Luna's Baublebilities

I'm trying to participate in Sharon B's second Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge this year.  Sharon, over at PinTangle, introduces a new embroidery stitch each week (on Tuesday for her but since she's an Aussie, the posts show up on Mondays for me.)  and we are encouraged to try working the stitch and embellishing it a bit. 

I'm excited about the challenge because I have really been enjoying playing with crazy quilting and embellishing my blocks over the past year but I really find that I want some help coming up with new and interesting stitches.  I'm planning on working most of the TAST stitches on embroidery cloth instead of a crazy quilt so that I can see the stitches a bit better and really learn their anatomy.  It will also give me a chance to play with some of the threads I'm experimenting with in my dye baths.  

I managed to work a bit on two of the stitches while waiting for Molly at the auditions for this summer's CPS production of Annie. 

(She bombed, by the way. It was very sad. She was so tired and the accompaniment was in a different style than she is used to.  There were tears for two days but she has now passed a major milestone in the performing world - bombing an audition with a Broadway producer.  She'll never have to do that for the first time again.  And she'll make up for it when she wows everyone with her NYSSMA solo. 

(Jenna, Gabby & Molly in costume.  Aren't they cute?  I had so much fun helping with makeup.)

Have I mentioned how her voice fills up the whole house when she sings?  I think I also neglected to mention that she & her partner were The Best at the Viennese Waltz and the Gavotte in Cinderella.  Their steps & poise were perfect and she and James did such a good job acting like they were in love that family members asked lots of questions about him after both performances.   There were several other pairs of dancers on stage for those dances, but I'm pretty sure that most eyes were on Molly and James.  They worked really hard to get it right and were very patient with each other. )

Anyway - Back to TAST - I worked a bit of Knotted Loop Stitch. (at top)
And since I had beads with me for working on Beaded Hedebo Edge, I did some more knotted loop stitch and added beads to that.  I found that if you graduate the height of the stitches and add beads, you can stack the beads up into some interesting configurations.




Then I worked some Beaded Hedebo Edge with my Adk. Sunset lace-weight wool.  I found that the thread snagged a bit.  The soft color graduation was lovely but maybe a bit too soft and the wool was definitely too 'sticky' for my tastes for this sort of application.  I think I prefer a shinier thread that snags less for something like this.  The wool is probably better for something that just passes through fabric instead of being knotted around itself a lot.

I have not had a chance to work Diamond Stitch but I really want to as I am intrigued with fill stitching and would like to try that with this stitch.  We'll see if I get a chance to work this week's stitch at all.  I hope so! 

I also need to find a supplier for plain white cotton perle and regular stranded embroidery thread in big skeins so that I can dye some up.  I like these exotic threads but I also want some basic stuff  to play with.  If anyone has leads on stuff like that - please give me a shout!