Here’s another interlaced stitch for you to try – you might find it handy for Christmas decorations and cards.
The instructions look daunting, and the first few may seem very tricky to work. But once you’ve got the idea, you’ll find the stars quick to stitch. I suggest practising on Aida fabric with a fairly thin thread until you are confident, then you can try working on other evenweave fabric or just using a circle of 8 holes made in thin card. Continue reading
Here’s the last, and final, part of the instructions for the Glimpse bookmark. If you’ve just joined up, you’ll find PART ONE here and PART TWO here. This time we’ll finish the bookmark, I promise.
Here’s the chart again, to save you having refer back:
And this is where we are so far:
Okay, you’ve prepared the mesh in Part One, so let’s get going with the filling stitches.
Here’s the chart. You can see we have two types of filling, open squares with overcast edges and squares filled with two crossed bars. We’re starting with the filled squares. (I call them “window stitches”, because they look like a child’s drawing of a window.) Use the same colour that you used for the edging stitches. Thread the needle with as long a length of thread as you can manage comfortably, to avoid having to make too many joins.
I’ve chosen this project as a way of explaining the coloured, counted openwork I have been working on recently, based on the examples in this old book from the Internet Archive. This is my own ‘take’ on the stitching, and is not necessarily the way it was originally done.
I am splitting the bookmark project into two posts. This one covers the materials and tools, and explains marking out, edging and cutting the threads to make an area of mesh. (The same technique works for similar types of embroidery on mesh, so it’s worth learning.) In the next post on this project we’ll do the fun bit – filling the grid with stitches.
I’ve been busy.
The new job is going well, I’m pleased to say. I am settling in there nicely. On the embroidery front, the Second Yellow Mat is making good progress – it’s not far from finished now. It might even have been finished already except that I got sidetracked by another project… As one does. This project was figuring out an old crochet pattern on the Antique Pattern Library website. There was no actual pattern or any instructions: nothing but a hand-drawn illustration (probably a woodcut). You can see the printout I was working from in the picture below.
I had fun trying to figure out how to stitch this. I can crochet, but I either follow a pattern or make up my own. Trying to figure out the pattern from a picture (which turned out to have a few minor inaccuracies) was quite a challenge.
But I rather relish a challenge like that. So with a lot of counting, trying-out, undoing, retrying and occasionally cursing, I did eventually figure the pattern out to my own satisfaction and produced the finished cushion front. And then came the equally tricky task of trying to turn my rough scribbles and scruffy notes into instructions that (I hope) will make sense to someone else.
The finished instructions now have their own page on Tortoise Loft – the Blog: Crochet: Old Cartier-Bresson Crochet Square.
With the 4-ply cotton yarn I used, it was a very good size for a cushion. In a finer thread, it would make a handsome square for a bedspread, or something of that sort. I hope some people will have a go at working it. I also hope people will let me know if they spot any mistakes in the instructions, so I can make corrections.
I don’t intend to work out any other of the crochet patterns from these little booklets – one was enough! But I am very pleased with how well this one turned out.
Tortoise Loft - the blog 