TAST Week 7: Detached Chain

My little block is filling up pretty quickly.

This week I used the detached chain stitch (aka Lazy Daisy) to make silk ribbon leaves for my tree.  I had originally filled it in with perle cotton leaves, but they didn't show up against the busy background, so I pulled out the heavy artillery.  I didn't take out the original stitches, but just sewed right over them, and that worked out fine.

Like I have done with other accent motifs, I traced this little owl from an old embroidery book onto some tear-away stabilizer and stitched through it.  

The bird in the central panel got a few accent stitches, and I added a gold spider web.  My spider blends a bit too much into its leaf, so I'll add some outline in a contrasting color.  My double herringbone stitches got some green buttons, and I added more herringbone stitches and French knots next to the butterfly.

The middle of the block got some dark green buttonhole stitch and some red lazy daisy blooms.

I'm planning to embellish the two short seams to the right of the tree, and to add some foliage to the left side of the tree.  Then I think this block's done.  Onward to the next block!

TAST Week 6: Chevron Stitch

It's been very inspirational to work the TAST and the Crazy Quilt Journal Projects alongside my sister stitchers on the Tuesday Stitchers blog.  This week I shameless stole was inspired by Jane's post from last week about using wool felt to make a tree.  I had some felted wool, and I applied Heat n Bond Lite to the back, took some rough measurements of the space I wanted to fill, and drew a tree in reverse of the image I wanted.

I had to trim the tree branches a bit to make it fit the space, but after I was satisfied with the placement, I ironed it down.  Now there was no going back.

I've also been inspired by the way several of the Tuesday Stitchers have stacked their TAST stitches, and also the free form approach some have taken.  I filled my tree with chevron stitch in a rustic way.  I added some heart buttons that Debra sent me, which provide the pop of red I was looking for.  I'll add more later after I add a bird to the long branch on the right.

Because others have posted their work tables, I'm posting mine here too.  This is the mess I had to clear away in order to do my stitching today.  At first I wondered how I would ever think up enough ideas to fill 12 blocks.  Now I wonder how I'll ever fit it all in.

TAST Week 5: Herringbone Stitch

Thank goodness for the Superbowl.  It allowed me to sit down and get this bit of embroidery done while the rest of the family watched the game.   I got one seam done with two layers of herringbone stitch.

I'd been looking for something to help get my stitches even, and this peel and stick tape that I found in the embroidery isle at Michael's worked really well.

I positioned it on one side to do the light blue stitching, and then I flipped the same piece to the other side to do the larger dark stitch.  It was easy to use the centimeter measurements, which conveniently have no numbers. 

I stitched a butterfly over some iron on stabilizer, a method I showed in an earlier post.  I used satin stitch and chain stitch.   The little bird at the bottom was transferred onto a piece of linen and then cross-stitched on.  Maybe I'll add some beads to the herringbone stitch.  It needs a bit of zip.