Some New Stitches

I've made just a little bit of progress on Garnet, the handbag I'm embroidering from an Inspirations kit that I picked up last October. This piece has a lot of new stitches in it, at least they are new to me. The middle stem above is Heavy Chain Stitch, in which each stitch is overlapped onto the previous stitch, making a nice, firm line. The leaf outlines, shown above are Chain Stitch - Back Stitch combination. On the left is the chain stitch, on the right is the completed combination.

Here I'm working the back stitch into the chain. you can see that the addition of the back stitch gives a nice texture to the chain stitch, while also spreading the chain out a bit on the sides and filling the center to make it solid.

The large flower is made using a Double Chain Stitch. You can see my first effort is uneven, as I couldn't get the width right. Then I realized why. That pink pencil I used is just not dark enough to see properly. So out these stitches went!

Here you can see that I drew in the outline using a Pigma pen and believe me, it is such a relief to be able to see the markings. My stitches are much more even and the dark red perlé cotton covers the lines beautifully.  You can bet that I'll trace over the rest of the markings before starting a new section.

This project is coming along slowly, what with all the new stitches. It's also been somewhat hectic at work so I've been coming home later at night. That, with my carpooler being on vacation makes for a tired girl with not much energy for stitching in the evenings. I have a doodle cloth set up in a hoop that I practice the stitches on before working on the purse, so that makes each session a bit longer. But it's definitely worth the effort to get the stitches done in my mind so I know what I'm doing. The center of the flower is supposed to be a Ghiordes knot, or Turkey work, but I don't like the look of it in the photo so I'll try to come up with something different. The flower at the base of the design has a spider rose which looks very nice.  If I can't think of something really great it will probably be French knots. But it definitely needs to be something solid to cover up my anchoring stitches.

I hope to get a few hours in today, maybe finish the petals and start on the filling. If you remember, in the last post I mentioned I have absolutely no business starting a new project what with all the unfinished projects I have. Well so much for that idea. This upcoming Saturday I'll be taking a class from Kari Mecca called Bits of Bullion Bubble. It will be perfect for my great niece this summer. I've mentioned before that we here in Southern California have quite a few heirloom sewing and smocking teachers, and Kari is definitely one of them. Please visit Kari's website, she has a lot of great items for sale.