Turkmen and Mountmellick

Hi beautiful

Rest after chores, lovely. Time to do some stitching.

Prompted by Sharon B's blog, TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday), I'm enjoying learning some more embroidery stitches. This past week, the stitch to use was Turkmen. So practice followed by application.

Here's my practice piece. Turkmen stitch is rows 1,2,4,7 (from top to bottom). I had to mix it up with some other chain stitches - for variety! 

Variety of chain stitches

Turkmen stitch is also known as double chain. The rows in blue are square chain stitch. The loopy stitch is rosette chain stitch and is done in crochet cotton. All others use stranded cottons.

My hankie cloth is the perfect piece to apply my newly learnt stitches. (See my previous post, Hankie Cloth on my take of recycling hankies.) 

Turkmen stitch - on right

And then I had to try another stitch - Mountmellick, a linear stitch from Irish Mountmellick embroidery.

Mountmellick stitch edging

Here is the meeting of Turkmen and Mountmellick applied to the edge of one of the hankies.

Green and gold edging

If you're interested in stitching, take a look at Sharon B's incredibly helpful site - Pintangle. 

Now that was a productive "rest"!

Cara

Hankie cloth

Hi beautiful

It's hankie time!

Do you have a stash of hankies just waiting to be loved? I have a pillowcase full, compliments of my mother. So late in March I selected 28 from their hideaway and went to town giving them a facelift.

Using the gelli plate, foam stamps and fabric paint, I transformed the plain hankies into a kaleidoscope of colours. Here they are drying off.

Gelli printed hankies

A couple of months passed by while I mulled over "now what?" Then inspiration hit one Sunday morning in late July while playing with another project. A tablecloth! For the rest of the day I delightedly pinned and sewed hankies onto a recycled piece of calico.

Hankies pinned to calico

It took another session to finish sewing on all the hankies. Then some more colour fun with zig zag machine stitching around some of the edges.

At the beginning of August, I began hand stitching here and there, choosing some of the stamped images. Here are some close ups.

Flower in stem stitch

Heart edged in blanket stitch

Heart in double chain stitch

Today I added more stitching, this time with crochet cotton, rather than stranded cotton - background and one edge.

Running stitch background

In progress - Edge in up and down buttonhole stitch

Finished edge in up and down buttonhole stitch

This cloth has 20 hankies in total - 5 rows of 4. It will be a long term project, for those days when I feel like slow stitching. Who knows what delights will be stitched onto this piece? I hope to use more old fabric pieces of my mum. The time I spend on this cloth has become my conversation time with my mum. She was a good dressmaker and embroiderer. While I still have my mum, sadly she has dementia and is unable to chat or remember. This is my conversation with her.

Enjoy recycling your hankies!

Cara