Band sampler 2

My band sampler is becoming a place where I work though the stitches in my stitch book and also where I just make things up as I go along in response to Sharon Boggon's Stitch Challenge. As you can see it is not a place of perfection but of learning.

Here we have some Pekingese stitch, a motif which was me messing around with derivatives of chicken scratch stitch. The block of stitching on the right was a thought I had about recreating the gingham on which Chicken scratch is traditionally worked. Didn't work but, hey, who cares?! Then some chain stitch. I have tried this before and I still can't get those little loops even. Hate it.
I think I shall be getting a fair bit of sampling done in it in the future as it is good for in front of the TV. And there is to be quite a lot of TV in our near future as Dennis, after dithering for months has finally bought the complete DVD set of West Wing. That's 154 episodes. At a cost of 30 pence each episode, which is pretty good really. But that's 112 hours worth........ Maybe I could hand piece a quilt and quilt the thing in that time!

Here were have more Pekingese stitch, which made me want to go back to trying loops on chicken scratch derivatives, then some bog standard chevron stitch from the book.

Finally some little flower motifs, again deriving from chicken scratch... can't leave it alone now! I may have made them up, I may, in my ignorance have stumbled on a stitch others have known about for years. Who knows?

Band sampler 2

Now I have a functioning camera I can show you the progress on my Band sampler from this week. Under the pre-existing running stitch is some stem stitch in various scales as I work through my book.

Then I added my participation in Sharon Boggon's Stitch Explorer. This month we are working on varying chicken scratch stitch. ( I am having a hard time not calling it chicken s**t stitch - which might well describe more accurately the accuracy of mine! Still, this is a working and learning sampler, not a hanging on the wall sampler.) All this was done whilst watching TV on Thursday.

I am amazed with myself how many variations I could do in a short time.

Some of them reminded me of snowflakes so I extrapolated to this motif.

I think there is more in me yet. And maybe practice will make me more accurate.