Sashiko Samples

I've been enjoying an online course through Domestika, provided by Kate Ward, who is well known as a sashiko enthusiast and teacher.  

This picture is a warning to pay proper attention to what she (or any other teacher) tells you about spacing.

My attempts at the lovely rice flower design  - third time lucky!  The first time I forgot to leave any gaps between the stitching lines when I was setting it out.  The second time I mis understood my own notes (!) and left two stitching line between the stitched lines, instead of two spaces (one stitching line), so I didn't have many motifs on the piece.  Third time lucky!  I finally got the spacing right, and got the distribution of motifs right, and they were lined up with the proper diagonal lines working too!

The first pattern that was taught was this simple cross.  Nice and straightforward.

Can you see the grid drawn behind it?  I used new stencils for this project.  It's nice and fast to use them for drawing lines, but the rest of the samples I used the dots stencil, as I preferred it to stitch on, even though it took a tiny bit more time to do so.

I could iron the grid away, but I quite like having it there for reference in my sample.

This is a person and flower stitch (I can't quite remember the proper name for it, but that's close enough!).

Kate recommended that you draw one or two motifs out as you go, so you don't get in a muddle with your stitch pattern - and also that you stitch some of your verticals and then some of your horizontals to make sure you know what you are doing!

Not the neatest sample, but you can see that it's the pattern that I want it to be.

Finally, we moved on to the rice flower pattern - the one that I struggled to get the spacing right on!

This, by the way, is not the right spacing - I should have left a gap between the lines of stitching.

However, the photos are to show me that 1) the stitches are a little shorter that the full length between the dots, and 2) how the motifs are made up with four directions of stitching.

You can see how it's building up here.

But actually, I didn't feel like finishing this sample, as I knew it wasn't right.

This was the one where I actually nailed it!  I'm so pleased!

Of course, at some point I will make some more samples, and perhaps make a sample book with them.  

I was pleased that I finally got the spacing right for these though!  Doesn't it look pretty? And is supposed to be a good strong one for visible mending too, rather than just decoration like I'm doing here.

I might also look for stencils with the grid that is a little tighter than this one. But that's a project for another day!