My weekend was filled with party, party prep (my sister’s and she forced me to make red velvet cupcakes ) and some serious stitching. Well, actually I finished my second sampler on Friday but Saturday was all about partypartyparty and Sunday was all about aaarghmyheadiwillneverdrinkagain so I didn’t get to post until today. Terrible thing when a grown up woman can’t hold her liquor.
Before I show you my new stitchy sampler I’d like to thank all you peeps that have come to see my work and left nothing but positive comments! Any crafter can vouch this; We need praise and encouragement once in a while. It’s our rocket fuel. As I was doing my buttonhole/blanket stitch sampler, I’d get very frustrated now and then as my design didn’t match my skill level but your words kept me going. Really!
My inspiration came from Sharon B’s Dictionary of Stitches and the diagram of buttonhole wheel. The shape just screamed dandelion to me which then lead to the idea of creating a scalloped frame to go around the entire hoop.
I have no explanation for why I decided to stitch the frame first but I began by tracing the outside of the inner hoop. The hoop I used for stitching isn’t the display hoop I used for tracing. Just a note. My stitching is far from even and I had to restart many times before I could wrap my head around how to begin a blanket stitch when not using it on edge of a fabric. Then I had to restart couple of times again because at first I wanted the “knotty” edge to follow the hoop curve but since I couldn’t create very even scallop that way, I ditched that plan and hey, presto! stitching got a whole lotta easier.
At this point I thought the hard part was over. “Hey, I’ll just do few buttonhole wheels and I’m done!” kind of way. Nope. What seems like a perfect size when drawn, doesn’t necessarily work when stitched. I kept re-drawing the circles so many times that the bottom half of my sampler was just big mess of purple scribbles and loose thread from unpicking my stitching. I don’t have any pictures of this phase because, and there’s no way I can put this nicely, I was on a very foul mood, had tears in my eyes and had I picked my camera to take pics I most likely would have thrown it against the wall.
But hey, it’s about process right?
The back. Looks kind of nice and at this point my stress and frustration disappeared. I’d like to point out that I’m the only person to blame for that feeling. I had a design in my head and I decided to go through without thinking how this design could come to be.
Again, I made a label to identify the stitch. This time I went for a banner shape. Pretty cute. Even if I say so myself. But here it’s my second sampler all finished and ready to hang:
Next week: Feather Stitch!
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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.
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.
