Leaf SAL - Sixteen leaves

In my last four blog posts, I have been sharing my Leaf Stitch-Along journey. The SAL was arranged by the Embroiderers' Guild Queensland during the Covid-10 restrictions and stay at home orders. These are the leaves I have embroidered so far.

Some I have enjoyed stitching enormously, others have been a challenge. Here's one that amused me no end - Butterfly Chain. It starts off with a line of straight stitches, three to a group. 

The Chain Stitch is added afterwards. It's detached. It lies on top of the fabric, tying the groups of stitches together to form a string of butterflies. And it makes a very pretty line stitch. 

Yet for me the butterflies disappeared, and all I could see was a fish bone!

Then, Twisted Chain Stitch sprang to mind, and I surrounded the fish bone with little fish of Twisted Chain Stitch. I'm still deciding if those will stay.

Other fillings seemed more mundane. I thought a Brick and Cross filling made up of staight stitches and crosses would be straightforward, and quick. But, I unpicked it five or even six times. First, I chose a variegated thread so that the densely worked filling would look lighter. Mmmm... 

After a few attempts and three determined rows I conceded that it simply looked splotchy. 

Then, with plain blue thread, I kept changing the spacing until all the lines looked more equally sized and spaced. 

The result is quite different to what I had expected. In the end, it's a filling that I am rather pleased with.

I have four more leaves to do to reach my goal of twenty. It's been an interesting journey so far. 

On another note, I hope you are able to enjoy doing some stitching today, Thursday 30 July, World Embroidery Day. You will be in the good company of very many embroiderers stitching all around the world.

'Till next time, happy stitching!

Pentas, Embroidery and Caterpillars

The pentas in my garden are still blooming after almost three years. They look a bit untidy, yet I haven't had the heart to prune them back hard because they always have flowers on them. I love the deep red flowers and that bush is suddenly full of buds about to burst open. It's lovely to have colour in the garden in the middle of winter.

Indoors, my SAL leaf sampler is growing. But it's one particular leaf I want to tell you about. The outline is Interlaced Cable Chain. I like the way the green interlacing thread lies neatly on the outside of the yellow cable chain. I followed the SAL instructions and placed a French knot in the centre of each chain. 

Early on I decided that seeing as though I did not have the threads specified with the SAL instructions, I'd simply choose bright cheerful colours from my stash of threads. With that in mind I chose a nice bright contrasting red for the French Knot inside the Interlaced Cable Chain. And those red spots do stand out. Unfortunately the result reminds me of a caterpillar! 

Not just any caterpillar, but the plague of hawk moth caterpillars that we had on the pentas during the summer. For weeks on end, Rod and I collected by hand anything from ten to fifty caterpillars each day on the six plants in the garden. It's a mystery where they all came from because I only ever saw one hawk moth in the garden and never any eggs on the plants.

Lots of birds visit the birdbath next to the pentas and I was reluctant to spray. As summer wound down we finally gave up, sprayed with an eco-friendly mixture, and it was a relief not to have go out each day and hunt for those destructive caterpillars. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I found a lonely caterpillar - the size of my little finger! I guess more will soon be back. 

Leaf SAL - 10 leaves

In my last post here I showed you the first of the leaves I'd been doing for the EGQ Leaf Stitch-Along project. Each leaf has a stitch outlining it and a centre filling with suggestions listed for variations. In that vein, I have taken a bit of liberty with some of the leaves and chosen different stitches. Others are waiting for inspiration. In the meantime these were my first 8 leaves.

Learning the more complicated stitches and doing them on the curve of the leaf has been challenging. I can see why they are usually demonstrated on an evenweave fabric which is particularly suited to someone learning the stitch. It does make the spacing much easier when you can place stitches in a straight line and a set number of threads apart.

So, it was nice to do a simpler outline of detached chain with two straight stitches in between. I wasn't looking forward to the buttonhole wheels, but they went more smoothly than I expected. 

Below I have added a further 2 leaves to my sampler, bringing the total to 10. Both the outline stitches  for these two leaves were new to me and rather interesting to learn.

Like me, one of the very first stitches you may have learnt to embroider is chain stitch. How about spicing it up, adding in a straight stitch, and trying Spine Chain Stitch? That sounds simple enough.

Well my version didn't quite turn out the way it should have. It's got spines on one side only, but that was an intentional variation. What wasn't intentional, is that the spines point in the wrong direction. Oops!

If you angle the straight stitches correctly, as shown below, with the spines worked back towards the beginning of the line, they stand out quite distinctly. 

Spine chain stitch - single sided variation

But, if you angle the spine in the direction in which you are travelling, it becomea partially covered by the next chain stitch. And that's why my spines seem to disappear under the chain. For now, I rather like the less spiky effect, so I have left it just like that. It's also a reminder to me of how not to do it in future.

Then I moved on to another variation of chain stitch. For most of the SAL stitches I have used Mary Thomas' Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches. 

I like the single clear diagrams that illustrate how to do the stitches. However, for Hungarian Braided Chain I had to look elsewhere. It's a tricky stitch. I needed to see specifically how to handle the needle and what to do with the thread. 

Mary Corbett's video that you will find in her post here is very good. It shows clearly just how the chain must be left loose as you begin the next stitch, and then exactly how and when to tighten it. I watched the video a number of times, each time noting and learning something else about the movement.

The finished effect is a neat looking, heavy chain. I imagine it would look perfect embroidered on a smart military uniform. I wonder if it is used anywhere for that purpose?

Next time I'll show you how I am progressing on the final set of 10 leaves comprising past 3 of the SAL.

'Till then, take care and happy stitching!