Travelling geodes 2

I’m trying to keep on top of the travelling geodes and doing them soon after the Seata meeting, but Christmas got in the way for the most recent one. This top photo is how mine looked at the November meeting.

For the December meeting, the one that I worked on asked for the colours of the hankie’s border to be used with a stitch of your choice. I took this literally and used all the colours in the border to do a random sized blanket stitch (again) with two strands of DMC or Anchor from my stash.

With The Great Scunthorpe Embroidery Challenge, shared lunch, Christmas card competition and a raffle, there was so much going on at the December meeting, that I forgot to take a photo of mine.

The geode was the first thing I picked up when I finally found time to stitch between Christmas and New Year. It’s lovely colours, and Sandra has put a selection of threads to use if we wanted to use them.

Since it was so dull and grey outside, I fancied a bit of sparkle, so back to my Madeira metallics. Several of them in the tub would have worked, but I settled on the mauve / purple to do a parallel running stitch.

It’s very subtle for me in spite of using it double, but it catches the light beautifully, as does the gold fleck on the background fabric, and hopefully it will show up when the following rows are added.

Travelling geodes

It was decided in the summer that the SEATA group would do geodes as well as travelling books, starting at the September meeting. The travelling books group had got much smaller. I opted out a while ago. When the format changed, I found that it didn’t spark my imagination in the way responding to what was already in the book had done. Two pages on a drawn-out topic just wasn’t the same.

All the participants had to set up a 6″ or 8″ hoop with a background fabric of their choice. Then put it in a bag with a little notebook, pencil and any guidelines or instructions (stitches or colours for example), and add any threads or notions if they wanted to, ready to be picked up by somebody else taking part. The idea is to work one row, inside the previous row make a few notes in the little book – stitch, thread used etc., and SIGN the page, so we know who has done what on our geode, put it back in the bag ready for it to be passed on next month.

This is where the travelling books fell down sometimes, if somebody wasn’t at the next meeting to pass on and collect the next one on the list. We tried various ways to try and reduce the problems, but some groups got in a real muddle at times. It was decided that if you missed a meeting, just to do another row and pass on next time with the geode.

I was dithering on my background fabric but, while looking for something else, I came across a little paper bag with these autumn-coloured tree “buttons” in, long forgotten my original intention with them. However, I decided they would make a perfect border for my finished wood / forest / trees geode on this dark background fabric.

I found this variegated slubby yarn …..

….. and couched it down. I’ve put the trees in the bag, so they can be stitched down at the end. (They would catch on threads while stitching if I’d put them on at the beginning.)

This is how it looked at the October meeting, thanks to Sue.

I chose this lovely green hoop for my first pick, and by chance it happens to be Sue’s. The only confusion so far seems to have been that some of us had done our own first row and some hadn’t, but not a problem. I used this dark purple thread to do Coral knot stitch, deliberately not making it a perfect circle.

The one I picked up at the October meeting was Lorraine’s, with the gold (the top photo) already stitched. She wanted shiny and blingy, so I’ve used a deep pink Anchor Marlitt for a random buttonhole stitch.

I don’t know who took mine last month, so it will be fun to see how it has progressed.

Finished geode

It was decided that instead of (or maybe as well as) travelling books we would do communal geodes at Seata. Alex has asked those of us who have done them at “In the stitch zone” to take them to tomorrow’s meeting to give the rest of the group some ideas of possibilities.

I’d finished mine ages ago, some time soon after I last blogged about it way back in March, Continuing with my geode sampler. It had just needed more beads, the row of Bullion knots finishing and a row of stem(?) stitch, apart from framing / finishing off the back. I’d been reluctant to cut off the excess silk fabric, it will come in for something else! But also I’d decided the best way of mounting it was to take it out of the hoop and stretch it over a circle of mount board, using a row of running stitches to pull it up tidily and evenly. Even this was done ages ago. But strangely there are no photos at all, which I have only just realised, looking back to want to use them here. Too many other projects!

I did take photos of how I’ve done a slightly smaller piece of mount board, covered in white cotton to hide the gathers on the silk. I’ve used a synthetic thread doubled with a good knot at the end to have something to pull against.

This is my first attempt ….

…….. it’s slightly too small, and the stitches were too close to the edge, and the mount board wanted to pop out and …….

……. you could still see the gathers and some of the gathering stitches on the back of the silk.

On my second attempt I cut the mount board a little bigger, and did the stitches a little further away making it much easier to gather up evenly. It’s the same principle as putting in a sleeve in dress-making.

The back looks completely smooth and flat.

I ladder stitched it to the geode, which holds it in place nicely.

A flat poster-hook on the back, and it was ready to hang. Why, oh why do I procrastinate?

Continuing with my geode sampler

With leaving a little time before going back to my geode sampler, I’d moved on from my frustration of having three beads short on my ring of beads Geode sampler.

I found more suitable beads in my stash and started stringing them randomly, echoing the colours on the silk background.

I couched down some of the strings between the fly stitch and the shiny beads, and some going through the gaps and meandering across the space; there’s more to do yet.

I then used two thicker threads that are interesting textures and lovely colours, but are too thick and knobbly to go through the fine silk. So I put them up close together and couched them down with two stitches and a gap all the way round, in a slightly darker silk thread. It shows off the couched threads better.

Then I used another tricky shiny thread, a single strand and one strand of stranded silk to do Bullion knots. I’m about a third of the way round the ring so far.

Close up

I need to string some more beads to fill in the gaps.

Work in progress, but not far to go. The “loose” tooth will squish back into place.