Sampler Roll - Playing with fabric and threads

 After finding the #52tagshannemade challenge I explored more of Anne Brooke's website and videos. One thing that caught my attention was her #sewforthesoul bobbin project 2020. I had already collected some slow stitch books and had drooled over these slow stitch kits. 

My first experiments with slow stitching happened after buying one of Lisa Mattock's patterns from a local quilting store. The pattern was for slow stitched Christmas decorations and I had great fun creating my piece of fabric over the course of 2020. My fabric ended up being cut into many hearts that were my Christmas decoration gift for 2020.

Moving in to 2021, and having the luxury of time to explore, I set about watching the videos so generously posted by Anne. Found myself some cotton batting and started to explore creating my own snippet roll/sampler. Such fun as I found small pieces of much loved fabrics, hunted through my thread collection and generally enjoyed just creating.

Sampler Roll Starting Snippets by MrsSOnline is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

I tried out old and new stitches, added lace and buttonhole covered rings, pieces of braid and some felting experiments. I went back to some experiments with hand colouring fabric and lace with Inktense colours. My batting is about 10 cm wide and the first section was about 75 cm in length. I Found this to be manageable and decided that I would work in sections that could be joined later. My later is when, hopefully, I have a timber bobbin to wind it around. Have asked my DH if he could turn a bobbin but am not sure when this might happen as he is busy with other things at the moment.

It is so much fun to be able to come back to sections and add extra detail when the mood strikes. There is no plan so it becomes a space where new stitches can be explored with different thread types - some successful and other less so.

My second section is still 10 cm wide but not quite as long. This one has more favourite fabrics and even a tiny-scape as I had so much fun creating my tiny-scape tag that I wanted to make more.

Sampler Roll Section 2 by MrsSOnline is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

I have explored chevron stitch, pekinese stitch, more french knots, running stitch and added a pocket to this too. My "the left-handed embroiderer's companion" by Yvette Stanton has been thumbed through and re-read as I try to work on stitches that I may have once learnt.

Silk threads, linen threads, perle thread and stranded cotton have all come out to be included. Stitching with silk floss has been a learning curve as it will snag on any small skin imperfection and in some of my stitching you can see that the end result of this is a fuzzy thread that may not be the look I was after.

Using Silk Floss - mishaps and all by MrsSOnline is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

This section is still a work in progress and will have bits and pieces added over time. That is part of the attraction to this type of creating - no end goal just exploring with needle, thread and fabrics over time.

Take look at some more images of my W.I.P.

What details would you add to a sampler roll? Do you have small snippets of favourite fabrics that would add to the memories triggered by looking back at your work later? Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts.