Stitch Challenge...Stitch for Five Then...

This Christmas weekend, we were visiting my mother-in-law in New Jersey. Since we were spending most of our time inside chatting...I was able to get a bit of stitching done too!

Here is the piece that I stitched. It is one of the stitching challenges that I'm going to suggest to the students in my upcoming Hand Stitching class. In this challenge you stitch for five and then make a change. The change could be a change in the direction of the line or a change in the stitch...or both!

I stitched five Running stitches, then changed direction and stitched five Back stitches. The background was hand painted and sprinkled with salt to get the gradations of gray.

At first I did all the stitching with two strands of white DMC floss but I found the result lacked the "punch" that I hoped for. I thought...maybe I should start over on another piece of fabric with three or four strands of white floss. But then I got the idea to shadow the original stitches with two strands of black floss. I think the result is pretty interesting!

It was fun to work out the changes in direction while stitching. I wanted to make sure that the stitched lines filled out the square area, but that they never crossed...sort of like building a maze!

Only two spots left in the class!

Humble Beginnings

This week, I finally started working on some samples for my upcoming Hand Stitching class. I've had lots of thoughts bopping around in my head (and I've gotten many of those down on paper) but for some reason I just wasn't sitting down and starting to make samples.

I decided to start by reintroducing myself to three basic stitches that I use a lot in my work...back stitch, stem stitch and running stitch. One thing I really want to do is set limits...both in size and color. So, I am trying to stick with black and white to start. These samples use black DMC floss on a slightly off-white Prepared for Dyeing Kona cotton. I also have black cotton and will use white floss. And...I'll probably try white stitching on white cloth and black stitching on the black cloth. I do want to try out some different fabrics....linen, silk, felt and maybe a sheer of some kind. The students will have the chance to paint and print (black and white) some designs during the first session...just for some variety.

Back stitch: Changing the thickness of the lines.

But getting back to these samples... I focused on thick versus thin so I stitched lines that gradually used fewer strands of floss. I tried to keep the stitches pretty uniform in length. Stitching the lines using 5 and 6 strands was not very easy (especially trying to keep an even tension as I worked) and I think that the weave of this cotton may be too tight to comfortably accommodate that many strands. The linen and felt will probably work much better (more samples to come!). Even doing these simple  samples has got me thinking...about designs with lines that become thick and thin. I want to try that next. And then I want to think about and explore the concept of line. Using descriptors for lines...and then trying to stitch them (for example...can a line be angry?).

Stem stitch: Changing the thickness of the lines.

Running stitch: Changing the thickness of the lines.

So this is the humble start...