Stitching with a Shimmy

The third motif on my ongoing crewel sampler is a design from the Anchor little book of Crewel, called “Blue Bee.” In my case, it could be called “Turquoise Bee,” as I was using all appleton wools and found that I didn’t have ANY of the color types used in the origninal design.

The design in the book was stitched with Anchor cotton floss. While it gives it a nice, smooth, shiny look, I tend to not call it crewel. The defining word for me with crewel work is wool, which is apparently whence the word crewel derives! So while the design done in floss is pretty, I don’t call it crewel – it’s what I’d call “freestyle embroidery.” It’s a nit, I know. But I live in a world where nothing has the same name between two people — both embroidery and bellydance use different terms for the same stitch or move. It drives my ordered brain nuts!

Anyway. The color scheme I ended up with was dependent on the colors I had in my box in Appleton. In this case, golds and pinks rather than golds and oranges. Luckily the pinks have a very yellow cast to them, and actually blend pretty well with the gold, which surprised me. Learn something new with every sample! The turquoise is a little bright for the rest of the colors, but it’s not TOO horrible.

The sampler was focused on the basque stitch – which makes an interesting twisted chain-like spike. The outside of the flower to the right is done in this stitch, as is the center of two of the leaves. Quite pretty. I’d never actually done this stitch before, and I found it a bit tricky, especially to make the loops all the same size and avoid tightening the stitches too much. Combined with the fuzzy Appleton wool, well, I had a few issues!

Even close up the gold and pink don’t look too bad – maybe even pretty good together!

I think it came out pretty well!

Next motif – floss silks and “Society Silk” motif – yes, I know it’s my crewel sampler. But it’s mine, and I’ll play as I like!

Have a wonderful Christmas, if you celebrate it!