If you do a lot of hand stitching, you can’t help inventing new stitch variations occasionally. There are lots of variations on basic stitches, and many ways to combine one basic stitch with another.
Blanket stitch tree with interlaced blanket stitch border
Here’s an interlaced/woven running stitch/blanket stitch combination, which looks best in two colours:
Sound on: Lovely Day, Bill Withers
You need to work a row of running stitch first, keeping the stitch and space between stitches as even as you can. Then you can work a blanket stitch into the gap, using a different colour, and weave through the running stitch to start the next blanket stitch.
Interlaced blanket/running stitch
A simple enough idea, and easy to stitch. It probably needs a better name though, combining blanket and running. Blanning stitch. Runket stitch. Oh dear me, no. Suggestions on a postcard please.
And a very warm welcome, firstly, to new subscribers – thank you so much for joining us here. If you’re looking for a quiet restful space, where nothing much happens except some hand stitching and gentle reflection, then you’re probably in the right place.
On the subject of which, I do enjoy my quiet Sunday mornings. At weekends my husband likes a long lie-in, and I don’t. I’m generally wide awake and out of bed the second I wake up, usually driven downstairs by hunger. I have the metabolism of a hamster and need frequent refuelling. Once the need for breakfast has been met, the rest of the morning is my own and I can stitch away in my workroom until lunch time. I call it a workroom – actually it’s the spare bedroom. Maybe I should go all Proper Artist and call it a studio.
Continuing on the Winter Time Traveller’s quilt
This quilt, originally a (Time) Traveller’s Blanket as part of an online class with Dijanne, has become a celebration of winter, my favourite season, and maybe it will be finished in time for next winter. It certainly isn’t anywhere near done at the moment. The top and back are hand-dyed silk noil, with some soft flannel (brushed cotton) as the middle layer.
This little tree is an experiment in making branches with blanket stitch and so far I like it. I’m using hand-dyed cotton perle size 12 thread, on a scrap of hand-dyed Swiss cotton fabric applied to the quilt top. I really like the way the woven dots in the fabric look like snow.
Little tree, in progress
The rest of it seems enormous, but it’s only about a metre square.
Very much still in progress; hand stitch on applied fabric scraps
I’ve added a layer of sheer fabric to some of the patches. This one is simple embroidered tree pictograms on hand-dyed silk organza, and then I’ve layered a piece of painted dotted tulle over the top. It’s impossible to photograph, but in real life the dots create little shadows on the organza beneath.
Painted tulle layered over embroidered silk organza
I always think this multi-layering is one of winter’s best gifts. It’s the season that most brings time to reflect, to look beneath the surface, to embrace the shadows, to see in the dark. To see through the dark too, because it doesn’t last long. It will be spring before we know it, and if you’re on the other side of the world it’s already summer. If that isn’t time travel, I don’t know what is.
Ours doesn’t go up until the day before the winter solstice. This is because husband and I both have birthdays before Christmas, and it can’t be Christmas until after the birthdays. That’s the rule, and a completely arbitrary illogical one it is too. Strictly speaking, it isn’t Christmas until Noddy from Slade shouts ‘It’s CHRIIIISTMAAAS’ and neither of us has heard that yet this year.
Until it’s time to haul our thirty-year-old tree out of the loft, I will make do with embroidered ones. The traveller’s blanket has a little Christmas tree panel, made with herringbone stitch and cotton perle threads:
‘Little tree, little silent Christmas tree… who found you in the green forest and were you very sorry to come away?’ – e.e.cummings, ‘little tree’
Every so often our feather duster sheds one of its lovely ostrich plumes.
Every home should have one
I’m currently working on the traveller’s blanket and thought, like a womble, waste not want not and all that. A quick trim of the feather and it kind of looks a bit tree-ish doesn’t it?
Trimmed ostrich feather
In ordinary circumstances of course an ostrich is going to need a lot of help if it’s got any hope of getting into a tree, but here in my creative little world where (nearly) all things are possible, here we are:
Ostrich feather tree
Just adding to the story collection really.
Leaves worked with silk and cotton hand-dyed threads on hand-dyed cotton lawn
Doesn’t it just make your heart sing when something like this happens?
Ostrich feather tree with seed-stitched falling leaves
The definition of good morning: a cup of hot black coffee, a cloth in progress, and a little collection of fabrics ready for their auditions.
Traveller’s blanket in progress
These are non-competitive auditions because they will all win in the end. I really like just looking at fabrics – although it’s never just looking, is it, because I have to pick them all up and touch them as well. It’s just seeing with hands, I suppose.
Fabrics that say Winter
The Traveller’s Blanket is turning into a short story collection. I’ve found it quite challenging to adopt someone else’s technique while making it look like my own work. Dijanne makes these cloths so beautifully and I didn’t want to produce an imitation. I imagine it’s a bit like doing a cover version of a very well-known song.
It’s a good opportunity to include some treasure, like this silk velvet, eco-dyed by Arlee
Eco-dyed silk velvet with couched silk bourette yarn on tea-dyed silk noil
Fine silk, eco-printed, with hand stitch. No straight/square edges happening here.
And then a few vignettes are happening here and there:
Traveller’s blanket, centre. Antique fine lawn cutwork embroidered panelHand-dyed vintage cutwork, more eco-prints by Jane Hunter
Now that a few fabrics have been applied, the cloth is stable enough to work on without support from the table. Eventually there will be some kind of quilting or seeding in between the motifs, but I think that point is still some way off. In the meantime it can carry on keeping my knees warm while I stitch in the evenings.
I’ve finally made a start on my traveller’s blanket for the last ever class with Dijanne Cevaal. It took a while to think about the right foundation for this quilt, and in the end I decided on a piece of tea-dyed silk noil. Soft but textured, lightweight but warm. The back is hand-dyed silk noil, and the middle layer is brushed cotton (also known as cotton flannel).
A slight stumbling block in the thinking process for this quilt has been that traditionally these quilts have been all about travel and recording experiences, and I’m probably the world’s worst traveller. I’ve never ventured beyond the UK, never been on an aeroplane, and have never had a passport. I don’t even drive. I get seasick just watching boats on TV. What could I possibly have to say about travel?
And then I thought of course we’re all travelling constantly – through time, through life, through experiences. And so my blanket has ended up being about a journey through winter, my favourite season, which will be with us very soon. I’m thinking greys, dark blues, sludgy/grey greens, browns, whites.
I’m starting in the centre with this beautiful piece of antique embroidered cutwork, a mystery object. Does anyone know what this would have been, originally? It seems to be a discrete piece, and doesn’t look as if it’s ever been part of anything else – at first I thought cuff, but it’s not long enough, and there is no evidence of unpicked seams. It’s about 2.25” x 6”. Dressing table mat? Answers on a postcard please.
The beginning. A very pretty start.
I’m using a few fabrics expertly eco-printed by Jane Hunter together with some vintage and antique pieces that I’ve been saving for something special.
Collecting treasures – eco-printed silks by Jane Hunter, fragments from an antique silk christening dress, various vintage cottons and scraps
