This summer has been a time for focusing on stitching work, with two completed sashiko pieces, and now this embroidery sampler. I’ve continued working on this small piece which I started in the Katy Biele workshop at the beginning of July, and recently finally finished it.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked with so much colour before, or texture for that matter. I really enjoyed making layers of dense French Knots in a few sections, and also layers of the Picot Stitch. The fuzzy pink bit is a pom pom I attached during the workshop, and cut down very short to fit better with the composition.

It was a terrific learning experience to work on this, and it has definitely reignited my love of embroidery. I am considering a new daily project idea around stitching, to keep building on the momentum of this, but I need to figure out the parameters.

I’m so pleased with this little piece that I’m going to add it to the salon wall in my living room.

Last week I was excited to attend an embroidery workshop, along with my friend Simone, taught by Katy Biele. She is a Chilean textile artist living in Victoria, and she creates elaborate and brightly coloured embroidered pieces inspired by her culture.

Work sample by Katy Biele

Work sample by Katy Biele

In the class she talked about learning embroidery while travelling in India, figuring out how to embrace a more free-form approach to her stitching, and breaking the rules. She taught us a basic repertoire of stitches, such as the French Knot (my fav), seed stitch, back stitch, and a few others I cannot recall the names of, and left it up to us to experiment with our samplers.

We worked with a bright colour palette, which was very fun, and used fibres and yarns that are thicker than traditional embroidery thread. I have a passionate dislike for the eight strand threads, so I really loved this part. We were all so absorbed in our work that the three and a half hour class flew by in no time.

My work-in-progress sampler

Samplers made by the entire class

The final stitch Katy taught us was the picot, which is like a tiny weaving in the shape of a petal. I ran out of time for trying it in the class, but have continued working on my sampler at home and am now obsessed with this new stitch. IT. IS. ADDICTIVE!

I am left feeling inspired by this wonderful learning experience and will continue working on my sampler until it is “finished”.

I started working on this new sashiko stitching project a few days after I finished the previous one I made for my friend Barb. I needed a new project to work on in time for Art & Craft Social.

I’ve wanted a unique custom runner for the side table I refinished in December, and decided this was a good opportunity to work on more sashiko stitching. I’m using the same cotton/linen blend fabric in indigo for this new project, and trying out a new-to-me style of stitching.

I measured out and drew a quarter inch grid over half of the fabric to guide the pattern, and then started stitching across the length of it with staggered lines. This part of things went surprisingly fast.

When all of the stitches going along the length were finished, I started a series of shorter ones crossing over each of the first layer of stitches. I’ve always wanted to try this pattern but it seems so much more complicated for some reason than it actually is.

I completed the last few rows of stitching over the long weekend, and now I need to figure out how to do the finishing. When I cut the fabric I left enough material attached to become a backing piece to hide the stitches and to sew the two sections together. I’m not following a pattern so will have to wing it to figure it out.

I’ll share the finished runner in another post.