Basketweave Stitching

The basketweave stitch is one of the three tent stitches. They all look almost the same on the front, but they don't look the same on the back. It is good for filling in large areas of all shapes, though stitch diagrams often show this stitch as a neat square or a triangle.  It distorts the canvas very little and is just as easy to work in hand as in a frame.  You do not have to turn the canvas for each row.  The front of the work is a tent stitch, with each stitch covering a single intersection of the canvas from lower left to upper right.  On the back of the work, the basketweave looks like a woven fabric, with horizontal and vertical threads.  At the edges of the work and at the edges of areas of each color, the basketweave looks like a single row of the continental stitch.  You have to look very closely to see this, and it is not visible on all edges.

As you work the basketweave stitch, you bring your needle up at the lower left and go down at the top right of each stitch.  You will come up in an open hole and go down either in an open or shared hole.  On the back your threads are either over two horizontal or two vertical threads.  The exception is at the edges, where it looks like a single row of continental stitches.


This stitch diagram has each pass of the needle marked.  To make things more clear, I will mark an identical diagram, but just number each stitch in the order you should place them.


In this diagram, each stitch is numbered.  Bring your needle up at the number and go down to complete a tent stitch over a single intersection.


When you are working a row from the bottom to the top, this is the stitching order.  If you look at the back of the canvas, your threads are horizontal, crossing two threads of the canvas.  Most of the time a row like this is referred to an "up" row.  Up rows are more fun and easier for me to work.  I have to be careful to not pull my thread too tightly when working in this direction.


In this diagram, a "down" row has been indicated. The overall stitching direction is from the top to the bottom.  Your thread on the back will be vertical over two threads of the canvas.  Because of the angle of the needle, I find this row to be less fun to work.  It isn't any harder than going in the other direction and I don't have tension problems with this row.  Win some, lose some, I suppose.


Please remember that these up and down rows of stitches usually share canvas holes with other rows, leaving no empty intersections.   You bring your needle up in an empty hole and go down in a hole that is either empty or shared with another stitch.

When ending threads using the basketweave, the first impulse is to run the needle under the work at a diagonal on the back.  Please don't do this. It will leave a line you can see on the front.  Either go along the horizontal or the vertical when burying your ends on the back.  This will be much less visible on the front.  When you bury your thread on the diagonal, you are using a single row of stitching and disturbing that row.  When you go along the horizontal or vertical, you will be using a single stitch out of several rows each. I know that if you use the "other" diagonal, you won't be disturbing a single row of stitches, but it is easy to become confused or grow careless.

If you stop stitching at the end of a row, it is possible to do two up rows or two down rows one next to the other.  This is not a good idea as you will find a diagonal line becomes visible on the front of your stitching.  If you stop stitching in the middle of a row, you will find that it is easier to start up again in the correct direction.  It is also easier for me to end my threads neatly.

This was plenty for me to keep sorted out as a beginning basketweave stitcher and if you have grasped this much, you will be producing some good work.  For the ultimate in basketweave, you should be paying attention to whether or not the top thread of the canvas intersection is horizontal or vertical.  If the top canvas thread is crossing in the vertical direction, you should be in the midst of stitching a down row.  Your thread on the back will be vertical.  If the top thread is crossing horizontally, you should be stitching an up row with horizontal threads on the back.  Fortunately, you establish this pattern with your first stitch and every other stitch should fall correctly,  without you having to check every single stitch.  This is also a useful way to keep track of where you are when jumping from one area to another and when starting and stopping rows.

If you need to make a shape other than a square or triangle in basketweave, you simply don't turn and go back for the next diagonal on the same row or column of the canvas threads.  On a doodle canvas, try filling in some circles.  You should not be placing your first stitch at the very top, but more to the right and slightly down.  Your first stitch will then not be a singleton, but will be one of a row, going up or down, depending on where you started.  Remember to avoid long tails of thread on the back when you move from row to row.

If your shape has very long, skinny areas, you may find yourself trying to stitch a single row or line in basketweave.  You will immediately see that you produce the continental stitch.  That's correct.  You cannot stitch a line of single stitches traveling horizontally or vertically using basketweave.  If you are working on the diagonal for lines that are a single stitch wide, you may want to use the basketweave for the \ rows and a backstitch for the / rows.  Do not turn your canvas sideways for diagonal rows of a single stitch.  Try to always work in a right to left and top to bottom pattern similar to writing a page of text.

I find it is better to work both background and pattern together, rather than filling in all of the pattern first and then doing the background.  Hold your canvas up to a strong light and try to look through it to check for missing stitches.  Basketweave and continental each use up about the same amount of thread.  The general rule is one and one half yards for each square inch of stitching.

Coloring Books

I used a Christmas gift card to purchase some adult coloring books. Then, I took my books to an office supply store with a printing area and had them cut the spines off. About $2 per cut. Since all my books were the same size, it could be done with a single cut, saving even more money. They have a massive, guillotine style paper trimmer, with a vise built in and a motor driving the blade. The gentleman doing my cuts has a GF who has him trim her coloring books for her, so he took the least amount of spine. Some of my pages were still in folio format.

I can work on one sheet of paper at a time. I don't worry about messing up the other sheets, and I am not fighting the valley of a paperback book.

Go me!

Colored pencils!

I have fallen victim to the latest craze of adult coloring. Being me, I've gone out and done some research on how to color. Yes. I really did research.

Here are the websites where I gathered information that I found to be useful.

• Dickblick.com  You will have to scroll to the bottom to find the videos that are tutorials on colored pencils. 
• Elfwood.com   More text than graphics, but lots of useful information. Was I absolutely wowed by his finished graphic? I wasn't sure it was finished. 
• Art is Fun  This one is a brief, direct, useful set of instructions. They also include links to more information and some very good instruction books. 
• The Virtual Instructor Comparison chart of some different brands of colored pencils. Also has a lot of the instruction you will find on Pinterest, like drawing and eye and a nose.  
• The Coloring Book Club Blog This one has a good bit of instruction, but also is part of a monthly club, where you pay to download coloring books that you then print out for yourself. 

There are three basic types of colored pencils. 

Wax based -the most common type. 

Oil based -not nearly as common.

Water-soluble -also known as watercolor pencils, can be wax or oil based. They are not actually watercolor paint in a pencil form. 

It is OK to use all three types of pencil in a single piece of artwork.

When making a pencil, pigment is mixed with wax or oil, some copyright ingredients, and clay to form a colored paste. That paste is extruded into a thick, noodle-like core. The cores are dried, cut to length, and put inside a shaped 'sandwich' of wood to create a pencil. So, you talk about the 'core' of a colored pencil, not the lead of it. 

Within the three types, there are sub-types based on whether the cores are very hard or soft, the size of the core, the shape of the wood, and whether there is a wood casing at all. 

The amount of pigment, the final rigidity of the core and the quality of the wood used all combine to create a better or not so nice pencil. Cheap wood doesn't sharpen well. Fragile cores break easily, even breaking inside the wood casing of the pencil. Dropping a colored pencil isn't a good thing. Heating a wax based pencil will soften the core and reduce breakage. Since I live in Florida, just working outside on my lanai can change how my pencils respond to pressure while I'm using them. 

Don't assume that all cores should be soft and responsive. There are times when a much harder core is desired. Detail work is best done with a harder core that can be sharpened to an extremely precise point. 

The Backlash Spring

Aha! I adore YouTube in small doses. I was looking for information on Endless Embroidery and I found an incredible video from Bernina Tampa on how to manage that spring in the bobbin case that gave me so much trouble.

The trick isn't just to pop it into place. I'd been lucky with that. When I removed it to photograph the darned thing, I found that I also had to press the spring into place all around the edge of the spring. I used the tip of my Purple Thang and it worked perfectly. It still didn't take lots of pressure. About what I'd use when writing with a pencil was good. The test is to pull on the thread and feel that the tension is steady and doesn't get tight and then loose again or that it isn't horribly tight and doesn't get loose at all. If the spring is really out of place, you can't load the bobbin into the case in the first place.

If you look through the videos that are listed off to the right, you can find quite a few videos on Bernina mechanical and digital functions. I am NOT suggesting that you follow the directions and attempt to become your own Bernina tech. But knowing what's going on inside your machine never hurts.

I continue to learn, a little bit at a time, about this machine. Later today, I'm off to another class on Embroidery with Big Mama B. Details to follow!

Marking Tools for Quilting

These are the markers that I currently have to choose from to mark my quilt top.

Starting from the top:

• A BOHIN mechanical pencil with white chalk. It can be erased. Write lightly, or you might fray your fabric trying to erase. There are also other colors of chalk available, as well as refills for the erasers and replacement leads for the pencil.  These are made in France. They are highly recommended. Preliminary testing is successful, it erases cleanly. White is good for dark fabrics.
• A blue, water erasable pen. NOT recommended. The ink tends to bleed into the batting of the quilt and then come back to haunt you later, when you would rather it didn't. I have not tested this, there are enough horror stories around to make me not want to try it.
• A purple, air/humidity erasable pen that IS recommended. If there isn't enough humidity in the air to make it vanish, a swab with a damp cloth or a spritz of water works well. I have tested this. It is true. Purple does not show up on dark fabrics.
•  A FRIXION pen specifically for quilters, sewers and the like. It writes green and a warm iron makes it go away. I have tested this and it is correct. I'm told it can be erased. No eraser is attached to this pen, but there are erasers on the ones you can get from an office supply store. Green does not work on dark fabrics. And I don't ever want to try to iron a quilt with polyester fiberfil batting. The batting melts into something like flexible cardboard. If I were to use wool or cotton batting and light colored fabrics, I'd try this pen.
• The square, white thing on the bottom left is tailor's chalk of the old school. It isn't really chalk, it is wax. The lightest touch of a warm iron and it melts. It leaves marks like oil stains on many fabrics. This wax comes right out with dry cleaning. Wax is wonderful if you are working with  wool. It's not right for a cotton quilt top.
• The arrow head shaped doo-dad is a chalk wheel, that will put a fine line of (in this case) yellow chalk. The chalk brushes off and doesn't stain. For marking a quilt, it's only good for a very short time. The marks brush off so easily that normal handling, folding, and such will remove the marks. It is also difficult to get this shaped wheel to accurately mark a set of tight curves. Straight lines are easy. Chalk wheels are also available with white or blue chalk. The blue can be hard to find.

In all cases but for the wax and the FRIXION pen, you do NOT want to apply heat before the marks are removed. Heat will usually make your marks permanent. Forever and ever, no matter how much washing, permanent.

The qualities that are desired in a marker are that the mark be visible, the tool is not sharp and prone to damage the fabric during marking (super fine point tips are not always a good idea), and the marks should be either self removing, or easy to remove. If you choose not to remove the marks, they should not be visible to the casual observer.

Practice Makes Better

I am practicing free motion quilting. I'm putting in multiple short sessions each day. I was trying designs that were beyond my skills and getting frustrated. I went backwards down the skill ladder to the basics. Instead of trying to put together sets of small squiggles to create leaves, I just worked on squiggles in different sizes and directions.

The tutorial blogs are not useful for an absolute beginner.  They assume a pre-existing skill set. The ease of each design is not correctly rated as a result of this assumption. There are some things that are difficult, like restitching on top of an already stitched line or precise angular changes of direction. Some designs are easier when larger, some are easier when smaller. All designs are easier with guide lines chalked on the surface fabric.

Today, I was practicing spirals. First, I practiced drawing them on paper. Then I drew them on my fabric and stitched over my guide lines. The most difficult part is changing directions smoothly from spiraling inwards to spiraling out. When I got it right, it felt easier than it was when I got it wrong. The positive reward for success was a reinforcement. After many failures, the frequency of success increased quickly.

Do I find it embarrassing that I have had to drop to such simple designs? Nope. I understand that if I can't do these, I won't be able to ever do a more complex design. Mastering the building blocks first will create a skill set that will allow me to manage the more difficult patterns later. The simple designs, well executed, will be effective on a quilt. They are certain to look better than a more complex design poorly executed. 

Not That Way Again

I followed directions like these on how to put together the flying geese for the quilt that I'm in the throes of. It wasn't this specific set of directions, but the whole assembly process is the same.

I will NEVER again use this process.

There is an overlap in the first phase of stitching that creates an incredibly lumpy seam allowance at the point of the big triangle. That lumpy seam allowance is pure torture to sew over accurately. Agony. Painful. Annoying to the Nth degree. Pinning carefully does NOT help.

And only now am I realizing this, as I created all of the pieces before I started sewing them together. And even then, I had to sew lots of them together before I could define the problem.

I've long said that there are prices to be paid for short cuts. Some of them are worth it, some are not.

Cricut Flower Shoppe

I have this cart for my Cricut and I kept fighting with it. I'd look up instructions and get something to almost turn out, but I wasn't ever really happy.

I have had an epiphany! The flowers are put onto the cartridge display in pieces sorted into columns. If you start at the top of the column, you will have the center of the flower. Then, you simply cut each pattern down the column and you will have the middle and outer petals of the flower. Last, at the bottom of the column, you have leaves that match the flower.

For an initial test, cut everything at the same size. 2.75" is a good start. after you play with your flowers a bit, you'll find which pieces you want to cut smaller or larger. I like to cut the centers up to two times larger because I like they way they look. 

To roll up the center of the flower, start at the outside of the spiral. Roll around a toothpick or needle to start. I use a paper piercer, because it has a nice handle on it. I don't roll around the paper piercer for long, only an inch or two. I remove it and keep rolling. The ruffled edge can do whatever it wants, but the goal is to keep the smooth edge even, to create a flat piece that will glue down to the tab that's left at the end. The angle of the spiral will cause the petals to fan themselves out. Then allow the spiral to spin loose to be just a smidge larger than the center tab. Don't worry that you aren't gluing down the entire spiral. It won't came apart if you glue enough of the first length that you rolled up to create the center.

Once the glue has dried, I bend the petals out with my fingers, one petal at a time. If I try to do too many or bend too far, they will rip or crush and the center of my flower looks a bit worse for the wear. I've found that warm, barely damp fingers also help. Cheap paper is frustrating to work with.

It is dark in my studio at the moment and a picture will be a fail. When I have sun, I'll add photos.

More Rainbow Looming

I'm still addicted. I've discovered that videos by kids may be difficult to follow, but videos by adults who don't know how to zoom in, focus, or fast forward can be equally difficult to follow.

A tip for adults who wish to make these bracelets for themselves is to get a second loom and hook them together to make an 8" bracelet. However, for some of the bracelets that require a second (or even a third!) loom to make a child sized bracelet that doesn't need extensions, you may not wish to make something that big. In that case, make your first bracelet and then immediately rip it apart, bit by bit. Check the size, and remove rubber bands until you get it down to your size. Put away the extra rubber bands and then take the bracelet apart. (It's a PITA to try to save a partly done bracelet) Re-make the bracelet using only the number of rubber bands that you need to make it fit your wrist. There is no other way to make sure that the finished bracelet will fit your wrist. I've tried and tried, and each pattern comes out a different length.

I've purchased rubber bands from a variety of sources and they are of different quality. The Rainbow Loom bands break least often. They all break, and never at convenient times.

Speaking of time, if you know what you are doing and just want to knock out a bracelet you already know how to make, allow 20 minutes. For a new pattern, allow up to 45 minutes.

PTotD

Tip # 130. The process for saving presets of different types, meaning shadows, styles, Brushes and so on, is functionally the same process. If you can save a style, you can save a Brush and so on. If you aren't paying attention, you'll save things that you didn't want to save included with the things that you did want to save.

I'm thinking of a kit that went up for sale and the designer had included a set of styles in her kit. But since she hadn't been paying attention, she'd saved a set of styles that included ones that were not for sale. She bought them from a different designer and hadn't meant to include them.

The trick is to select only the objects that you want to save in the Preset Manager. The lines around the different styles or Brushes or whatnot will be heavy if the item is selected. Use your Command or control click to select more than one. Shift click will work as well. Only the do you want to click on the save set button.

Don't forget to give your set a descriptive name when you save it!

Photoshop Tip of the Day

An old joke in my family ran like this:

A man is lost in New York City. He can't find Carnegie Hall. He stops and asks a wino, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The wino paused a moment and answered, "Practice, man practice!"

That's pretty much what I heard from an airbrush expert this past weekend. He spends time doing drills, thousands of them. He can create strokes that look identical because he's done it thousands of times. I'm not saying you need to press the keyboard shortcut for the Brush tool a thousand times. You do need to continually practice what you learn. Use it or lose it.

Organization

A large part of using Photoshop is being able to find the graphics you are going to work with. This means organizing your photos and organizing the kits, templates, overlays and so on that you have bought. Spending time learning shortcuts to work faster will do you no good if you are wasting time searching for your files.

Organize in a way that works for you. Using a system that someone else created won't help if your brain doesn't work that way. If you think in dates, working best chronologically, a system that uses names in alphabetical order won't work for you. The one thing that will help any system is to use complete words. If you are labeling something from a trip to Orlando, "Orl" is not the best choice. "Orl" could also stand for "New Orleans" or "Oriole."

Don't think you must purchase fancy software to organize your images. I managed for many years simply using the directory structure of files, folders and sub-folders present in Windows. Now that I own the fancy software, I still use that structure as the base of the system.

PTotD

Tip #129. Those Swatches that are available in the Color/Styles/Swatches panel by default are a fast and easy way to select a color. The cursor will turn into an eyedropper when it is over the swatches panel and a fist will let you know that you have successfully clicked to grab a color. Glance over at the background/foreground icon to make sure that you got the right one. Hover your cursor over a swatch to see what it is named. If you right or option-click in the panel, you can save a color you like as a swatch. Make sure you give it a descriptive name. You use the Preset Manager to save your swatches as an .aco file. They aren’t saved unless they are in a file you can back up. Photoshop will remember them if you close down the application, but that doesn’t mean they are saved!

PTotD

Tip# 128. Gradients are a great way to put a little more interest into a background. Give this a try. Open a document and put in a ho-hum kind of background. Create a new layer above it. Select black or some dark color from your swatches and then select the Gradient tool. The Keyboard shortcut is the letter G. You might get the paint bucket first, but you want the Gradient tool. Then go to the options bar and select from the second drop-down from the left to set the kind of gradient. The first choice is from a foreground color to white, and the second one is from the foreground color to transparent. You want to use the transparent option. Then look at the icons.to the right of that. The first one is a horizontal gradient, the second is a radial gradient, the third is Angle, the next is reflected and the last one is diamond. If you hover your cursor over the icons, you’ll see a name pop up. The one you want for this is the radial gradient. Next, click inside your layout somewhere around 10:00 and drag down towards 4:30. A line will appear, indicating the direction of the gradient. When you release the drag, a layer of color will appear that fades from your start color and start point down to transparent at the end point. Whee!!! If you want it to be darker or lighter, select a different color, change the opacity of the layer, or make the drag line start and end in different places.

Photoshop Tip of the Day

Tip # 127. When making a tricky selection, there isn’t anything wrong with making adjustments to your image to make the selection tools work better. Your goal is a good selection. You can add an adjustment layer, and tweak the contrast to be incredibly wrong, for example. Just ditch the adjustment layer after the selection is made. Or, if you are using Smart Objects, you can revert back to the original. Wow. What a concept.

PTotD

Tip # 126. A Smart Object can be defined as an object, which may be composed of multiple layers/objects or a single layer/object, which remembers what it used to be, so the changes you make are not permanent and can be reversed. A smart object has a marker in the lower right corner of the icon in the layers panel to indicate that it is a Smart Object. The marker looks like three images, with one black and two white. You can create Smart Objects several ways. Right or control-click on the layer in the layers panel and select Convert to Smart Object. Or you can go to Layer | Smart Object | Convert to smart object. You can control or right-click on the object in your layout and select convert to Smart Object. You can even convert for a smart filter through the Filter menu, which will create a Smart Object. When you drag and drop an image from MiniBridge in CS5, it will import as a Smart Object. It will have bounding box that includes an X through the center. Hit Enter, and it will be a smart object. Smart Objects do have a few limitations, but in general, they are useful, because you retain the ability to undo changes, even after saving and closing the file.

PTotD

Tip # 125. Ever open a file, make a few changes and immediately hate them? You want to go back to the freshly opened file and start over again, but you don’t want to undo, use the History, or close without saving changes and then open the file again. Just go to the file menu and select revert. Your file will go back to the way it was when you first opened it.

PTotD

Tip #124. As usual, Photoshop has more than one way to get to the same settings for the Brush tool. The keyboard shortcut for the Brush tool is the letter B. Have you noticed that many of the keyboard shortcuts for the tools are the bottom row of letter keys? Ahem. In the options bar, from left to right, you’ll see first an icon of the tool you have chosen. There will be a dropdown arrow next to that tool icon. If there are presets for that tool available, they will be listed. Don’t be confused by the word ‘presets’. There are other brush presets that you’ll need to know more about. Next to that, will be an icon of the selected brush and a dropdown arrow. If you choose that, you’ll get to a pared-down panel for selecting brushes and changing the size and hardness of the brush. The number in the pictures you see will let you know the size of the brush. It’s the larger of width or height in pixels. Next to that is an icon of three brushes in a jar. Clicking on the icon will open up the brushes panel, which includes tabs for brush presets, brush settings, and clone source. Now that you know where to go to change brush settings, it’s time to play. See ya later!

PTotD

Tip #123. Those blobby/spiky shapes for the brush tool are great when you want to apply an action, but softly, gradually. Say I want to erase something, so I can see through it to the layer below, but I want the top layer to remain in ghost-like fashion. Instead of doing a selection with a feathered edge and playing with blend modes, I can use a soft brush to erase what I don’t want. And with a soft, blobby brush, I can work gradually. If you are trying to do things like this with a mouse, you won’t have pressure sensitivity. If you have a tablet, you are good to go.

PTotD

Tip #122. The Eyedropper tool you use to take a color sample can take a sample of a single pixel, or sample a set of pixels. It takes the average color in your sample, so a larger or smaller sample can make a big difference. You can make the sample size from one pixel, up to 101 pixels by 101 pixels. When you change the setting for the eyedropper tool in the tool bar by changing the sample size, it becomes the setting for the eyedropper in the color picker. Photoshop’s default setting for the eyedropper is for a single pixel.