August Samples

18/31 Chain stitch on soluble fabric  (that's 2018, week 31 by the way!)
A technique geek one this time. Not many people seem to play with hand embroidery on dissolvable film, but I can't resist. It's quite challenging... try it and you'll see!

I worked rows of chain stitch in grey, blue and turquoise pearl cotton, adjacent but not linked. Then to hold them together I threaded pink-mauve through the straight stitches that appear on the back of the fabric when you stitch chains.

Carefully dissolved, and voila! A fabric made of chain stitch embroidery. So what if it'd be quicker to knit, this is something different. But which side is best? The back looks like this:

 

18/32 Pattern Stitch fabric

Still in the mood for creating "fabric" from just stitches on dissolvable film, this time I went with machine embroidery. But built-in, automatic embroidery patterns, not free machining.

 

Thinking of the sea (it's right in front of my desk!) I chose a curled, wavy pattern:

I stitched three layers of this pattern on Romeo, working from dark at the bottom to light at the top. By the third layer, the Bernina had sussed that I wasn't using its pretty patterns as intended and started protesting by breaking the thread, but I pushed it on - I am very cruel to that machine.

In the end it was quite successful. I deliberately (honest) didn't align the stitches of each row, but it's all stayed together well and the curly pattern shows in places.

   

18/33 Gannet eye

I love watching gannets diving for fish in the bay - they're so spectacular! They look amazing close up too...

 Solid free machining (sometimes called thread painting) on calico.

 

18/34 Hand embroidery in air

There's such a craze for "hoop art" at the moment - embroidery displayed in the hoop used to make it. So of course I have to try it with dissolvable fabric!    

 

I decided I'd need a solid fabric edge, as tying a lacy confection onto the hoop would be messy at best. So I hooped up some felt with my dissolvable film and made sure all the stitching was attached to that.

I used tiny circles of felt for the flower centres - you do need somewhere to fasten threads on and off! They're linked with green running stitch, knotted at the junctions. Then simple straight stitch for the flower petals and French knots for the centres.     

 

18/35 Felt jewellery

For a change, I followed an online course in Wool Felt Jewellery throughout August. It was great fun, I can highly recommend Fiona Duthie's courses! 

 

We learned all sorts of techniques to make wet felted beads, cords and lace. I especially loved the cords, and made several bangles. I haven't done a lot of felting, so there was a lot to learn; I made sure I tried everything while there was someone to consult - Fiona and other students were very helpful.

 

My final experiment was this brooch idea, combining the felt I'd made with a bit of free machining on dissolvable fabric.        

It's a felt bead trapped in flat felt as it was made, then revealed as an "inclusion". I cut out the circle, then stitched it onto a larger circle of felt that I'd edged with cable stitch worked on Solufleece.

I focussed so much on learning all the new techniques that I ran out of time for making finished pieces. But I still want to make myself a cord necklace, with slider beads and inclusions.

It was wonderful to find I could make small felt pieces at my desk without getting water everywhere. Now I know that I'll definitely do more wet felting to combine with my stitching.