Abiding in the True Vine

I am several weeks behind on the Take a Stitch Tuesday embroidery challenge. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been inundated on a daily basis with creative outlets.

(And, hopefully, I’ll have some time to catch up in the coming weeks.)

Cable Chain Stitch was the TAST stitch for Week 25. It took me a second to get a rhythm going with this stitch, but once I did, I liked it as a stitch that works well for curved lines. And there are a lot of curved lines in lettering. (Pardon the lighting on these photos!)

Can you believe that it is Week 24 of TAST? Neither can I! I really enjoyed the stitch this week. I thought it would be fun to incorporate the Buttonhole Wheel into each word that contained a letter “O” in the verse. Plus, I really liked the way that the Buttonhole Wheel stitch looked when I filled in letters with it. It kind of reminded me of a bunch of crocheted granny squares forming the letters.

And the progress so far:

TAST this 22nd week featured the Knotted Cretan Stitch. Hmm. What do I want to say about this week’s challenge. It was a challenge? I participate in this embroidery stitch challenge for fun. And to learn new stitches. This week was heavy on the “learning” and not so much on the “fun.” I had real difficulty interpreting the instructions for this stitch…and I do not usually have that problem. I had substantially limited time, so the added frustration of having to take time to figure out how to complete this stitch was not especially welcome.

BUT, I persevered!

And the project, so far:

Week 21 of TAST featured the Butterfly Chain Stitch. This week, my non-TAST life has been insanely busy, especially at the bakery where we celebrated our second anniversary by introducing cookie ice cream sandwiches and preparing for a television interview. But, I was determined to fit my TAST challenge in, anyway. I guess sometimes being stubborn is a good thing?

Anyway…this was a new stitch for me, again. At first, I thought it would be a good stitch for lettering because it had a clear center line running through it. But I soon realized that the butterfly effect was almost lost when I attempted to make the three initial stitches small enough to allow the center line to dominate.

See how the three straight stitches kind of disappear, even though I worked them in a contrasting color to the chain stitch?

So I tried to make the three straight stitches a little clearer with this next font.

I think the general look this time was better representative of the stitch.

And the sampler so far:

(Does anyone else have an immediate mental connection to what you were listening to when you were stitching upon seeing your work again? I was listening to several episodes of “The Brady Bunch”–remember the one where Marcia gets braces? and when she meets Desi Arnaz, Jr.?–as I stitched and when I saw these again, my brain hollered, “Brady Bunch!”)

The Bullion Knot was the stitch challenge for week 20 of TAST. I really liked using these adorable little knots.

First, I used the cute little wormy bullion knots end-to-end to form my letters.

Then, I formed them into little “roses” and buds within the letters.

The whole sampler so far: