Aliens among us and they sew

 well my mother thinks that this stitching figure looks like an Alien, not the kind Ridley would have recognised but the little grey men type with the large head.

of course it is still just outlining and that large cranium is her hair in an updo, but pointing out the oddities in a design as it develops is something that amuses her.

So the table, hoop, material and top half here all meet where they are supposed to, it will be interesting to see if the back of the skirt will meet up with the chair in the correct place. if it does then I just need to fix the sections of skirt coming up to meet the table as that appears to be where I am out by a stitch.

BFF SAL 3 Side by side.

No update on the projects this week as there was no sewing there was real face to face getting together in line with the current regulations. It was Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday this evening.

My BFF made the journey from her new home and we went out for a meal. But not to leave the projects out of the fun they came to and here they are together side by side.

 similar in size as the one on the left is on 14 count and on the right 28 count over two.

We had a lovely evening chatting an laughing and spending time together, oh and yes the meal was nice too.

this was mine, to see what my BFF indulged in follow The Link and see her photography skills  at the same time. 

There is no picture of  a delectable desert as there was not anything that appealed enough either on an individual basis or to share.  Or perhaps we are getting less fond of deserts and as my friend put it more inclined to to just get a nice big bar of chocolate!

Back to the sewing next week.

Blackwork a little bit more

 beginning to think I can't count more than two on this one !

I am out by one somewhere...so that the table top and the skirt are not meeting quite as they should.

So....as I cant quite figure it out I am going to work from where I am and then fudge it! Probably.

A tentative new start

 this is a new blackwork piece. It is a progression in blackwork for me, My First and subsequent small pieces have been fully charted, out lines and fill.

This one has charted outlines (with strand count) and then instructions for the fill pattern.

Watching the scoring for the Eurovision Song Contest was perhaps not the best time to start something new and occasioned two false starts.

I am not 100% sure even now that I am getting it right, the outline charting is somewhat challenging and not what I am used to.

The design is from Holbein Embroideries and is the same basic subject as my previous on, just a different time period and size. This is called the Needlewoman.

BFF Sal 3 all Knotted

 happily in this case that refers to the Celtic knots on the cross and not to knots on my thread. I did have a few slippy thread issues and the larger knot being a true knot (the smaller ones are interlinked loops) was interesting. Pleased with how they turned out.

Then moved onto the backstitching, I have stuck with the colour as per the pattern for round the cross, but once more deviated for the edge, I am using the same colour as the stitches to keep it back from the cross and let the cross come forward.

I remain undecided about those corners and am hoping that as the backstitching goes on I will firm up in my mind what I want here.  Still at least I am sure it won't be a lazy daisy!

Funny the material looks grey in this picture. My BFF and I had a fun night discussing our stitching and much laughter was had.

This is a link to her blog  Click here for link

If you want to look at other knots Click here for knots

Chorley Crossed

 That is what I have decided to name this quilt now that it is finished.

I did the quilting on the cream areas by machine, not as well as I would have liked, I cant blame it all on the throat size of my machine, I had issues with the tension on the thread. Nevertheless even with issues it was relatively quick and some lessons were learned.  And my design for the machine quilting went well. Although I did change my mind a time or two, which as I was marking on with washable felt markers looked a bit messy. Alterations added in a different colour to the original set so I could tell them apart.

The quilting on the patched coloured areas I did by hand as I was pretty sure my machine quilting was not up to all those seams.

It went OK as well.

The name comes from the origin of the material, the pattern and feeling just that bit cross with it and myself on more than one occasion in the process.

Here is is finished. 

It was a nice sunny day so my Dad helped me take a picture of it outside, this is the back

Which was turned to the front to make both the front edge and binding. It is a light green and not the cream shade the following picture makes it look, but you can see the quilting design better here I think.

The spirals were a change in plan from my original sketch, but a better fit overall. 

I am hoping that having finished this one I will be able to get back to the sampler quilt which has been waiting for me to settle on how it is to be quilted.

BFF SAL 3 divergences

This evening we moved on to the next specialty stitch which was listed as satin stitch in normal embroidery thread. Now last week I had every intention of following the pattern with the stitch if not with the colour.  As I am working on linen it did not feel as if that was going to be much of an issue.

However, a passing thought that crochet thread (stored in the loft with my lace making stuff) might do as a substitute for the thin cord listed in the pattern. So off on a loft adventure I went and came back down with two options. 

I did take the part completed project up there to see how the colours went in the light in the loft.  The paler colour looked a bit warmer in the loft but still I rather liked it and thought I would use it for the satin stitch. But being a cord it was not filling the space, then I thought I would try something else. Basked weave (also used as a darning stitch) and I quite liked that.

So that is what I did for all four of the spaced designated for satin stitch .

Then I looked at the decoration for the edges over the green, due to the earlier (undisclosed and I expect you have spotted it by now  design deviation) if I followed the pattern for the lay over stitches something odd happened. On the sides it fell so the paler green squares fell inside the diamond shapes. On the top and bottom the dark green fell into the diamond space. That did not look as if it was an issue close too and sewing it  but as soon as it was completed and viewed from even a slight distance...

well I think you can see what happened, I was quite surprised by that and so was my BFF. Now maybe for some that oddity would be fine or even desirable but in this instance and for me it was a no. So out came the bottom and top decorative diamonds to go back in points to corners and light green to the centre. Now those lines were supposed to be couched, than goodness I had not done that or taking them out would have been quite an issue, I just did this with very large backstitch. I may go back and couch them later, it will depend on how they are sitting and if my initial finishing thoughts happen or not.

Oh and for the first time in the picture above I think the colour of the linen is showing better, the very light sage green.

At this point my BFF and I stopped for a showing and sharing of progress (we often wait till the end to do that) and a discussion of out next steps. Now we had both started with the satin stitch, pop over to my BFF's blog to see what happened to hers, I will give you a link at the end, but then we had once more diverged. I to the edges and she to the knot work on the cross.

I am very impressed with the way her colour choices have worked out and the opulence it has given to her version.

On mine I decided to try the second of my two loft retrievals with its subtle sheen. Funny earlier on I was going for the bold with my green checks and BFF was enjoying subtle, we appear to have swapped.

In this instance I did couch the thread, it felt more like it needed it.  I stopped after that one knot as I did not feel I had time to give full attention to the others and finish on time.  As mentioned before over runs are not allowed at the moment as I am watching the Great British Sewing Bee with my mother. So I used one strand of the Raylon thread (also what I was couching the full strands with) and used it to do a couched frame to the basked work sections, they looked more "finished " and less raw that way.

So this is my progress to date and I am looking forward to getting the rest of the knot work done.  Still think the corners need something, what I have not settled on yet, I may complete the backstitching and then decide.

Now here is the link I promised to my BFF's blog, Click here for LINK

BFF SAL 3 Further than expected

OK my BFF was right and the filling in with full cross stitches went very quickly so that I caught up with and passed her and got to the fancy stitches stitch first.

Now as previously mentioned this is supposed to be in the pale yellow and I did not feel that was right for me on my material.

I decided to go with the dark green from the edge.  The pattern calls for them to be sewn with two threads.

I auditioned two threads and did not like the look of that either so I have just used one thread.

I did the one in the middle in expectation of only getting the one done and it making a better update picture that way.  However it went much easier and quicker than I had expected so I managed to finish all of the eyelets.

There should be lazy daisy stitches in the middle and each of the corners.  I am not fond of that particular stitch, they never feel like they sit just right. So I am thinking about it and I feel my lazy daisy will be exceptionally lazy and not be there at all. So the question is will I do something else in that space or not?

Now as we started late and we are a little out of sync my friend has dispensation to catch up out of time so she may have a couple of updates.

Pop over to her blog to see. CLICK for LINK

Back to front

binding. Sewing this down by hand and this feels like slow going. I think it is more the stuff on the TV has not been inspiring. It has been a lot of Snooker, can you tell I did not have the remote.

I am hoping to get it finished soon, then there will be a little bit more machine sewing to get it done. This particular project has had quite a few ups but more downs so far.

 Now some people don't like back to front binding, but I feel it depends on the quilt and on the material available. In this case it felt like the way to go and it was very kind on the corners which went in quite well and no bunny ears.