Well this week I managed to finish and send off Module 1 for my City and Guilds course, to my tutor for her to mark. I am now waiting for it to come back and to get Module 2.

Here is a small sampler that I have just finished for Take a Stitch Tuesday - this week the stitch was Chevron Stitch which I have use to couch down a thick chenille thread and used it to make patterns.

This week I have been working on the final piece for Module 1 of my C+G course - a landscape picture based on a photograph that I took while I was in Cornwall last June with my mother - I think that I took it at the National Trust house, Lanhydrock.

I have used an evenweave fabric which I sponge painted, then used a number of the stitches used in the module including herringbone, feather stitch, fly stitch, thorn stitch, fern stitch and roumanian stitch.
I tried to plan it out before I started, based on the photo, but my drawing lets me down and I ended up stitching it freehand as I went along. I didn't want an exact replica of the garden - more the general feel of it, which I think that I have achieved.

Now I need to do a quick embroidery on winter, then finish all my comments and presentation before being able to send it off as planned next week.

This weekend I have been concentrating on working on my City and Guilds Module 1 - I am now aiming to get it finished by the end of the month so that I can send it off for assessment and start on Module 2. With that in mind I have completed the Design for Craft section and am just finishing a few stitch samples and mounting them. Then I have to do the stitch sample for 'winter' and a final landscape piece.

This first sample is using fern stitch and a very pretty rainbow variegated thread - I tried to vary the sizes of the stitches and on the last sample on the right added french knots at the end of each stitch.

The second sample is worked in Cretan stitch on a piece of evenweave fabric which I sponged painted with fabric paint to make it more interesting. I also wove in some knitting wool into one of the samples and for the last sample on the right used 2 different thicknesses of thread and random sized stitches.

Lots of people keep sketchbooks with ideas in them - I decided today that as there are so many variations of each stitch that I would keep a sketchbook devoted to the stitches. One stitch per page, starting with the traditional variations, then different ways of experimenting with it. Here is page 1 - Herringbone stitch (sorry the quality is not brilliant - it wouldn't scan any better)

Having done the Personal Library of Stitches and now taking part in the Take a Stitch Tuesday there are so many inspirational ideas of how to use the different stitches that I thought it would be good to jot them down in one place - some of the ideas are from Sharons notes and others are from samples done by members of the challenge. As I experiment further I can add additional notes and more photos of my samples over the page.

Happy New Year to all my visitors to this blog!

Stitching update - I have done a bit of stitching over the Christmas break - mainly small samplers of different stitches, one for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge, the other 3 for my City and Guilds course.

The first weeks stitch for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge was Herringbone - I had already done some experimentation with this stitch before Christmas - see here, so I decided to try stitching on hand painted silk with Caron Watercolours thread - it has puckered a bit but creates some interesting patterns.

For the City and Guilds module that I am doing I needed to do a selection of stitch samples, many of which I had done on calico, but since doing the Library of Personal Stitches course had decided to redo on linen. These are the latest ones that I have done - fly stitch. Here I have used a piece of hand dyed scrim over a piece of white linen to add a bit of colour to the base fabric.


These are example of thorn stitch using a variety of thicknesses of yarns and varying the sizes of the stitches.

On the left of this sample is a leaf done in Roumanian stitch and on the right using fishbone stitch.

This is a picture of the completed autumn piece - only winter to go. I have yet to decide on a picture to base it on. It is very difficult to find a photo which depicts winter that isn't misty and grey or all white and that is interesting.

Autumn again is sponged with brown, yellow, orange and green fabric paints - I use Jacquard, then stitched in perle cotton with fly stitch. Originally I was going to do leaf shapes in cretan stitch but decided to go more abstract, however, once I had started stitching I thought they looked like sycamore seeds falling to the ground.

Today I am going to show you the first two pieces I have done for the first module of the Level 3 City and Guilds course I am doing by distance learning with WS-Touchbase in Dorset. As part of the first module looking at colour we had to find photos depicting each of the four seasons, pick out the main colours from the photos, using fabric paint sponge the colours onto plain fabric then using similar colours stitch onto the fabric using the stitches we have practised. I am not showing the original photos as they are copyrighted.

This first picture shows spring - the original photo was on a postcard depicting a bluebell wood - I have used feather stitch and mainly perle cottons on a calico background.


The second picture is summer taken from a photo of a meadow in the height of summer. This time I have used buttonhole stitch radiating both inwards and outwards again in perle cotton on calico.

I am now working on autumn then need to finally decide on a picture for winter.

This is a wall hanging that I have started based on a design from a Fabrications magazine I bought a few years ago. I have used a piece of 'Sky Dyes' fabric by Micky Lawler that I bought in America to create the sky and now have to start quilting it.


Will show the finished wallhanging later.