Tag Archives: knotted cretan

TAST 22&23: Knotted Cretan Feathers

 Am I boring you yet? I’m so sorry that my blog content has been lately only about embroidery but I really, REALLY want to catch up on TAST. Don’t worry, I’m only 6 samplers behind now. Well done, me.

Like I said in my previous post, I had so much trouble with knotted cretan that I decided to another sampler. My first one was similar one to my cretan stitch sampler but the knotted version of stitch proved to be too tricky for me. What was the problem? Where as in cretan stitch I had to go smaller with my design, with knotted cretan, stitching got easier when I did larger stitching.

 Here you can see my original sketching. At first I wanted to do overlapping feathers but I didn’t have enough floss in this colour to finish the design.

 But then to my disappointment, it wasn’t enough to do three full feathers and I had to made the third one with backstitch. Even then the floss was barely enough. There’s (once again) a lesson to be learned here.

 The verdict: nice sampler but not my favourite stitch. I prefer the basic cretan over this version.

 Next stitch is buttonhole wheel and the sampler for that is almost done! I’m going to do all the missing samplers this weekend so I can link them up at Pin Tangle when the new stitch is posted next week. If you are interested, rest of my samplers are organized here.

Till next time!

 

 

 

 

TAST 21: Butterfly Chains

 I haven’t really done multicolour samplers before but as I was sketching this design I thought one colour wouldn’t do. I chose three shaded of muted pinks to work this stitch as I was aiming for feeling of Japan and cherry blossoms.

Here you can see my sketch. The official instructions for butterfly chain stitch call for three horizontal stitches  but I went with five. I wanted fullness.

 The back is beautiful. This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen love with the back of my sampler.

Stitching the stems.

Ta-dah! My butterflies in a chain is done! I’m very pleased with my decision to use multiple of colours.

 Very simple yet effective. This stitch is perfect for embellishing dresses for little girls.

The next stitch to learn is Knotted Cretan. I have already one sampler but the stitching is so awful, I mean really butt ugly so I have to do another one. I can’t bear to show the one I’ve done. If you’re interested my other samplers can be found here.