Patterns on padding

Sharon b’s April SE challenge is on Casalguidi and somewhere in my research about this type of embroidery I read that the chain stitch was occasionally used to cover the padding. At the time I read it, I didn’t mark it or think much about it. It was only after doing the tassel pictured in the last post that I remembered it again.

The tassel had sparked my imagination, I took it off grid and began playing with a few ideas. Here is one of those doodles.

To the lower right, I tried areas of coverage alternating with areas of no coverage. On the spiral (top center) there are three stitches used to cover the padding. And on the lower left, I use patterns in the foundation stitches for the raised stem stitches.

Taking these ideas into an on grid mode, the following are my school girl exercises:

chain stitch

buttonhole stitch

a knotted stitch

And as you may detect, the first and last rows of this were knotted on every foundation stitch but in between I alternated and knotted every other one. I saw what started out as a practicality to keep the coverage as close and dense as possible became another way to create a pattern on the padding. So I tried some more with the more traditional raised stem stitch for Casalguidi.

The last of the school girl exercises was the change in the foundation stitches. These are worked on a foundation laid out in a triangular pattern.

The last photo is a close up the area in the doodle where I used a pattern of two close foundation stitches followed by a larger space in a repeating pattern.

That concludes the photos on one of the wandering trails I took in trying to explore  Casalguidi. I have photos I’d like to put together for one more post on the subject before I start posting some work on the May SE challenge and other things I’ve been doing. I appreciate all those who are reading the very erratic posts I’m making these days. Thank you. Many thanks, as well, to those who continue who visit the QM blog in between times.

Late and all thumbs

I feel like I’m all thumbs pulling together a post on the work I’ve done on Sharon b’s April Stitch Explorer. And late…that is putting it mildly.

Here’s some of the fun I had. Given the limited time I’ve had in the last month or so, I didn’t touch the pulled stitch background. I took this opportunity to work on the padded raised stitches of Casalguidi as an extension of last year’s work with raised stitches.

Raised edges with a very flat center by catching the stem stitches into each other. It would have been fun to see how a large bead or marble in the center would have changed this.

Using felt rather than thread to bring various levels of padding to the raised stem stitches. 

Waste canvas ground–a quick imitation of a pulled work background.

Experiments with increase and decrease of  padding width and height.

Fringe or tassel

Raised stem stitches with Parma braid stitching as padding. This makes a squared line rather than the rounded one of the traditional Casalguidi.