TAST 61 & 62
I'm trying hard, and with difficulty, to get my family room finished ASAP. Since I don't know if I'll have any more time this week to work on stitching, I decided I'd better post what I have done, even though it's not a lot.
I didn't feel particularly inspired with the up and down feathered buttonhole. I like how the top row came out. I used oyster stitch as the buds. With the second row I was trying to create a fringe look. Meh. It's OK, but doesn't really stand up as fringe by itself. I imagine it in a stitched picture as part of a rug or a rodeo jacket. All perle 8.
Monday night (the new TAST starts on Monday afternoons here in the Pacific time zone) I sat down as my husband watched TV and started on the raised cross stitch flower. Oooooh! I like this one! So, I kept stitching for five hours! When I started I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do. I knew only that I wanted a lot of flowers. It came to me that a dozen roses would be nice. As I was doing them, I was unhappy with how they were turning out, but I think I was being too hard on myself. I didn't get the first few exactly right, and some are a bit square, but over all I think they turned out really well. It seems to be a pretty forgiving stitch. I did the stems with a single fly stitch around each flower which morphed into stem stitch. The bow is two closed base needlewoven picots pulled around into loops (ie. the loose ends tacked down at the base). Two open base needlewoven picots make up the streamers. The flowers are perle 8 and the bow is perle 12.
Of course, nothing ever goes perfectly. This morning, when I looked at what I had done, I realized that I did it on the back of my sampler! Fortunately, the fabric has no right or wrong side.When the whole sampler is stitched, I will add a backing fabric and the seams will cover the blanket stitch on the edge, so it won't matter. But that's why the stitching on the edges looks so messy. It really is neater, at least a little, on the other side. Be sure to check out PinTangle to see Sharon's samples and what others are doing with this stitch. (And since it's still early in the week, you might want to go back and look again later this week for more.)
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cross posted from Airy Nothing