http://needleandthimble.blogspot.com/ is a wonderful site that I've just stumbled across. She has podcasts on her site. One of which I've just watched by Bonnie McCaffery aat the New Zealand quilt show. I recommend taking a look.

More pictures of the quilt in last blog.

This is one of my favourite quilts. It catches the light beautifully, wherever you put it, it changes mood. We used to have a shack at Milang on the river front and for the year 2000 Karen (who's business name I would mention if I knew it) one of the local's at Milang dyes silk. She made scraps for us all to wear as scarves for the street party. They were beautiful with firework images and all sorts in the background see photo above. I was lucky enough to grab a bag of her offcuts from the little craft shop at Milang and so began a new quilt. After piecing and machine embroidering all the squares it sat in the cupboard for years. It was stitched on batting and the magazine I was using with instructions on how to make it went missing. It's a quilt as you go type pattern. Well time passed and every now and then I'd get it out and spread it on the floor thinking what will I do. I finally decided to zigzag the patches together, lay down the backing then stitch the borders down and finally handsew the other side of the borders. For what was supposed to be a quick and easy quilt it was quite a truama. Never mind it's turned out to have lots of memories and to be one of my favourties.

TAST knotted cretan

Knotted cretan is a stitch I have never tried before. In fact I looked in my stitch books and couldn't find it. This is why I find the tast challenge so good as Sharon's ideas take us on to a new level. I struggled with this stitch as I couldn't work out how to knot the bottom of this stitch. Sharons dictionary of stitches is great but my brain wouldn't let me flip it to form the bottom knot. Finally go there.

For anyone unfamiliar with TAST of take a stitch tuedsday it can be found at http://inaminuteago.com/blog/index.php/take-a-stitch-tuesday-challenge/ it has flickr site and is fantastic to browse through.

I have been digging around in my stash for this piece of material. My hunting finally paid off. I wanted to include this for interest in tast couching last week. The picture probably doesn't do it justice. Silky wraps are coiled and couched on net. I don't know how I would use it as it is quite heavy and bulky, but it is quite fascinating.

Small Mountmellick project

My finished mountmellick project. It took a while to do the fringing and due to the heaviness of the canvas type material I had to do it in stages as it actually hurt my hands pulling the threads through. I love it anyway and think it needs a larger one to go with it perhaps with the knitted fringe.

Mountmellick work stitch sampler.

I love to try different types of embroidery, mountmellick work is one that appeals to me. I also like to learn about the history linked to the work and why and when it was popular. Mountmellick is a form of white work embroidery that originated in Ireland. There is a very good article about mountmellick at http://islandireland.com/Pages/folk/mountmellick/embroidery.html

tast week 12

Tast week 12 couching

TAST Up & Down buttonhole stitch

Up & Down Buttonhole Stitch

I like this stitch as it can be manipulated in so many ways.

As a straight line it can be added to. It follows a line nicely.

I experimented with shading, it would probably make a nice

fill in stitch for birds feathers.

I can also see it appearing as shells and sea urchins in an underwater scene.

I have used it before in Crewel Work.

Dorset Feather Work

Having started the TAST challenge late I felt it unfair that I have not been able to share my work but have been browsing everbody elses. I was deciding wether to start from week 1 and try to catch up when I stumbled across some samplers from my level 1 surface stitchery folder which was done with Embroiders Guild S.A.

I will use them for feather stitch week 7, and buttonhole week 2, cheating a little I know but it will help me catch up.

Dorset feather Work "Trial and error sampler" book "Dorset Feather Stitchery Olivia Pass"

These samplers are worked straight from the above sampler book found at the embroiderers guild S.A.

Sampler 1) My first attempt at this style of embroidery was very primitive. (Threads used DMC).

Sampler 2) A little neater. (Threads used-rayon on silk)

DMC rayon 4 threads 33608 feather stitch

Maderia 3 threads 554 buttonhole scroll

DMC 4 threads 210 buttonhole scroll

DMC 4 threads 553 feather stitch

DMC 2 threads 553 satin stitch

pine cone

DMC 4 threads 554 inner buttonhole

DMC 4 threads 554 outer buttonhole

Well we finally have the internet and it just blows my mind. I didn't realise how much info was out there, nor how much time I would spend just looking and reading.

Naturally one of the first things I looked up was crazy patchwork and landed straight in Sharon's Blog. WOW!!! I just had to be part of that group.

BUT HOW?????

After many trials and loads of frustration I uploaded a picture to flickr, not the one I wanted to of course, but I got there, I,m still not sure how.

Just joining Sharon's group was hard enough I sent my message and thought it got lost in cyberspace, so I sent another. Thank goodness I gave up because lo and behold looking through her blog the next day there I was TWICE. How embarrassing. Just imagine a whole page of Hi. I'm Annette. Never mind I'm sure it's happended to others.

So I,ve been learning, learning, learning. My needlework has been sitting, sitting, sitting as I promise myself to look at only one more site. Thanks everyone for being out there and sharing your work it's fantastic and inspiring.

Hopefully I'll be out there soon sharing and learning.

A section of embroidery from my crazy patchwork vest.

Well I,m finally here after struggling with learning how to use the internet.