Beading Arts

I'm sorry to say that even though I really wanted to do Sharon Boggon's Take A Stitch Tuesday project through all of 2012, I ended up getting behind and then just sort of dropping it.  Even though I visited the site to see the new stitches each week, I didn't manage to follow along after less than half a year had passed.  That said, I still enjoyed the time that I did spend on TAST, and I'd definitely recommend it if you'd like to improve your embroidery skills. I posted information and some tutorials on Mixed Media Artist about the construction of the quilt top, including the manipulated fabric pieces.  Some of the stitches included beads, others didn't, but I thought I should post this here just to finish off my planned series.  If you'd like to see links to all of the stitches I added, they are under the label TAST .   Copyright 2013 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out f...

This week for Take a Stitch Tuesday we looked at the knotted Cretan stitch !  I love all the viney types of stitches we've been doing, because they all fit really well with the underwater theme of my manipulated fabric quilt . I placed three rows of very (deliberately) uneven knotted Cretan stitch near the herringbone stitch that we did for week 5.  I'm liking the two together. TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch  TAST week 11 - whipped wheel stitch  TAST week 16 - French knot  TAST week 17 - wheatear stitch  TAST week 19 - half chevron stitch  TAST week 20 - bullion knot TAST week 22 - knotted Cretan stitch   Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelr...

This week for Take a Stitch Tuesday we visited with a beautiful stitch, the bullion knot !  The usual thing with bullion knot is to use it to form flowers or flower buds, so I decided that I'd make a starfish to go along with the underwater theme of my manipulated fabric quilt .  So why does it look like a flower, you ask?   Because the best laid plans of needle and thread... It looks like a flower because it is one.  Despite my resolve to be creative, I fell prey to the floral charms of this stitch.  I also didn't do a very good job keeping the wrappings even.  I'm going to have a go at it with a needle and see if I can get them to lie a bit better.  But just in case I screw them all up, I thought I'd share the picture now!  More practice in my future :-) TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron...

This week for Take a Stitch Tuesday it's a stitch I've never heard of before, the half chevron stitch !  I didn't feel that doing the stitch on two straight and parallel imaginary lines as it's usually done would really give me the right look for the edges of my manipulated fabric quilt .  So I changed it up a bit and made all the various legs uneven.  Trust me, it would have been easier to actually make them even! TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch  TAST week 11 - whipped wheel stitch  TAST week 16 - French knot  TAST week 17 - wheatear stitch  TAST week 19 - half chevron stitch Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , neckl...

Yay!  It's  Take a Stitch Tuesday day again!  And again there is a stitch that will look good on my quilt.  In fact, I'm really excited about it, because it's got the look of seaweed about it: the fabulous wheatear stitch !  I decided to decorate mine up a bit extra, with a double chain stitch of two different colors, straight stitches of a different color, and added French knots (last week's stitch) at the end of each straight stitch...yet another color.  I think I might add more strands of these fun stitches around more edges of the quilt .  TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch  TAST week 11 - whipped wheel stitch  TAST week 16 - French knot  TAST wee...

I've ended up not adding the last few stitches in the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge to my quilt, but I have used them for other projects.  Back on track this week, with a stitch that I felt would enhance several areas on my manipulated fabric quilt : the French knot .  So simple, so lovely! TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch  TAST week 11 - whipped wheel stitch  TAST week 16 - French knot Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

This was not my best result to date!  Since I've worked with whipped wheel stitch before, I thought I'd get tricky and turn it into a clam shell.  That would have been fine, but you can see that in my first row, where the two parts come together, I wound the thread the wrong way.  I didn't figure that out until I had finished the entire thing, so I decided to leave it as an object lesson: pay attention to the basics! Depending upon how full my Take a Stitch Tuesday quilt becomes as this challenge continues, I may very well go back and add a few more clam shells.  And this time I will do them properly! TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch  TAST week 11 - whipped wheel stitch ...

The humble running stitch ...the backbone of the stitching world.  I won't be adding any additional running stitch to my Take a Stitch Tuesday quilt this week, because all of the fabric shapes were constructed using running stitch, so it is already well-represented here! I know, sounds like a lame excuse, doesn't it?  Fact is, I'm presently working on three other projects that are calling to me, so my TAST quilt is just going to have to take a backseat until next week! TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch TAST week 4 - cretan stitch  TAST week 5 - herringbone stitch TAST week 6 - chevron stitch TAST week 7 - detached chain stitch TAST week 8 - chain stitch TAST week 9 - couching stitch  TAST week 10 - running stitch Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

I decided to allow myself to get behind when I went on vacation earlier this month, but I promised myself that I would catch up, and I (mostly) have!  It wasn't too difficult since I'm only doing a small sample of each stitch on my manipulated fabric Take a Stitch Tuesday quilt. So I had to catch up with herringbone stitch , which I'd already stitched but didn't have time to post about: Then I added some chevron stitch along with detached chain stitch .  Chevron isn't very different in feel from herringbone, feather, and cretan, with the back and forth swinging motion of your needle.  However, it's much more precise, even when I tried to make it a bit wonky: Next, very near the line of herringbone stitch , I added a broken line of chain stitch peeking in and out of one of the fabric ruffles: Finally, the stitch that was featured this week, couching stitch .  I used a long strand of fuzzy green yarn that was wrapped with white eyelash yarn an...

I love this stitch!  It looks so good when you make it a bit uneven...or free form if you prefer that term.  Of course it looks good when it's done in even rows too, but for my my Take a Stitch Tuesday quilt, with its underwater theme, I thought a couple lines of free form cretan stitch would look great running up the middle. TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch  TAST week 4 - cretan stitch Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

The edges of my Take a Stitch Tuesday quilt are slowly starting to fill up!  This week featured one of my favorite stitches, feather stitch , so I really enjoyed myself this afternoon, running a couple rows of the stitch along an edge and adding some shell and beads to it. My theme for the quilt is an underwater kelp garden, so I could very easily end up adding more feather stitch before the piece is done.  I just don't want to go overboard right now, not knowing what stitches are coming up in the following weeks.  This has really been fun!  TAST week 1 - fly stitch TAST week 2 - blanket stitch TAST week 3 - feather stitch Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

Here is my second Take a Stitch Tuesday entry.  This week is blanket stitch , which is also known as buttonhole stitch.  Since I usually refer to it as blanket stitch on Mixed Media Artist , that's the term I'll use here. The image above is the unadorned quilt top.  Each week (more or less!), I'll show you the little area that I add stitching to, but I'm not going to show you updates of the entire quilt top until it's finished. Below is the blanket stitch sample I did.  The entire quilt is actually pieced together by hand with blanket stitch, as you can see in the photo, but that's not the sample part!  I added a couple of strands of fuzzy yarn using blanket stitch to couch them in place, and then I added a second row of blanket stitch below the first so that some of the arms would stick out.  I made the arms uneven lengths to make it a bit more interesting, since all of the piecing blanket stitch that I do during quilt construction is fairly even......

I told you a few weeks ago that I had decided to join the stitching challenge run by Sharon Boggon , called Take a Stitch Tuesday .  So here's my first weekly entry.  I've decided to add the stitches that seem appropriate to this manipulated fabric quilt that I've been working on.  Stitches that don't seem to fit will just end up on some scrap cloth, so I can't promise that I'll be posting about TAST every week.  But I was excited to get started today ;-) The quilt instructions will be posted on Mixed Media Artist soon, and I'll be sharing more details shots and explaining how it was made.  In the meantime, the first TAST stitch is fly stitch , and that seemed just perfect to add to the upper right border of my painted silk pieces. Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

I've decided to join the stitching challenge run by Sharon Boggon , called Take a Stitch Tuesday .  Each week Sharon introduces a new embroidery stitch that participants can practice and expand upon.  Sound like fun?  Sign ups are still going on over at the TAST home page! Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading