TAST - The Fly Stitch

I was glad to know I didn't bore you all too much yesterday with my Living Room drama! It's been quite stressful for me. I like neatness, order, no clutter, "a place for everything and everything in it's place". And I like beauty. But this room is anything but beautiful at the moment!

I kind of have to have "tunnel vision" to deal with it. I set some rules for the space in which I stitch. No clutter on the coffee table, the TV cabinet or the DVD cupboard. This is what's in my range of view and thankfully, my husband has been respectful of that.

When all is said and done, it will be decorated with a Cottage Victorian feel. I'll be sponge painting the walls with an icy aqua glaze. The trim will be white and then I'll be stenciling little bits of ivy here and there. Not all the way around the room, just a bit here and there. I want it to look like a Victorian Sunroom. Eventually, I want white wicker furniture in there but for the moment, I'll have to live with what I have so I'll get some pretty covers for our sofa and chair. When it's done, which probably won't be for another couple of months, I'll share some before and after photos. You really won't believe the difference.

Onto stitching! I completed the handwork on the Red Hat Lady Society Purse yesterday along with the little Spring Cellphone Pouch. My husband took the camera today so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to share photos of those with you. Oh, but just wait until you see them! Esp. that Red Hat Lady!

Once those were complete, I started on this little pouch:



When I started on this, I had no clue about what to do. I wasn't thrilled with how it pieced up. The corners of the black velveteen were too harsh. I found the little butterfly applique in my stash but it was lost in that large space. I decided to try working with it but held off on sewing it down until I had some of the seams covered.

While digging though my "way more than I need" lace stash, I found the blue floral trim that I used to the left of the butterfly. I loved the way it looked and decided to stay with a blue and white color scheme.

If you're new to crazyquilting, that's a really good way to start. Pick one thing that you want to use, and work off of that.

I started with my beloved Feather Stitch on the top seam. I then wanted to work this week's TAST Fly Stitch into this so I covered the bottom seam with that. I of course, can never leave anything as intended so I added what I call "small fan" stitches to the bottom of the Fly Stitch.

That still left way too much space for the butterfly so I moved him up a bit and started my vine (which I use to add movement and soften harsh corners) at the bottom of the black velveteen patch. As you can see, it filled in that excess space! I simply did a stem stitch vine and added the SRE leaves. I was going to do the flowers in SRE too. But I didn't have any icy blue ribbons. In fact, my stash of blue ribbons is very limited so I'll be emailing Pat Winter and asking her if she might be able to put together a small custom pack of blues for me.

I have some design work to do now, so I'll leave you with the charted versions of the traditional Fly Stitch and then my own variation:





Click on one of the images to go to my Flickr site where you can download the larger versions of the patterns.

I'll have another update for you tomorrow!