Free ebook of Vintage Crazy Quilt Embroidery Patterns

In 1884 Mary Haehnlen wrote  A Book of Fancy Designs for Ornamenting Oriental Work. It’s a little gem because it is full of vintage Crazy Quilt embroidery patterns. I bet she never thought that over a century later, women from all over the globe would be interested in it. To …

Raised Cretan Stitch Tutorial

Raised Cretan stitch is a variety of Cretan Stitch which is also known as Herringbone Ladder Filling, Double Pekinese, Figure of 8 stitch and Laced Cretan. Before you start this stitch take a look at Cretan Stitch and pay attention to the hand movement required to create the stitch. The …

Crazy Quilt Block 91

Crazy quilt block 91 is a block in shades of blue gold and burnt yellows.  This block sits in the overall diagonal design of my I Dropped the Button Box quilt. On this block I mainly used a mix of quilters cottons.    There is 8 pieces of fabric used in this …

Hand Embroidery band sampler details 741-744

I have some more details from long band sampler which I would like to share with readers. If you are new to Pintangle this band sampler is 96 feet long or 29.38 meters- anyway its long ( you dont want to have iron it…) but it is only 6 inches wide …

Looking closely at my Freeform Hand Embroidery Sampler

As I have said before I had fun experimenting on this particular area of my sampler I think I really just relaxed into it because it was a very long piece of linen. I explained on this page that my local branch of the Embroiderers guild has a recycle table and …

A closer look at details on my Freeform Hand Embroidery Sampler

I had fun experimenting on this particular area of my sampler. The middle is made up of 2 lines of herringbone Cretan stitch. The herringbone feet are very narrow and the beads cover it a little but it is an interesting variety of Cretan stitch. I worked it in a hand dyed perle …

Knotted Cretan

I think Knotted Cretan stitch is one of my favourite stitches as you can easily work on  gradual curves well to create meandering lines in organic designs. Ordinary Cretan stitch is flat, this version is textured. The knots formed on the spine create texture and change the feel and look of the …