one will inspire more than this one.

TAST - Feather Stitch

I didn't do a lot of variations on the Feather Stitch but I stitched enough to get the feel of it. I used the water soluable markers to draw some guiding lines but still found myself counting threads to get the spacing even. The curvy one was tricky. I didn't have the space to add more curvy lines with it but I think it would be good in different colors. The last one was a whim. I kept increasing the number of threads as I moved down to make the line larger. Then I went back and added French Knots, which I needed to practice for another project, and enjoyed seeing how it took shape.

I used the other half of the page I'd already embroidered with the Blanket Stitch. This is how the whole page looks now. I haven't figured out how to label the stitches. I didn't really leave room for that and am not sure I need to. I'm not good at embroidering words.

I divided the sections with plain sewing thread this time instead of perle cotton and when I took the center line out, it didn't leave traces of color. Yay!

TAST - Fly Stitch

I've been having a hard time figuring out how I was going to use TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday). I wanted a sampler of some sort, but not too formal and not too informal either. I didn't want to just do a length of fabric with stitches. I'd probably roll it up and put it away. I didn't want to do 52 separate projects either.

I finally decided it will be a book with separate pages. The fabric I'm using is 28 count evenweave that I bought a long time ago. I got 1 1/2 yard on sale once. This page is 8 inches square but I've stitched off a 1" boundary all around. All the pages will have this 1" boundary. I do better with boundaries! In this case, I've also divided it into 4 segments but that may not always be the case. This one is for the Fly Stitch and I already plan to follow some of Sharon's suggestions and try it several ways - different thread and with variations. There will be at least 4 samples and maybe more. She has also suggested using different fabrics. I may do a small sample on another fabric and then stitch it to the page in some cases. We'll see. I'm kind of making it up as I go. I expect the 1" outer boundary to be somehow finished later. I'm not especially concerned about it right now.

Here is my finished page. I tried to do several variations as Sharon suggested. My favorites are the leaves and the ones with beads. Adding beads is tedious but I did get faster with it as I went on. Originally I thought they were added at the same time the stitch was made, but I figured out they were added afterwards. I only have one needle small enough to allow seed beads to pass over the eye so I put a few beads on the thread before I put it back in the pincushion to mark it.

I see lots of possibilities with the reverse fly stitch (bottom left). You can barely see it here but the red thread bled a bit when I damp stretched the piece. I was surprised as it's tatting thread which is supposed to be colorfast. I noticed the black pearl cotton that I used to divide the page into quarters left a tidge of color too. I wonder if it has anything to do with the evenweave fabric? The blue pearl cotton didn't bleed.

I used pearl cotton in size 8, 2 colors of 1 strand each embroidery floss, tatting cotton in size 20, tatting cotton sizes 40 and 50, and the top leaves were done in 2 strands of the same color embroidery floss.

I used the right hand bottom quarter to stitch the elements I liked the best in a sort of decorative format, as if I were really using the stitch on a project. I may not do that all of the time but I like the idea of doing it. I hope I can keep up with this project!