TAST catch-up, part 1

I've been doing my best to catch up with the TAST challenges. Five stitches it added up to, all in all, and today I've got samples of four of them to show The couching isn't really part of the challenge: all those pieces are stuff I've done last year; for the TAST challenge I'm only doing couching and satin stitch with Aurica yarn so I won't show that until part 2. Which I'll hopefully write before I need to finish this week's challenge stitch.

Be sure to click the image above for a close-up. To see what everyone else have done, do please click the english name of each stitch to go to the Pin Tangle blog posts. Don't miss the weekly TAST highlights on the blog either!

English name: Whipped wheel
Swedish name: ?

At the top of the sampler above, you see a couple of whipped wheels. A pretty fun stitch, though slightly tricky to get even. I've used similar techniques in wirework. Decided to try and do two beaded versions too, which was partially successful. For the first beaded wheel I added beads to the centre of four spokes. Only had room for one row of thread around them so it's barely visible. For the second wheel I put the beads on the edge of each of the eight spokes. Looks kind of nice, but I should've make it bigger as it was tricky to get the needle in between the beads.

English name: Barred chain and alternating barred chain
Swedish name: ? (Alternerade räta och avigvända kedjestygn?)

At the middle of the sampler you will find a mix of barred and alternating barred chain (the difference being if the twisted chain stitches stick out on only one side or on both). Fun stitch, which like the whipped wheel, I'd never done before. As I loved doing beaded chain stitch earlier in the challenge -- read about that here -- I just have to play around with beaded stitches. Tried different versions, adding beads to different parts of the stitch. Liked the result!

English name: Stem stitch
Swedish name: Stjälkstygn

Last week's challenge was stem stitch. I used to hate that as a kid: you need a bit of patience to make the stitches short, even and smooth -- didn't really have that as a kid. So when I tried it last autumn for the first time in many years, I didn't think I'd be able to make a nice, even line -- but it was really easy! I was surprised. Unfortunately, I can't find the piece of cloth I stitched on and so can't show the kitty I made.

But I did make a new sample for TAST. This time stitching on aida, which works really well. The first row is short, long and whipped stem stitches. The second row is bead stem stitch. I began -- stitching from right to left -- by just adding one bead to the middle of each stitch and then making "fully beaded" stitches, adding five beads per stitch. The last two variations are whipped, adding one or three beads to each whipping stitch.

English name: Couching
Swedish name: Läggsöm

The sample above is another one from last autumn. I played around with cross stitches and ended up doing these variations. Not sure they can actually be called couched, but I like how fixing the centre of the large cross stitches subtly altered them so I wanted to add a pic.

Earlier I've shown my couched ball chain, which you can read about here, and my aurora borealis bead embroidery (one of the first I ever made!), which include lines of couched beads near the horison. You can read about the bead embroidery here.

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What is TAST?

Take a Stitch Tuesday is a weekly embroidery challenge throughout the year by Sharon of Pin Tangle. You can read more about it here (or by clicking the TAST badge to the right).