Embellished jacket 2

I’ve been continuing with my embellished jacket, finding experiments and samples to add to it. This is another piece of Kantha that I did at “In the stitch zone“, way back in April 2022. Both pieces play with circles on wool (Harris tweed?), this one following and echoing the lines and weave of the fabric.

I used a variegated thread and deliberately left the ends and the knots visible.

I had no plan for either this or the brown piece from last time, but the colours work well with the jacket….

…… but which way up and where?

The green kantha circles on the slightly patterned cotton fabric needed to be on the slant to fit on the shape of the jacket, and not be hidden under the collar. This piece has also been around for a long time, from a Grasby workshop that we did at one of our exhibitions, I think. I liked both sides, but hadn’t come up with a way of using it to show the back as well. So, it’s found a good home at last!

In the end, having tried the wool piece in several places, I settled with it on the diagonal, echoing the angle of the green piece.

I’m enjoying wearing it as it slowly progresses, but the weather is supposed to change this weekend, so I may need something warmer and more waterproof over the rest of the winter!

Bargello cushion progress

The three skeins of wool that I’d ordered from Etsy arrived early on Monday morning; the dye numbers are much higher, so presumably newer packaging than in the kit.

I was keen to finish the border, and it was only when I was nearly all the way round that I realised that I have had my usual counting problem: seven staight stitches instead of eight! The darker green had to come out, and the light green as well, almost back to the corner.

It was soon rectified, and progress commenced with a different pattern.

I also noticed that lines and colours didn’t quite look right on my DD pattern, so I unpicked the dark green and used the mid green to re-stitch …..

…. then filled in the rest of the gap with greens. I also put some more straight lines into the corner.

I added some more rows of steps, before putting in stripes of green in varying widths .

I didn’t want to continue the honeycomb pattern right across the panel, so let the stitches escape ….

…… and filled in with the colours of the honeycomb.

It keeps getting turned around to work on, just to make reaching easier, but it also helps with assessing the overall balance. This triangle looked too even …….

……so I added a brown stripe, followed by ……

…… more greens and brown, coming from the other direction.

This is where I’ve got to so far, and the orientation as I envisage it when finished. I think I’m going to have plenty of wool, but want to finish the stitching while I still have the opportunity to get more brown if I need it. I don’t have enough green for the other half of the border as planned(top left). It will take most of a skein, but I do have a choice of brown, dark green, either of the caramels or repeating the existing green, but I haven’t decided yet. I think it will be easier to assess once it is all filled in.

Bargello cushion

A couple of folk (thank you) suggested Etsy for the Twilley’s stranded embroidery wool, and I’ve found the green (45) that I’d run out of so far. There were three skeins, and I asked if by any chance they had any of the other numbers; yes, number 49. How I didn’t spot it is beyond me, but turns out there are only 2 green, so I have a brown (49) on its way too. There’s more 49 available, so I need to get on with it quickly to see how many I might need: a good excuse to stitch.

I have been making progress anyway, athough I’ve done a couple of stitches too short (spot above!). I’ve been trying to use the tangle of threads left in the middle, which is how it was when I bought it in the charity shop. Some were on the back, and kept catching when I was working, so I brought them through to the front.

I have also tried to continue to the border with the patterns I’ve started, before running out of any more colours. In the end, I put in a tacking stitch to show where the lines and corner are. Now I’m waiting for the wool to arrive to finish the last few stitches in this corner.

Then I added some dark green, both sides of the pattern.

I used some of the ends to finish this section.

Now it’s just the green (45) to finish the row.

A couple of short bits and I just got there.

I wasn’t sure how to progress here but, seeing that I had three strands of the lighter caramel all attached, I decided to come down in steps …..

…… to the corner.

And I filled in the wavy lines to meet it. I’m trying to balance the colours and patterns to use the skeins that I have left and the ones that are in the post.

Bargello

I’d planned on taking this charity shop find (from long, long ago) to work on at the Bargello sessions at Alex’s “In the stitch zone”, but as I wrote in last week’s blog post I managed to leave the frame on the settee at home.

It was already stretched on a frame and started when I found it. I thought it would cover the piano stool, but it ‘s not quite big enough. It could be extended by adding more canvas, but on looking at the piano stool the cover is perfectly fine as it is. The other alternative was to cover what was my Nanna’s foot stool but, on looking that out, again it’s not quite big enough; and the only thing wrong with it is that the edge needs a new trim.

So I’ve decided to make it into a big cushion, with the Bargello just in the middle of the top like the big canvas work cushion that I did several years ago (2014) (Finished canvas work cushion). It would seem the other later one that I did was when I wasn’t blogging. Another charity shop find?

The centre was done in honeycomb stitch, but I had always intended to do variations of Bargello to finish it.

I did a little reading about the technique and looked at a few books, and then decided rather than follow a pattern I would use the basic principles of zig zags but make it up as I went along. I did this pattern in pairs of stiches, but varied the length of the stitches on each row.

This one is one stitch wide (except where I’ve done two together by mistake, but for some reason the left hand edge is right!). Again I’ve varied the length of stitches on some of the rows.

And this one is three stitches wide with stitches of varying length in the green wool, and two wide on the caramel coloured stitches.

I’ve now done about as much as the centre hexagons that were done when I bought it. We have a catch up / own project week coming up, so I may continue with it then, but it’s easy to pick up when the light is not good, and I feel as if I should make use of the good light that we have at the moment.

We have a few new folk in the group, and it’s been suggested that we take some of the things we have finished or are WIP’s for them to see the sort of things that can be done. Plans are being considered for next term.

Alex has sent us all a list of things that we have done since the group stated pre-lockdown; some I had forgotten about, so once I sort them out they’ll pull me in several directions!