May TIF - Foundations 1

I sometimes wake in the night and find I can’t get back to sleep for hours. This can be frustrating but sometimes I find that the deep peace and stillness of the night is the best time for thinking. On 14 May I had blogged my initial thoughts for the May TIF but at the time I did not know what I would be stitching. In the early hours of the following morning the cat chasing a mouse around the bedroom woke me. By the time I had caught the mouse and released it in the garden I was wide-awake so I made myself some tea and logged on to discover that SharonB has created a new community space for everyone interested in textiles called Stitchin Fingers. When I went back to bed, hoping to get a couple of hours sleep before work, my head was buzzing with thoughts about embroidery and my TIF design. Eventually several threads of half formulated ideas began to come together and twisting around each other and finally produced an Aha! moment. My May idea was conceived!

I didn’t find time to start on it until this week. I know that I have some of the linen that I used for my TAST samplers remaining but cannot find it, so impatient to finally get stitching I selected a piece of cotton (I think) that looked suitable. Actually, now that I have started stitching I think this is more suitable than the linen.

The design area is 10 cm square and is divided into 5 randomly shaped areas. The first stage is to fill each segment with foundations stitches; I will be using satin stitch in a variety of threads.


The first segment is stitched with two strands of DMC Linen.


I like the matt finish of the Linen thread but the foundation did not lie as smoothly as I would have liked using two strands so for the second segment I used a single strand.


I much prefer the finish using a single strand but now I have spaced the stitches a little too far apart. The next segment is also stitched with a single strand but this time of DMC floss and the stitching is much denser.


I like the subtle difference in texture created by using different threads. I will be using a thread that I have never used before in the next segment.

Happy Stitching