T.A.S.T. - Cross Stitch

T.A.S.T. challenge for week 9 was Cross Stitch.
Neki Desu made me laugh when she summed it up on her blog by saying that to her X Stitch was the epitome of a little old lady gone crafty! These samples are all unfinished for one reason or another. Time has ran away with me and I need to move on to other things.

I wanted to use wire in this weeks challenge so the first sample is a piece of wire mesh with the X stitch in a 0.5mm and a 0.20mm gauge wire. I wanted to cover the whole piece with layers of stitching but it was playing havoc with my fingers!

This sample is made using a wire grid and a ribbon yarn from Colinette as the thread.

This is another wire grid. You can see what a small gauge this is by the ruler. I used one of those really tiny quilting needles and I even had to pull on that to get the thread through. I had to give up on this, it was just way too small for me.

The thread is a fine copper wire wrapped around a bamboo core. I have used wire a lot on the knitting machine, sometimes along with machine embroidery thread to give it more stability. I wanted to try using this in the hope that I could mould it into shape after knitting.It’s quite an expensive thread, a 1 oz (28gm) cone cost me £8.45. It was another Ally Pally purchase from HABU textiles. Take a look at their website they do some of the most brilliant yarns: stainless steel and silk, originally used to make oil filters: paper yarn: bamboo tape: paper and raw silk: pineapple ramie and many, many more.

Some textile artists have created really amazing things with knitted wire. I haven’t got the patience to hand knit so much prefer to use the knitting machine. ‘Knitwear in Fashion’ by Sandy Black shows bowls made from knitted wire embedded in glass and in resin and the book ‘Textile Techniques in Metal’ by Arline Fisch shows some wonderful items knitted with wire.

Using wire for the X Stitch samples has inspired me to carry on experimenting with it on the knitting machine.