It was Craft Club afternoon with my WI on Friday, we usually just take our own projects and enjoy stitching and chatting with of course a cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake. I decided to start another page of my stitch journal. I’m working my way through the TAST list of 100 stitches on Pin Tangle (Take a Stitch Tuesday)  but I stitching them in groups and adding a few extra as I come across them.

My first two pages were fly stitch and feather stitch, number 2 on the TAST list is buttonhole, so that’s what I’m stitching now. There are LOTS of types of buttonhole stitch so I’m doing a double page spread. I’ve always called the basic one blanket stitch so I’ve embroidered both names at the top of the two pages.

I’m using one of the DMC Colaris threads for this page, 4523. It’s very pretty with shades of powder blue, lilac, taupe and cream. It’s interesting seeing how the different threads sew as this one seems to have very sudden colour changes, it almost looks striped!

I started off with basic buttonhole and then stitched three different variations of stitch height and base line and three buttonhole stitch hearts. My favourite is the third one with the second row of stitches underneath.

Having filled nearly half a page with variations on the basic stitch, I thought I’d better start stitching some of the other buttonhole stitches so we have…

• Triangular, I quite like this one, simple but effective.
• Crossed, I stitched two variations on this row with even crosses first and a long and a short one second.
• Up and Down, it took me a bit to get my head round this one, there are several different variations too, but this is the basic one.
• Top Knotted, I struggled with this one, I started off with one loop to make the knot (a bit like a french knot) but that didn’t show up much and they kept disappearing down the hole!, the middle ones are with three loops and the end is with two loops. I found it hard to make it look neat, not so keen on this stitch!
• Alternating Up and Down, took me even longer to get my head round this one!!
• Interlaced Up and Down, I like this one, maybe I was finally getting the hang of the stitch, but you basically stitch the top row and then turn your work round to work the lower row, weaving in with the top row as you go. I think this was easier because you are always doing the same movement, not having to reverse it to stitch the opposite way.

So that’s the first page of buttonhole and there is still another 7 more TAST stitches plus a couple of others to go on the second page!

As it happens I’ve been using buttonhole stitch on my flower lattice too this week. I’ve managed to really crack on with it so I’ll have lots to show you next Sunday with the Stitch-a-long, but here’s a little peep of some buttonhole on a stumpwork leaf, just to whet your appetite!!

Last week I showed you my travelling sketchbook with all it’s beautiful entries, well most of the books are now photographed and on the Skipton Embroiderers Guild website, follow the links for the two posts of photos to see lots of amazing entries. Click here for post one or post two.

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not follow the link and see what everyone else is stitching.