TUSAL October 2017

CLICK HERE to go to Sharon’s It’s Daffycat blog for all the details about the Totally  Useless Stitch A-Long.    

Lots of orts this time!  Well, for me, that is.  All these are from Jane Turner.  I did stitch a bit on LHN”s Seasons Greetings, but not enough to finish the gold frame yet.  You could imagine two or three gold orts off to the side if you'd like.  The Silly Stitching Calendar says I’ve had 18 stitching days since the last TUSAL post. 

Jane’s lady has hair!  And a floral crown!  And a dress!  Well, sort of.  Guess it’s more like she has a dress frame.  I keep thinking I should do the detached buttonhole filling but since I stitch in hand I’m a little worried about that looooong stitch the buttonhole goes over.  You see, those sections will get filled vertically (turning Jane sideways to stitch) rather than across the short direction.  I think I’ve figured out how to make sure it doesn’t pull things out of shape, but I keep putting it off. 

So both those spiral trellis flowers are done, a few of the fruits on the trees are stitched, and the large birds have eyes now so they can watch what that caterpillar's up to.  Also, one of the moths is filled in.  You can see that, like the moths on at least two of the Jane Turner “sister” samplers, he has a head and antennae and a couple of legs – quite bug-ish, if small.  That’s because it looked really dumb just being a two-colored floaty thing.  Not too creepy, right?

(EDIT/ADDITION)

Thought you might be interested to see a moth comparison.  All of these little snippets are of the right-side moth which turned out to be easier to catch.  Jane's original very un-mothlike moth is on the left, the kit model in the middle and my unfinished one on the right.  

But if you look at the same part on the "sister" samplers, it's easy to see what these floaty blobs are supposed to be.  You can barely see the outline of the lady's dress on the snip on the right - that's because this picture was from the back of the sampler signed D.O. which belongs to the Museum of London.

So why didn't Jane stitch heads and legs on her moths?  Did she forget?  She could have meant to go back and add them and then lost track since this band has a lot going on.  Maybe after stitching the legs on the caterpillar, she decided they were too creepy crawly?  Or perhaps she just didn't like moths.  We'll never know, but it's fun to wonder about and come up with possible reasons.

(end edit)

Have realized that with a good bit of stitching yet to do on the Lady Band plus three narrow bands, a wide band in Montenegrin, and the alphabet band, there’s not much chance Jane will be finished by the end of the year.  Oh well ... next year, then!

>^..^<