TAST week 18 ~ crossed buttonhole stitch / 15 minute challenge

once again i am combining posts.
i have a bad cold so efficiency seemed wise this week.

over at pintangle the stitch for week 18 with TAST is the crossed buttonhole stitch. i've never worked this stitch before and really had a difficult time getting excited about it.

so i did some warm up exercises aka 'productive procrastination' and worked a wheatear stitch (week 17) into the stocking. i used a hand dyed single strand cotton thread (Oliver Twists). a fabulous thread to work with and i did the expanded version of the wheatear that i practiced onto a postcard last week. i still like the loose organic flow of  it when worked that way.

next came some french knots onto the same stocking (wonderful daughter's). i used an italian silk thread (24 wt) in a pretty gold color and placed one knot into the center of  each grouping of some previously worked  detached chain stitches.
the french knot is another stitch that i had not gotten into the stockings yet although i felt like i did get the hang of them nicely while using it to fill a bumblebee during week 16's practice.

finally i worked some crossed buttonhole stitches into the stocking. i worked them in the same gold silk thread and i didn't like the way things looked at all. i thought seriously about removing them but in an attempt to salvage things decided to weave a small white boucle thread through the 'base' part of the stitch instead . . .

i still wasn't happy with the look of things but decided to step away from the project and let things 'process' a bit.

when i picked the work back up again i decided to stitch a tiny horizontal catch stitch across the middle of the crossed lines of the crossed buttonhole. i used a white perle cotton (12) thread for this.

i then added small french knots and accompanying small vertical stitches evenly 'under' the crossed buttonhole with the same thread.

in the end i thought that the seam treatment did have a whimsical/naive sort of look to it that i liked. 

there were others from the TAST group who were far more imaginative than i was though:
don't miss these impressionistic feathers from exotic birds.
the crossed buttonhole can make a great fin filling on fish.
and Masha once again wows with a beautiful border created from this stitch.

and here you will find some exotic patterning on a snake~!

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my brief 15 minute challenge report includes work done on the christmas stockings/TAST as well as the hexie top. i've also been doing a bit of applique work on a project that i can't really talk about yet.

i did manage to get my sewing time every day last week.

:-)

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recent gifts include:

• watching the goldfish swim happily about. they love it when the sun shines and will swim closer to the top of the water in order to 'sunbathe'
• a cleaned up/reorganized pantry with a follow up shopping trip to fill in where needed
• the smell of our freshly mowed lawn from the first mow of the season