Thursday, March 9, 2017

Cool!

Last weekend was great! I took Friday off as a mental health day and after we ran a few errands that morning, Wonderful Husband encouraged me to stitch. A lot! He also encouraged me to spend a fair amount of time stitching on both Saturday and Sunday so I made good progress on Jane Turner – all the spiral trellis bumps are finished (woohooo!) and I really got going on the sections filled with plain trellis.


Oh, and those spiral bumps are all in the charted colors - gray petals, dark green petals, yellow-green centers. Don't really look much like flowers now, do they? Oh well...


Also made a discovery: had thought it important to keep tension quite loose for plain vanilla trellis, but after looking at Mary Corbet’s video (LINK) a couple of times, it was clear that my stitches were too loose and my trellis rows overly large. Was tempted to clip and remove the pale blue leaves but then decided that could be hazardous to the outlining so I’ve let the slightly sloppy leaves be.


Got it right in this part right – making smaller stitches and pulling them tighter (though not nearly as tight as in the spirals). Doesn’t it look cool? Uh, all but the one stitch that's out of kilter about in the middle of that bottom diagonal.


Remember my lost needle? Thought you might be amused to see it. This is also a compare-and-contrast picture – the needle on the left is my favorite, well-used, slightly bent, old DMC needle. The one in the middle is a Colonial brand (what my former LNS sold after the DMC ones stopped being good) and the one on the right is a Lance needle from Wyndham Needleworks (defunct online LNS in case you don’t know it – though they are selling some recently discovered stock on ebay and I plan to contact them to ask about needle availability).


Anywho, can you see the difference in the size – especially the width – of the eyes? Somehow the photo doesn’t make the difference appear as drastic as when I’m holding them – seems a huge difference when I’m threading or stitching.


>^..^<

6 comments:

  1. Jane Turner is looking great.
    I'm enjoying watching your progress on this piece.
    You CAN see the difference in the eyes of the needles.
    I also bend the eyes of my needles, but they still work. :)
    Marilyn

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  2. Such an incredibly detailed sampler! I do love those flower "bumps!" You are doing a wonderful job, Deb--I can't even imagine tackling something like this... It will be a real heirloom when you're done!

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  3. Those flowers are incredible, so neat and regular. Mine would not be! Don't forget Jane is probably charted as she looks now, not as she was stitched. The colours may have been more vibrant when she was new and have faded over time. If you are lucky enough to see the back of an antique sampler it is quite an eye opener with the garish colours they used!
    I don't like needles with large eyes, I stitch with 28 petites for everything except metallics now.

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  4. Your work is beautiful! As always we are our own worst critics. Looks perfect to me! It's always nice to get pointers from experts though. Interesting on the needle. I do wish they would make our favorite needles and not go downhill. :(

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  5. Your spiral trellis stitches are exquisite! You're doing such a gorgeous job on this sampler--and what a wonderful gift of time for stitching!!

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  6. Gorgeous, gorgeous stitching - I am in awe!

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