WEEKEND WORKOUT 2 - RUNNING

Hello, Eleanor here with Friday's challenge.

This week it's running stitch, probably the first stitch we all learnt.

Let's use it on paper and card as well as on fabric.

  


I have tarted up a rather dull needlecord skirt by shortening it to knee length, and embellishing it with stitches.

First I marked race tracks with a tacking stitch:

Then I threaded up my needle with all six strands of embroidery cotton and started my running stitch:

Each track I changed colour until I had five, this is the reverse, make sure to fasten each colour off securely:

Remove tacked tracks, and press, adding a little crochet motif, and it's ready to wear:

I used the same cotton thread for the crochet:

Hope you're inspired to thread that needle and get running.

Over to Dolly, I wonder if she remembers sewing running stitch on Binca at school ?

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Dolly here. I would so love to be able to sew like Eleanor and make proper sewn fabric things - clothes that are beautiful to wear but, whilst I do remember that binca and still have a needle case I made at school, my sewing is usually of paper.

I do handstitch on layouts quite a lot, and having bought a new tool to help has inspired me even more, but I used my machine for the weekend workout this week.

 

I wanted to include a photo border to use lots of pictures and so decided to sew it in place.

 

My top tip - a cheat as usual - is to get out those chalks. I have lots of different colour thread for my machine, but I can never be bothered to change from my white cotton I use for most everything. The cheat is, sew it in white then use chalks (you remember those fab sets we all bought years ago) to colour the thread. I use a cotton bud and then when I have finished rub a very soft eraser over the top. It removes all the chalk from the papers surrounding the stitching but leaves the cotton coloured. Now I always have the matching thread I need.

Great challenge Eleanor - and maybe next time I will venture onto fabric, thought I bet it would still only be onto a page rather than clothing .... I am just too scared to try clothing!

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As Claireliz said last week, we're setting a new challenge every weekend on a Friday for you to play along with. The challenges are just for fun & we hope they'll give your mojo a boost, we've been having great fun with them.

We'd love to see what you create from the Friday Weekend Workout challenges, whether its a scrapbook layout, card, altered item or anything else, so if you leave us a link in the comments, we'll pop by & say hello.

Bye for now.

the girls

x

Comments

[Debbie Roberts]

Beautiful skirt, I will have to find something to customise it looks so nice.

Love the layout and the tip about colouring the white thread is genius x

[Claireliz]

Love the skirt, great idea & fab layout too.
C
xx

[Eleanor]

Thank you.:)

Dolly, have to say, the white cotton/chalk idea is THE best idea I've read in a long long time.
I don't have any scrapping type chalks, but I have a set of 48 chalk pastels, which will do the job just fine I reckon.
xx

[Lynne V]

Beautiful skirt Eleanor, I must try and stitch on some of my plain clothes.

Dolly thank you for the chalk tip. I will try it out.

Love the way those photos flow on your LO.