More on the half chevron stitch

A few experiments here with lines and diamonds and then a mini tutorial on the second grid in yesterday’s post.

Lines and diamonds

I had lots of fun with lines.
The first one kept changed as I went along.

These diamonds would be great for grids. I just didn’t have time to develop any ideas with them yet.

Oops, something else sneaked in here. Definitely not a diamond!

Mini tutorial

This came about due to a comment asking how to do the second grid from yesterday. Thanks for asking Mady! I hope this is helpful to anyone wondering about that. I have tried to make things “see”-able. But, if anything seems unclear or I messed up along the line and didn’t catch it, please don’t hesitate to ask any follow up question by way of comments.

I appreciate all the comments so many of you leave as you visit the blog. Thank you! Please forgive me for not commenting as much as my general habit. I’m missing doing that; although I’m feeling better, I’m just not up to full strength yet. I’m seeing wonderful TaST work both in flickr and on so many blogs (see Sharon B’s listing here).
Here we go on the grid!

bringing the needle up at the center and out from there at a forty five degree angle

Now pull the thread through until everything is snug but not distorting the ground at all. Then put the needle on a ninety degree angle from the center point across from where the needle just came up through the fabric. Don’t pull this resulting stitch snug, but catch the thread with your needle as your needle come back up from the ground as shown below. This makes the start of the second leg of the half chevron. Now the stitch pull snug around your needle.

This is the hardest part to capture on camera because the thread is hidden below the needle since it is continuing on the same forty-five degree angle as the first stitch. The next two photos may make it a little clearer what was being accomplished here.

Now you are basically at step two on this second angle and ready to pick up on step three. Repeat these steps for the third and forth angles. It may seem like a long process when I’ve stopped it at so many spots along the way. But it really went fast for me by the time the process was fixed in my mind by doing the first one.

Odds and ends on the half chevron stitch

I seem to have lost focus in stitching last night. Everything is a bit here and there. I’m  still thinking so much about this stitch and how it is worked and where it can be effectively changed that I seem to be going in a million directions at once.

Grids:

Lines

The half chevron on trial

Sometimes that’s how I feel. I want see how each stitch will stand up under examination. The half chevron stitch is no exception. It’s been a very relaxing stitch for me. I like the rhythm in it.

As you will see several of my samples today come out of things I saw in Sharon B’s introductory post–specifically the fourth photo for the two lines I’m doing here…

…and the last photo in her post for this grid.

This is another grid that needs embellishment. If this grid won’t work, I still love the individual unit and think it will work on its own. There is still plenty of play left in the grid arrangement.

Here are a few other things I enjoyed stitching yesterday afternoon.

detached chain stitches added

The center is a rice stitch with back stitching.

Embellished, the changing line and other things

I think I rescued the grid from yesterday to my satisfaction. At least I’ve not chucked it out the window yet.

The changing line

Another line of sorts

Here are some more things I call my T stitches

a tiny snippet of the chevron.

I think they could be great fun.

Here are a couple of trials

TSTC Week 26: The half chevron stitch

Perhaps by this time next week I’ll join Sharon B in a happy dance over being half way through the TSTC year. Until then I’m going to be happily stitching away on the half chevron stitch that Sharon introduced us to for this week’s challenge. Sharon’s provided so many interesting examples that I’m ahead by leaps and bounds in experimenting already. I also love her sample in the dictionary (link for stitch above).

Here are a few of the ideas that popped into my mind from this simple line.

Now this grid below is pretty ugly. But I saved it thinking that perhaps all it needs is some embellishment. I shall have to see what can be done, otherwise it’s going out the window. I’m already playing to adjust the concept.
Oops, now I see a mistake that needs to be fixed, before I go rushing off to embellish it. Sometimes the camera is better than my eyes!

Blogs, Expanded squares and broken rules

Blogs

I thought I would highlight the blog of another participant in Sharon b’s TAST as a way of welcoming newcomers. Conni at The Scoop, Score and Deal has a blog that I always look forward to visiting. As a Vermonter (state flower: red clover), I very much appreciated her clover for the long and short stitch. She consistently has wonderful pieces up on her blog. Here are a few of my favorites: for TaST, here and here; from the embellisher, this piece; a work in progress, Binky’s Garden. If you’re not familiar with Conni’s blog, please do have a look around since I’ve only been able to highlight a few things. Thanks for a wonderful blog, Conni!

Expanded squares

This weekend I could not find one magazine in the craft store on embroidery. Out of frustration and being at loose ends, I picked up a Quilting Arts Magazine, Issue 27. It had me hooked by one article, Design Tools: The Expanded Square by Jane Dunnewold. I bought the magazine. I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the article and I found a lot of interesting things in it for a poor embroiderer like me.

Looking around the web, I found that there is an mini article on the technique by Jane here, at her website Art Cloth Studios. There is an article done by Lin Altman, a teacher at Cedar Creek Elementary in Texas, who mentions Jane’s article and pulls in lots of links and examples done by students some of whom are seventh grade students. Unfortunately, a number of the links do not appear to be working for the Santa Rosa Junior College and that is why I’ve put in the one link to student work that did work for me.

In my design class from last year expanded square exercises were by far my favorite involving paper. I did over 25 of them. Some are definitely school girl exercises. But when I got to play with them, I was amazed by the patterns and drama of the black and white image. It was nice to see such a well written article in Quilting Arts bringing this tool to the forefront.

One thing that made me smile was Jane’s encouragement that, “Once you get the basic rules figured out, you are free to break them.” One of my expanded square designs came back with words to this point from my teacher, you broke the rules, but I approve of breaking the rules when it turns out this well. She was too kind to mention the many times I broke the rules and it did not turn out so well.

Here are some broken rules on the long and short stitch. And I’m afraid, I still don’t have the basic rules on this stitch figured out.

Long and short with mirror image

the key element: short-long-long-short

and fun with it

fun with the French knot

opposing each other

and layering on one another

Rick rack the basic elements

and a row of fun

A long and short buttonhole rows, opposing each other and filled in. Rather a bad job because my thread and fabric were working against full coverage.

Interlaced long and short slanted and facing each other with thin thread as the next layer on both sides and interlaced.

Patterns in the long and short stitch

I wanted to try some patterns with the long and short stitch. I tried some blends earlier in the week, but they are not patterns to me.

I’m making slow progress on the radial version of the stitch. I didn’t post any today. It’s not too exciting to look at yet. I’ve worked up to about three layers and ten to fifteen stitches on the third layer at an angle of ninety degrees. At least I’m not ripping it all out anymore!

Here are slivers and slices of patterns using the long and short stitch.

I might have cheated a bit with this one because I doubled up on the pattern–two longs, two shorts, two longs…

Practicing on the long and the short stitch

Here are my practice pieces with the radial version of the long and the short stitch. I can not experiment with this radial version for a long time. My skills are just not up to some of the experiments I want to try. I ripped out almost everything. I had pity on these and they survived. I still can’t do the diagonal version either–I didn’t bother to rip it out I just left it for now. Perhaps it will be a good reminder in my journal that I have plenty more growing to do.

 

As you can see I stayed with one color. I was having enough trouble managing that!

I’m thinking about just sticking with the vertical and horizontal lines. There is plenty to explore there. But it would be nice to learn the full range for this stitch.

More progress on the little piece I’ve been working on in previous days. I didn’t put in the stem for the bell flower yet. I think I’ll try a stem stitch after everything else is put down. I was able to baste in a guide for the remaining corners of the purple square. Now, that stitching should go fast when I tackle it. I brought the yellow down into the lower half of the piece. I’m debating about filling in everything behind the purple square. I’d like to try some rick rack patterns in ecru to cover up the ground.

Progress on the long and short stitch

I still am working only vertically and horizontally with the long and short stitch. But this afternoon I plan to try the radial long and short stitch. That is why I  decided to post earlier and post the experiments tomorrow.

Here is what has happened with the sampler.

The dark pink flower is finished. It does have a medium pink center. I added a few leaves and a bell flower. I might switch that out and try to do a radial stitch on that flower. I finished off the purple square in the lower right–not good. I should have basted a diagonal line before I filled up that area with the flower and leaves.

What is ahead? I think the blue flower needs beads or something exciting in the center to help break up the diagonals. Maybe a touch of yellow since I need to start pulling some yellow down into the lower area.  The upper right is looking very bare. It’s a good thing this is just an experiment on a scrap of fabric!

A variation: thoughts and samples

My boss asked me to vary my hours today. Sometime in the late afternoon (west coast USA) I should have another post with the long and short stitch.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a variation that came up when Sharon b assigned the wheatear stitch for TSTC week 23. The wheatear which is a composite stitch. According to Sharon’s stitch dictionary it is two straight stitches joined by a chain stitch. And her instructions are for the straight stitches to be set at right angles.

This is the normal wheatear, I think.

This is my variation.

I wasn’t sure if this was a variation of the wheatear or if I’d wandered over into another stitch or a variation on another stitch. There are two straight stitches at right angles joined or about to be joined with a chain stitch in both my pictures. In both cases the needle is sliding under the two straight stitches. If you go back and see some of my earliest explorations you will see I didn’t start out with that kind of slide. But in experimenting to make the variation stable this was the only thing that seemed to work–clean, simple and stable. To me it looked like an arrowhead stitch with a foop or chain. However, passing by that thought, the main differences between them are where the join is happening and that the straight stitches in the regular wheatear look like the top half of a cross stitch while in the variation, the bottom half of a cross stitch. More on this at the end of the post.

When Sharon asked for others to help me with identification, Deepa brought to our attention the Ceylon stitch here. Here are some side by sides here. And I did limit the stitching on the Ceylon stitch to a single vertical or horizontal row to keep it to the bare minimum and matching the variation more closely.

Ver 1 and ver 2 are referring to two versions of the variation. The two unlabeled rows at the bottom are ver 2 running horizontally (left) and a completely unnecessary trial of ver 1 running side by side (right).

I began to explore the Ceylon stitch. How was it made and how was it used were two of my major questions when I started out searching? While I researched and read more material, I began to wonder if a reversed chain stitch had anything to do with the total picture. When I mentioned to Sharon a possibly similarity between it, the Ceylon stitch and the variation, she suggested looking at the twisted chain, too. She said it was the reversed twisted chain stitch worked horizontally that would would make up the Ceylon stitch. I tried working a reversed twisted chain. I’m not sure that I pulled off working it correctly, but the side by side is interesting to me.

Well, all of this has give me a lot to think about and so many not even named here, have helped further my thinking as I searched the web and pulled out some of my stitch books. While it would be my ideal to find an exact match, that doesn’t always happen. Or perhaps it just hasn’t happened yet!

Now back to the cross stitch thought from earlier in the post. While I was experimenting the cross stitch had appealed to me as a base for a mirror image border. But I couldn’t pull it off. Everything was too unstable. I was writing an email to Sharon about that early this week. A little while later it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken the fabric into consideration. A tighter weave might hold the thread in place and help stabilize everything. If the thread was thicker and would hold its shape better, that would help, too. I had a lot of fun trying this. I hope my labels won’t seem to confusing. Feel free to ignore them. Oops, I just noticed that one of my label doesn’t tell all! The “diagonal sides of a cross stitch” (mid right) should read “diagonal sides of upright cross stitch”.

all diagonals on an upright cross stitch

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the post. I know that this type of post is probably not everyone’s cup of tea. I wish I could think and express my thoughts more clearly, too. Please feel free to leave a comment or a question.