TSTC Week 39: The reversed buttonhole bar

I had a great time with the reversed buttonhole bar this weekend. It’s another post on condensed experimental stitching time as I struggle to get back on schedule after vacation. SharonB’s introduction to this TSTC week is super. Her examples inspired me to try some things that I might not have thought of on my own.

After my stitching was done and photos taken, I had a bit of time check out the TSTC flickr account and saw more things I wish I’d tried. It’s very encouraging to see all the good stitching there as well as on so many other blogs.

I started out with this sedate curve.

And finally move forward to this more extreme one.

In between these two came some other curves. On the second sample pictured I tried skipping very other prong of the buttonhole bar. As you will see in the third sample I liked this idea and tried it out on a straight bar.

That lead to this. In the top sample the first and last line of the peach thread are done over each prong of the buttonhole bar. The three middle lines are staggered and skip every other prong.

Two bars off-set and facing each other in different colors.

Two bars back to back. The following two photos don’t do justice to the purple thread.

A rick-rack trial

I feel disappointed that I didn’t develop this more. I think that a lot could be done with this or other types of couching.

Well that’s it.

I’m looking forward to see what stitch Sharon will be introducing next.

Knotted buttonhole ladders

News note:

I’m off for vacation and expect to be posting again on October 6 (west coast, usa).

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I was experimenting the other day with these knotted buttonhole bars. And they reminded me of ladders, not bars. So I had fun with them as my ideas progressed. I should have snap a few pictures of my uncle’s ladders for comparison.

It started with this bit of “off grid” work.

I moved it to “on grid” work with variations.

Above I didn’t knot the buttonholes on the inside curves, just the outside curves. The thread for the bars is a dark purple. Unfortunately, the colors in the photo are not true to life.

As you may notice this ending leaves me with something to work on while vacationing. The stitching in this row is far from satisfactory but I like the idea.

What more to do with knotted buttonhole bars?

I’ve had fun with the knotted buttonhole bars–still disappointed with my consistency in execution. I keep plowing ahead and hope that corrects itself with more practice.

Normal

Inside out

Staggered

A flower

Cross purposes.

Threaded or couched

Buttonholing knotted buttonholes

What more to do with knotted buttonhole bars? I’ve three or four more samples to post, but one has to be rephotographed and they go together in a series. But I have no idea what I’m going to stitch next. Perhaps it’s a sign that I need a vacation soon.

Stitching bars of knotted buttonholes

I’m having fun with knotted buttonhole bars and can’t seem to settle down to do much serious work on them. I’ve more ideas that need stitching. If I can find a few spare minutes with my needle again today I’ll be happy. Given my schedule the good light needed for photographs is shrinking as we head into autumn here in California’s central valley.

Not ribbon, I couldn’t find any in a pleasing color. But there was some tissue paper laying around and I decided it would do. Now in the picture below, I used rick rack, no substitute, as the basis for the experiment. The only problem with the rick rack is that the camera can’t seem to capture the fact that it’s purple. The green thread not only held it in place but also acted as the bars for the knotted buttonholes.

TSTC Week 38: The knotted buttonhole band

As every Monday afternoon (USA, west coast) I read about Sharon b’s stitch for the 38th week of the TSTC. It is the knotted buttonhole band and Sharon has provided an excellent step-by step on this stitch in the introduction. It sounded like a lot of fun to try and I started in on it right away. It’s a stitch that is hard for me to execute consistently as the following photos will show. However, that didn’t prevent me from trying out a few experiments.

As you can see just a bit of this and that in trying to figure out how to work with this stitch and make it useful. As an outsider looking in, this stitch seems like a great one for seam treatments since once the simple straight stitches are done everything is worked without moving through the fabrics.

Where to go next

After doing this stitching I’ve begun to wonder where to go next with the cast on stitch. I think it’s time for something more exciting, but I’ve no clue what that would be. It doesn’t seem like I have skills to make a vase full of blooms. I can’t imagine using it to represent the the coat of my favorite dog, Tucker.

Oh…perhaps I could use it to represent the woolly coat on a sheep. I can almost see that now. I’ll have to see if imagination matches stitching reality. What else would this stitch be good for? Could I make it very narrow at the ends and wide in the middle? Could it be made to look like a hen’s comb? There is so much to find out about this stitch and I seem to be dabbling at the water’s edge. Nevertheless, I hope you like these sample. I had a lot of fun stitching them up.

Blue fans–the one on the right is only tacked to the fabric at the edges of the innermost row.

Hum…maybe they don’t look like fans now that I tucked away the loose threads. They did look like fans with nice blue handles.

Semi-circles

This sample I call “my music”.

And this one, “two sticks”. I learned a new way of working with cast on stitch to make the bumpy part of the left. Rather hard to photograph. While re-thinking about how I did that, an even better idea came to mind. I could make two cast on stitches close together and whip stitch the edges together. Maybe they would look like a pea pod or a green bean? Could they look like an apricot or peach on a tree? Oh, no–strike that idea, I must be dreaming.

Where to go next with the cast on stitch?

More practice

I discovered another nice thing about using buttonhole wheels with cast on stitches this week. Now, I’m sure that others already knew about this match between the two stitches. I probably just wasn’t observant enough to notice it or pay attention to it before I had to work with them myself.

Here it is. Not perfect stitching but I think a perfect match between these two stitches. I love the contrast in density between the two stitches.

Since I discovered it on grid, I tried it with two layers of buttonhole wheels on some felt.

Here is the practice on the cast on stitches. I’m beginning to see how pulling them in various ways controls the shape.

You can see that I’m still using Perle cotton for the most part. It is easier for me to control than the pima cotton that I have in overdyed threads. Not that overdyed Perle cotton isn’t available, I suppose. Maybe that should be on my list for the next visit to the local needlework shop.

My stitching is still not such that I want to try making all kinds of flowers but I did try this one last night.

TSTC Week 31: Cast on stitch

When Sharon b announced her thirty-first stitch for the 2007 TSTC, it sent me scurrying for her stitch dictionary to find out about the cast on stitch. It is a high texture stitch and Sharon has shown us some exciting applications of this stitch in her post as well as another in the dictionary. The ending link in the dictionary shows a full view of the block from which one of her samples was taken. It’s well worth clicking to see Sharon’s beautiful work.

I’m learning this stitch so there are some bad little errors in some of the stitching samples, maybe all of them.

Here is my first try.

This is the next trial. I began to make as many cast on stitches as possible. I had fun stitching over the bad ones and trying to make the next ones better. But there were too many bad spots cropping up to hide them all! And you can see glimpses here of the buttonhole wheels that I want to continue working on this week.

Here is a sample of several spiral buttonhole wheels. I did more over stitching. These are both things that I want to spend more time with this week.

These last two buttonhole samples have to do with an idea I didn’t think of until Monday. My idea was to make one outer circle with two centers. As I went around the outer circle, I alternated between the centers. It might be worth working with a little more; I’m going to try it with a different type of thread.

Two little lines and beyond

My ideas on the buttonhole wheels have been few and far between. My two little lines are slight variations on some common seam treatments I’ve seen.

I like the top one but this second one needs more work–a bead or something. And while I’m thinking about beads, I wondered if a bugle bead could be used for spokes of the wheels. And beads between the spokes for rims? I think I must try that–wish I’d thought about that at the beginning of the week instead of the end. I’ll have to look, beaders must do this all the time.

Here are some more trials and tests.

The largest dark wheel was testing places other than the center for some of the spokes to end. The other dark wheel was grouping some of the spokes close together and then trying to go as far as possible without distorting the circle shape. I went too far. That’s why the second rim is added. Not all my ideas work out!

The other thing I was forcing myself do in the sample above was to stitch over some of my previous stitching. It’s hard for me to do that; I think I’m covering up the best part. You can see I was all too gingerly and only stitched over the outermost edges of the wheels.

First I tried weaving the center spokes. Then I tried making a mill wheel, I thought it would look three dimensional but my perspective was certainly off. The last partial wheel is just trying to balance off the failed mill wheel.

I’m not ready to leave the buttonhole wheels behind. Friday evening I’d exhausted everything I could think of, but this afternoon I began thinking what if…

I think they may be showing up in my work with Sharon b’s thirty-first TSTC stitch. And starting Wednesday I should be back to a more normal posting routine again. What unpredictable schedules I sometimes have!

Mostly off grid

I was working mostly “off grid” last night and again this morning on the buttonhole wheel stitch. Very interestingly the one “on grid” sample is something I first did “off grid”, transferred to “on grid” work and liked the “on grid” work best. The only other surprise was that while working on the blue piece I never realized a “heart” shape was developing until I was turning the piece around to fasten all the threads. I’m not much for heart shapes, but decided to leave this one as is.

That’s all the work I’ve had time for with the buttonhole wheels. There is some really good work with this stitch on various blogs and the flickr site. A good way to find blogs is to check towards the end of the TaST week with Sharon b’s weekly introductory posts and follow links. If you haven’t already visited I hope that you will do it. This stitch deserves a lot better work than I’ve been able to give it so far. Fortunately, some other stitchers are just doing great with it and inspiring me.