Handstitch, week 2

Using one of the "easy" stitches, we worked it to give gradations of tone. I experimented with stem stitch, one that I've never before spent long enough with to get familiar with. (Love those tight curls with the prickly bits!)

Then, a real challenge - stitching onto a very "foreign" material, acetate. It's a bit stiff and slippery, very unlike cloth, but does have potential and I plan to go back to it in the context of double-sided stitch - after all, it's all to easy to see the stitching on both sides at once! Also, it can be incised and inscribed, and then the light hits it in interesting ways -

The "finished" sample, incorporating a little bit of 3D-ness -

 Then a chance to investigate the other stitches on the handout - feather stitch, coral stitch, running stitch, fly stitched, open chain, raised chain band, satin stitch, straight stitch, and backstitch. And detached loops. We were given some words to represent visually - hidden; intense; undulating; calm; punctuated.

At home, with the radio for company, I had a go at seeding with various threads, and then moved on to satin stitch -

The thick black thread is a strip cut from old tights, which stretches to become very thin. It's a very intense black, and quite easy to stitch with -

With the blocks of straight stitch, the change of colour makes them quite compelling to do (and I like that grid structure...). There's space left on the strip for next week's stitches, and for those of you who like to see the back of the embroidery, here it is -

Not sure if I showed the back of last week's "sampler" - it has some interesting double-sided things going on -

Also I added some couching to the end of last week's work - both some squiggles of thread found lying around, and some more solid stuff. The multi-coloured patch of bokhara/roumanian couching makes a very  solid coverage - is this what Boetti's Afghan embroiderers used for their "solidly worked straight stitches with no exposed fabric"?