Still no TAST, but.....

I have been sick, but I have also finished about 20 ornaments.  Here is a picture of some of them:

I still need to make at least 10 more.

Below is a thread painting that is for one of my sisters for Christmas.   I don't think she reads my blog, so I am OK to show it.

I would like to do more of these with needlefelting as the background and more hand stitching when the machine stitching is done.

I hope that everyone is getting their Christmas projects done.  I had to give up on one of mine because of my illness.  I will get that daughter something else.

No TAST, Just Christmas ornaments

I am putting aside Take a Stitch Tuesday for awhile to do some Christmas projects.

I have finished enough to make 8 ornaments.  Here is what I have:

Here are a few close ups:

Now all I have to do is put two together and buttonhole stitch around them while adding stuffing and a ribbon!

TAST 2012 Week 43 Buttonhole Wheel Cup and more catch up!

I am actually on time this week with my TAST Stitch.  Here is a picture of what I have done.

I love how this looks with thicker threads. I really like the rayon ribbon on the bottom right.  I also like the shine of the silk in the top right.

Here are 3 more stitches that I finished in the last week or so.  

My eight year old son thinks the one above looks like a water bug.

I used beads instead of a french knot for some of these stitches.  

Now I only need to do one more, and I will be all caught up!

TAST 2012 Week 40 Beaded hedebo edge and Week 32

I finished this week's stitch: Beaded hedebo edge and also did week 32: cast on stitch.

You can see them both below.

First the beaded hedebo edge:

This stitch was satisfying to do as I saw the results--especially when adding the beads.

This next one is the cast on stitch, which I love to do.  I really love the texture of this stitch.  What I really want is a very long and large sized milliners needle so that I can make them really long.

TAST 2012 Week 39 Knotted Buttonhole Stitch and another catch up

I actually did the Take a Stitch Tuesday for this week as well as doing week 34.  If I have time, I will do more "catch up" but my sister is in town and other things need to be done as well.

Here is Week 39:   Knotted Buttonhole Stitch

And here is Week 34:  Linked double chain

I am enjoying doing this on a regular basis again.  I was glad to finish my large project, but I will really consider well next time before I choose to make something that will take so much time.

TAST 2012 Two catch up stitches

I didn't do this week's stitch for TAST 2012, but I did do two from previous weeks: sheaf stitch from week 35 and pistil stitch from week 37.  I will try to do at least two stitch pictures each week until I have caught up.

Tree of Life project is done!

As you can see I haven't been posting any Take a Stitch Tuesday for 6 weeks.  I had to finish my Tree of Life project that was for a crazy quilting contest on Evening Star Designs.  It was to be finished by September 15th.  Well, I did it. But I couldn't have finished it without stopping TAST 2012 for awhile. But I used a number of the stitches from TAST in this quilt.

Here are some pictures of what I did:

This project is 20 inches by 24 inches.  It is mounted on foam core (I used Allison Aller's book as a reference for this).

I used my own design for the four crazy quilt blocks that I put together. The fabric around the blocks was dyed by me.  I also designed the tree that I embroidered on the blocks.

But I pretty much let the rest of the process just come together as I embellished the blocks.  I decided to keep the embellishments mostly the same color as the pieces of fabric that I used because the colors were already so vibrant. I didn't want to cover up the colors of the fabric, but I still wanted to embellish them so that they had a lot of texture.

I used lots of threads for this project (silk, rayon, wool, cotton--flat, perle, ribbon, etc.)

I used some buttons and hundreds of beads, spangles, and crystals.  It really sparkles in the light.  

I also made my own leaves using wool fabric, embroidery, and beads.  Then I attached them with more beads.

I encountered a number of problems.  Some of these I was able to fix.  Some I just have to live with.  Over all it was a great learning experience for me.

Now I can start doing TAST again!!!