TAST stitches and shirt finish

There have been another couple of TAST weeks.  Week 6 was Chevron stitch:

Week 7 was Detached chain:

I've completed my first shirt.  This is the first time I've made buttonholes.  It was a bit nerve wracking putting the buttonholes in.  At that stage all the shirt was made up, so if I'd messed up the buttonholes it would all have been wasted.  Fortunately they worked out really well.  This was a New Look pattern 6963 and labelled Easy.  However I found some of the instructions really difficult to understand and they really weren't in-depth enough.  As a result I spent a long time on Youtube looking at how to videos.  Of all things, the pocket instructions I couldn't follow.  I thought patch pockets would be easy, however it turns out to be a type of fabric origami.  Easy enough once you know how, but the instructions on the pattern weren't nearly good enough.  The turn up sleeves also defeated me and I ended up doing my own thing with them.  The pattern calls for a 2 1/4" hem and have a tab looping around to appear to hold up the sleeve.  However if I'd used a 2 1/4" hem there would have been a huge amount of surplus fabric hanging down from the tab.  In the end I folded 2 1/4", and folded again.  I then sewed close the folded edge.  I then turned this to the right side of the sleeve and stitched at the bottom of the sleeve so it appears like edge stitching at both the top and bottom of the cuff.  This fits perfectly in the tab and is the perfect length.  With the two double folds this ends up as a  6 3/4" hem.

I'm very pleased with how this has turned out.  It's a smart casual shirt.

I'm going to make another of these shirts.  I have some red checked fabric and solid red fabric so I'll use a mix of these using the checked fabric for the body of the shirt and the solid red for collar, sleeves and pockets.

I'm going to add some more tabs to this blog showing only photographs of finishes as a quick reference. 

Tast week 5 - Herringbone stitch

Week 5 of the TAST challenge is herringbone.  These are my examples.  Other participants have posted some amazing examples on the TAST facebook page.

CQ tea cozy and TAST week 4 Cretan stitch

I finished my crazy quilt tea cozy.  With a layer of batting in it, it keeps my teapot wonderfully hot for ages.  Here is the second block completed.

  And here is both sides of the completed tea cozy.  It has a ribbon at the top so I can easily lift it off the teapot when pouring a cuppa.

TAST week 4 was Cretan stitch. Here are my examples.  The first is on my CQ Four Seasons cushion

This is a double row of Cretan in pink and blue and is on the Tea Cozy.

Up next, I registered for an online CQ course on embroidery motifs with Kathy Shaw.  The first task is to do two trees, one using a twisted method and another an embroidered method.

Tea cosy crazy quilt and TAST

I've started working on a crazy quilted tea cosy. I love having a morning cuppa but find that the tea is getting cool before I've finished.  Hopefully a tea cosy, as well as looking nice, will let me extend those lazy mornings!

Both front and back will be crazies.  One side is done.  This is also my May block for the CQJP2015 challenge.

I've been keeping up with the TAST challenge, but last week got slack about posting on my blog, although I did post on the TAST facebook page.  So here are week 2 and week 3 for the TAST challenge.

Week 2:  Buttonhole stitch.  As a seam treatment, buttonhole wheels and a buttonhole leaf.

 

Week 3 is feather stitch.  Worked here as seam treatments and also to join blocks and borders.

 

Anyone wanting to learn how to do these stitches, should click on the TAST badge to the right.  This will take you to the Pintangle page, then click on TAST FAQ which lists all the stitches and gives instructions on how to do them.  Mary Corbet also has great tutorials, including easy to follow video instructions.





 

Over on  Kathy Shaw's page a new free crazy quilting course will be opening for registration in a couple of days.  The course is Embellishing with Threads.  I'm looking forward to learning more on this course.   Anyone wanting to get into crazy quilting should take a look at her free classes.  They are great classes with easy instructions and so much fun seeing what other participants are doing.