Module 3 - Chapter 4 Decorate with Stitchery (second part)

Monday morning, staying at home and waiting for a worker to come and repair my dishwasher. He was supposed to come at nine but in Rome appointments are rather a vague thing and there is not much you can do about it (call them? answer: we're almost there; call them again? answer: sorry madam there is a demostration going on in front of Parliament, we do what we can; call them again after an hour? answer: we just got an accident with a motorcycle and are waiting for the police to come ... yell? not possible, their mobile phone is now switched off).

So here goes the second batch of samples for chapter 4, the machine stitched ones.

SAMPLE 6 (22 x 24 cms)

In this first free machining sample I tried out several stitching possibilities:

free straight stitch telephone wire like in orange as a background, whipstich in orange, cable stitch in yellow/blue and finally free zig zag stitch to fill in spaces and underline whipstitch/cable stitch shapes.

SAMPLE 7 (18 x 22 cms)

Background of this sample is random-dyed cotton cloth.I first applied an orange dyed light cotton on top using reverse appliqué by free machining and then couched a woollen variegated yarn also by free machining obtaining two layers of spirals. I finally distressed the orange margins somewhat.

This other sample combines machine and hand stitching. I use free machined whip and straight stitch and added spirals in hand running stitch and irregular satin stitch, plus a appliquéd spiral.

SAMPLE 8 (20 x 22 cms)

And finally a first experiment in wet felt making. It was less messy than I thought and it didn't take all that long. I prepared a background felt with three layers of wool rovens and placed some knitting yarn on top, poured hot soapy water on this sandwich and massaged through a sheet of bubble wrap for ten minutes. I rinsed it well, massaged some more on a washboard and dried my piece of felt. How proud!

When dry I put some coloured accents and needle felted them, finally I drew on the whole surface by free machining spirals in zig zag stitch.

SAMPLE 9 (23 x 25 cms)