Advent Angels and a Stitching Tutorial

We are in love with Rosalie Quinlan's new wall quilt and advent calendar, Advent Angels.

Available now from Patterns Only, order today to have plenty of time to get busy stitching and finished before Christmas 2010 surprises us all!

For readers of The Oz Material Girls blog, Rosalie has kindly shared her process for completing the stitchery element of the quilt.

1. First the stitchery must be traced on the linen. I like to use a light-box and a permanent pigment pen. Draw accurately and the permanent pen will easily be covered by your stitches.
2. When you have finished tracing the design, iron a thin, fusible, woven interfacing such as weavline to the back of your work. This is to prevent any threads showing through to the front.
3. To create a knot free beginning, cut a single thread of embroidery floss to twice the length you would like to work with. Fold the thread in half and then thread both cut ends through the needle eye.
4. Start at the back of your work, bringing the needle through to the front on one of your traced lines. Do not pull the thread all the way to the front. Make your first stitch by bringing the needle back through to the bottom of your work.
5. Thread the needle through the loop of thread at the back of your work.
6. Pull gently. This is how to anchor your thread without a knot. This really makes the work look neater and sit flatter.
7. To do back stitch, bring your thread to the top of your work and take a small stitch back to the bottom of the work. With needle at the back of the work, travel twice the distance of your first stitch along the traced line. Bring the needle to the front and bring it back down in the same hole as the previous stitch. Continue in this manner.
8. I like to do a fake blanket stitch rather than the real thing as it holds well and looks neater. Simply back stitch the line and then come back through making stitches at 90 degree angles to the back stitches. I put a stitch in each gap between the back stitches.
9. To do a chain stitch. Start with a single lazy daisy stitch and then come back up through the top of the loop to attach the next loop.
10. Pull gently to achieve the correct tension without destroying the "loop" effect.