I keep playing catch up with this stitch-a-long and then forget to post about it! This is the weekly word prompt for a piece of textile art, Anne Brooke is running it, I saw her finished hoop at the knit and stitch show last month and it looked amazing, full of texture and interest. The project is designed to be stitched on an 18″ hoop, I’ve no where to hang an 18″ hoop so I’m making mine into a book, so I have had to adapt things occasionally.

Last week the word was ‘attached’, so Anne added buttons, stitching them on in a variety of ways. I stitched some buttons on as they did help fill a few emptier spaces. I also stitched on a brooch my mum made years ago when she went to jewellery class.

Other words on these two pages are ‘limpet’ which are Suffolk puffs, ‘wriggly’ which is twisted thread couched down, ‘wall; which was meant to be a wall of crochet, but I couldn’t get it thin enough to work so I used detached blanket stitch instead. The two holes are ‘edge’, Anne had then overlaid with a piece of backing fabric behind, I thought it would be quite nice to have a window through to the next page. The tassel is meant to be ‘teasel’ but I think it looks more like a thistlehead, I still haven’t worked out what word to put next to this one, shaggy, flowing…I’ll wait to see what the last few words of the year are.

The other side of this strip with the other hole has a few more buttons and a spare Suffolk puff. Mend was an early word, you can just see behind the three circles is a raw edge. two pieces of linen weren’t quite big enough so I stitched the circles over the raw edges to join them together. Thr three circles on the right were for ‘ripple’, that’s wool that’s couched over. Twisted is a stitch which I can’t remember the name of but you basically do a line of stitches slipped on a needle before pulling it through to make a sticking up stitch!

The page on the left still needs a bit of filling to one side I think, even if it’s just some running stitch circles.

Another recent word was twist, this is a macrame knot used to make a twisted length, I struggled to think where to place it in my book of circles, in the end I added it to the page opposite the dangle bits.

The pretty pieces for ‘woven are made on a cogged wheel, they’re called Yorkshire buttons, if you want to make a button you carry on weaving thread round the circle and then gather it round some stuffing. I’ve added a few on other pages too as they fill up space nicely without dominating a page.

The ‘wrapped’ is done with buttonhole stitch over a washer, some of it is perle thread, other times it’s 4 ply wool.

The other end of this linen strip has a few more Yorkshire buttons but this time they come under the word ‘love’, or to give it’s full title, do what you love.. ‘Yummy’ was just a piece of something you really liked, for me it was this piece of batik. Fly stitch is used for ‘buzzy’.

On the left there is ‘gills’, using pistil stitch to represent the gills of a mushroom. Coils are just a heap of bullion knots.

With just three weeks to go I’ll be glad when this SAL has finished, I’ve enjoyed doing it and Anne always makes me think out of the box a bit, trying new things, but once a week for a year takes some keeping up with!

Once I’ve done the three remaining weeks I’ll have a look at my pages and see which areas need a little more stitching, it might just be a circle of running stitch, or herringbone. or I might repeat one of the techniques from earlier in the year.

I’ll post the other two sets of pages in a couple of days time 🙂