I’m excited about this one. I’m looking forward to experimenting with two kinds of strands.
Shannon’s suggested text said “Bodily autonomy for all” and while that was a fine sentiment, I wanted to use the quote that was in the running for sampler No. 3 but didn’t make the cut.
And you can see that I learned from last time that I should first transfer the design then reposition the material and transfer the lettering.
We did sampler no. 4 on Aida fabric, a fabric I’d not stitched on since Regan was president. I don’t love it, because it reminds me of my cross stitching past, but it was very handy for gridding out all these filling stitches.
Unlike the last sampler, I’m quite pleased at the colors I chose.
Here we have Hungarian stitch and cushion stitch. Hungarian stitch, the first one, turned out to be my favorite. I used twelve strands, not liking how it looked with six strands, and it was a thumb killer, but look how great it looks! Unfortunately, cushion stitch came early on and I wasn’t sure what to do if the pattern didn’t perfectly repeat, so some letters are a little short.
Next are raised stem band stitch and fern stitch. Raised stem band stitch was quick, but I didn’t like how it was a bit wavy in places. Fern stitch was my second favorite, looks-wise.
The last two are tied gobelin stitch and French stitch. I liked the complexity of tied gobelin stitch and how firm it was, plus it had such good coverage. Shannon pointed out that French stitch should be called vulva stitch, and that made me laugh. With the number of strands I was using it wasn’t quite so obvious, but it for sure looked like it in her example stitches.
I outlined everything in backstitch and that took forever and used a lot of thread, but was worth it in the end, I think.
And here is the back, because it’s fun to look at the backs of things. Aside from raised stem band stitch (the red and pink one) being wavy, it also had those long runners on the back I didn’t like.
The next sampler will not be as intensive. This did take a bit of time. But was well worth it.
When I bought my little loom, it came in a plastic bag I had to cut open to get to the loom and accoutrements.
This means that all the things fall out of the bag all the time.
I did some measuring and sketching.
And then I made my own pattern.
Et voila! The holder is finished. It has a handle and an off-center example of what the darning loom can make.
Inside we have a few things to hold things in place.
One pocket for each part of the loom and a center pocket to hold the long needles, the bands, and that thing I don’t know what to do with. I also sewed a piece of felt onto one pocket to hold some of the shorter needles.
Everything comes together nicely.
I’m quite pleased with how this turned out. Now I need to make one for my bigger loom. To do next time: carefully center the front image and watch a tutorial for best practices in attaching snaps.
I love, love, love how this one turned out. Yay for Beach Day!
Aside from liking the beach, I bought this sampler because I was curious about how to make the hat. How does one get embroidery to stick up like that?
In this case, I was instructed to do couching stitch to build up half of a sphere and then cover it with detached buttonhole. Brilliant! The base of the flip flop is just chain stitch, but with that thread color, it looks like a rattan sandal.
This stitched up fast, too! Probably the hardest part was tying that bow.
Since the weaving part is sitting above the fabric, you can weave in the ends underneath the weaving part on the front! Brilliant! Much better than tying off a million knots.
I’m now working on a holder for my handy little darning machine.
We got to choose our own quote to go into the quote section. I chose to use Wallace Stevens’s words.
As usual, colors continue to be tough for me. I’m happy with my bird, and I think the nest goes well, but I think I lost my way when it came to the frondy things.
Despite my color mishaps, this was a very fun sampler to complete. I also figured out how basket weave stitch should work when you have two or more colors: the color is woven the same way every time. It doesn’t alternate! You can see what happened when I didn’t know that.
This was a fun one. My satin stitch continues to improve. And it was the easiest thing in the lineup, so I think that’s a win.
Here’s a closeup of my work
And one from the other side. As per usual with Kirkiki Press, I did some ripping out. The middle heart is single strand, but that wasn’t the way I stitched it the first time.
You can also see that I didn’t quite have the spacing correct for the Herringbone Ladder on this side and things got crowded.
Herringbone Ladder was the most challenging thing. I found it hard to wrap my mind around where the loops should start. I eventually got it, though.
The bonus pattern was this cute anatomical heart. It was very quick to stitch up and I didn’t have much trouble with it.
Here’s the full layout, including the coupon code. I greatly admire this company’s business acumen, as well as the artistic merit.
Another of my Etsy patterns, I used embroidery thread again.
This is to mark another pillowcase that covers the cats’ headed pad.
Because I have white sheets on my bed, I like to put a little something in one corner, so I can easily tell which corner goes where. I used my new loom (and followed a pattern I bought off Etsy) to mark one corner.
I’m quite liking the result:
This was the first time I used embroidery thread instead of sashiko thread. It’s very shiny. Here’s what it looks like after the ends are pulled through.
Since this wasn’t a darn and I wasn’t going to walk on the final result, I experimented with tying the knots off instead of weaving them in. This was slightly tedious, but no more so than threading my needle multiple times.
I wanted to mark the pillowcases I use to cover the cats heated loungers, so I tried this pattern on my darning device. I like how it turned out.
Here’s how it looks with the ends pulled back (and before I washed it to get rid of my square and the authentic cat hair.)
It is a very fun machine!
