Thursday, July 1, 2010

100 Stitches - Closed Buttonhole Stitch

Here is my version of the Closed Buttonhole Stitch!
This stitch is the next stitch on my 100 Stitches list. Here are three of my practice lines of stitching...I had a lot of trouble with spacing, floss tension, and consistent stitch sizes:
I started with 100% cotton, quilting weight fabric. I used a #24 chenille needle and dmc #4240 color variations perle cotton floss.
Step one is to come up through your fabric:

Now go back down through the fabric above where your floss came out, but at a slant back towards where your floss came out:

Bring your needle back out right next to where you first came up through the fabric. Notice in the picture - make sure the floss is UNDER your needle:
Pull the needle all the way through:

Now go back to the top of the stitch and go back into the fabric at a slant, this time slanting in the opposite direction:
Bring the needle out - and make sure the floss is under the needle again:
Pull the needle all the way through:
And go back into the fabric again at a slant:

Come back out, keeping the floss under the needle:
Pull through:
Onto the next slant- remember, keep the floss under the needle:
and just continue on:
I love the color variation floss - it makes this row of stitching look so interesting! This stitch is easy to learn and do, and I think I am doing it correctly, but I just can't seem to make it look right. 100 Stitches describes this stitch as being stitches made in pairs that form triangles. Mine sort of look like triangles! I think one mistake I made was not drawing stitching lines. I should have put a double row of stitching lines to mark the top and bottom of each stitch. As far as the floss tension goes, I don't know what I am doing wrong. The stitches look too loose to me! One interesting thing about this stitch, is how good the back looks!
This stitch is #24 and is in the looped stitches section of 100 Stitches.

2 comments:

Gina said...

Looks good to me! Love the purty floss too!
I think you are right. I bet drawing stitching lines would have helped. I think that's true of many stitches. Did you have to hold down the floss at crucial times while working? I find it difficult in those cases to keep the tension consistent. I've seen Mary Corbet do that on some videos on Needlenthread.com and she makes it look so easy.

Kim said...

Hi Gina! Yep - I think your tension idea is correct - I was so busy making sure that the needle was over the floss that I ended up leaving the floss too loose. I am really loving this floss! I think in my demonstration pictures it is so much easier to see the stitches with the perle cotton than the multi-strand silky floss.