TAST finally caught up

I finally put the rest of the skipped TAST stitches in my gingerbread house.  I am still working on the girl. I know it will be hard to see, since it is hard to take pictures of white on white. 

Girl overview

 In the closeup I hope you can see that I outlined the apron in crossed buttonhole (Week 18) and then added the pink beads in the holes I left behind.  The middle part of the apron is 4 rows of wheatear (Week 17) in alternating directions.  The scallops on the edge are whipped wheel (Week 11).  All the white stitching is DMC Perle 12.

Girl skirt with new stitches

Playing with samples - want feedback

I have been working on my gingerbread house.  I have done the background for the roof.

I was hoping the glittery thread would show up better in the sunshine, but it really didn't. 

roof in progress

close up of the detatched buttonhole edge - beads will be added later

Now comes the fun part - I will be putting peppermints on the roof. You can see my test peppermints below.  They are made with perle cotton #8. 

test fabric

 The one on the left is needleweaving. The one on the right is detached buttonhole. I like the buttonhole one better.

sample 1

sample 2

                 These are test samples for peppermint sticks that go by the front door.  On the right is feather stitch over knit weight yarn (sample 1). Left is is feather stitch over a lighter weight yarn (sample 2).  And the last is beaded feather stitch over perle 8. If I use that one I will have to dig out some perle 5, or I might try the beads over a yarn (sample 3). Leave comments and tell me which you like and why.

sample 3

TAST Week 2 - Buttonhole stitch

Week 2 for Take a Stitch Tuesday is up and it is buttonhole stitch.  This works out for me, since I plan to use quite a bit of buttonhole stitch on the edges of my gingerbread house. So far I have put in just a little bit on the roof edge.

Roof of Gingerbread house

You can see the buttonhole down the left edge. And below you can see a close up of just my simple buttonhole edging.


Closeup of buttonhole edge

Paula Heckman Iris

 This is one of my pieces from the finished but never "finished" box.  It is a Paula Heckman cutwork design from *cough* over 20 years ago *cough*. In the extreme closeup below you can see the buttonhole connector bars and the buttonhole edges.

Paula passed away recently.  She used to have a website, but it seems to be no longer active. The only link I found to Paula's embroidery is to EGA Notecards made from her interpretation of the EGA logo.