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Beyond TAST – Woven Stitches Sampler

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Embroidered woven stitch sampler for Beyond TAST

(Click the photo for a closer look)

After spending quite a while trying to work out what I wanted to embroider for the three Beyond TAST embroidery challenges that I was behind in, I attacked the stitching like a mad woman and am really happy with the results! I’ll show them in the order that I embroidered them rather than the challenge order.

First up is season 8, my woven stitches sampler. First I stitched a vintage handkerchief that I had dyed navy blue to a background piece of cotton with running stitch and caught down the lace with a French knot in each scallop. I then drew a picture of some houses and a tree inspired by vintage wooden building blocks. The sun is a woven wheel surrounded by open based needlewoven picots, with pekinese stitch surrounding the woven wheel.

The top arch in the house on the left is whipped wheel, again with a pekinese stitch border. On the very bottom arch I wove the spokes two at a time. The clouds are also whipped wheel with a pekinese stitch border around each “puff”.

The main parts of the sampler are all woven with stitches from “Needle Weaving Techniques for Hand Embroidery by Hazel Blomkamp. I worked the house on the left and the tree with perle cottons, while the smaller house is crewel wool.

Things I learnt from this sampler:

  1. I love woven stitches, especially over large spaces. They are fun to work, but I also love the way they look.
  2. I shouldn’t be lazy about going out to the studio to get different colours of thread. The large house was worked with thread I had right on hand and it’s a bit bright 😉
  3. Trust my intuition. On the sun, I almost did one layer of picots and no border around the centre. I trusted my intuition that it wasn’t finished, and was really happy that I added more. After all, it’s embroidery, and if I didn’t like the extra work I could always cut it out.
  4. Blocks of weaving and woven wheels look great with another stitch as a border around them, especially if you’re using them as a filling over a fairly large area.

Next up I’ll tell you about challenge 6, laced and threaded stitches. Because I just hate to do anything in the expected order, apparently.

Sarah

A Checked Knitting Pattern with a Difference

Knit and purl ridged check swatch

The end is here! Stitch No 33, Striped Check is the final stitch in my knitting stitchathon!

Another knit and purl stitch, I think this one would look particularly nice in a yarn that has a little texture to it like a fine bouclé. In a plain, smooth yarn, an nice project for this stitch would be to make squares in Striped Check and stitch 28b and join them together with bands of garter stitch to make a large afghan with a thick border of garter stitch all the way around. Very cosy 🙂

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of 19th century and 1930’s knitting stitches. I have a lot of new additions planned for knitters, my fellow embroiderers and more, so if you’d like to keep notified whenever I post something new, subscribe over on the left (on desktop), or underneath this post of you’re using a tablet or on mobile.

Happy stitching!

Sarah

Printing PDF Downloads and an Apology

Sorry.

A kind visitor to Knitting-and.com let me know recently that I had accidentally created many of my pdf files without letting anyone print them without a password.

My sincere apologies to everyone this has affected (I’m mortified that I made such a simple mistake).

I have fixed them now, so if you find yourself with a file from Knitting-and.com that you would like to print, and it’s asking for a password, please download it again and you should be able to print it. (If you can’t, let me know and I’ll double check). Note: This will only affect files downloaded after October 6th, 2018.

Regular visitors may have also noticed that the website has been offline a few times over the past week. This was caused by a failure on the new server, which I have been assured is now fixed. I hope this hasn’t caused too much inconvenience.

Sarah

The Penultimate Stitch

Knitted swatch in lattice stitch

We’ve reached the penultimate stitch in our little series of knitting stitches! In my opinion, it’s also one of the most understated and beautiful.

Lattice stitch has been around for a very, very long time. In Victorian times it was used as the centre of baby shawls, and in strips that were sewn together to make afghans and knitted quilts. It enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1930’s as a stitch used to knit short sleeved tops, whether in an all-over stitch or worked in panels.

When worked in a smooth, fingering weight yarn, lattice stitch is particularly lovely. I’d also really like to see it worked in mohair with larger than normal needles for a super cosy stole.

Whatever you choose to use it for, I hope you enjoy knitted lattice stitch.

Sarah