Week 2′s stitch—buttonhole (aka blanket, which I chose because it’s a shorter word, and incorporates the letter ‘K’)—went very quickly for me, thanks to lessons learned from Week 1′s awkward Fly stitch.
For one thing, I like this landscape format of the page much better than the portrait format; it allows the typography to expand and fill more of the page, without a lot of space at the top and bottom.
Also, I messied-up the ‘page’ before stitching—using watered-down acrylic paints and ordinary wax crayons—and doing so took away that “faced with a blank page” nervousness: confronted by a pristine white surface, my creativity tends to go into an overly-cautious, formal mode. I concentrate so heavily on every little mark I make on such a clean sheet, that I usually don’t have any fun.
And this time I made sure to have fun. Used the hot colours that I love, kept designs abstract, used different threads, made random marks…on the whole, I didn’t take this week’s sample too seriously, and am much happier with the results.
It helped that this is one of my favorite stitches. The use of buttonhole can impart a rustic, almost naive look to hand embroidery. Something to do, perhaps, with its associations with woolen blankets, homemade velveteen rabbits and bedroom slippers, and kids’ summer camp leatherwork projects.
Personally, I love using this stitch for its enclosed or bordered field of thick stripes.
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This small embroidery sample is for the Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge. The idea was to combine my love of embroidery with my love of typography.
Related articles
- Because I am a greedy, unrealistic, and starry-eyed stitchin’ project hog… (smallestforest.net)
- Week 1 ✂ Fly stitch (TAST) (smallestforest.net)
