Jane Turner, afterword

As you can see, Jane Turner is now proudly hanging on the wall.  She’s in the living room, just beside the room’s entrance.  Not where I had envisioned her, but Wonderful Husband pointed out that in my chosen location, rather than catching my eye each time I walked by, she would be shadowed and invisible for a good portion of the year.  Sigh.

I did mount her myself, probably more from paranoia than any other reason – I couldn’t even think about handing her over to anyone else without getting queasy!  Here’s the frame I picked.

I used to use unflavored dental floss to mount needlework, but thought I’d see what was recommended and after some internet research, decided on using perle cotton.  After getting my work space prepared, I did the requisite blocking and measuring.

And pinning to the foam core…

… and repinning after turning things front side up.

Of course Harley wanted to help.

Giving in to my overachiever side, I decided that the "recommended" single looooooooooong strand of perle cotton lacing left-to-right and another single stand top-to-bottom was the best way to handle mounting Jane.

Have I mentioned that Jane's 24 inches tall?

I don’t know how a professional laces needlework onto a backing board, but I figured that over time, in-out-in-out would be a lot better for Jane than a single stitch passing through the linen, since this would put much less stress on specific spots in the fabric.

Starting in the middle allowed me to estimate the length needed for the other half - I tried to keep count of how many "pulls" I took.  And it worked ... pretty much, anyway.  I’m pleased with how little of the perle cotton was wasted.  It took nearly an entire ball to do the job.  The full ball below is for comparison so you can see how much was used, and the loose snippets are the bits that were cut off.

Of course the corners are miter-folded.

After a couple of hours (oh, my tired back!), she’s ready for the frame!

Wonderful Husband helped by drilling tiny holes for the small screws used to mount the hanging wire.

Do you get the Scarlet Letter’s newsletter?  If not, this may seem a bit odd.  When the Grace Kemish sampler was from her frame, Marsha discovered that dozens of bay leaves were inside the backing/dust cover.  The stitcher must have known they are a natural bug repellent.  Cool, huh?  Adding some seemed like the right thing to do (hey, it worked for Grace for 200 years!), and we have a *big* container of bay leaves, so I figured, why not?

I filled out and used the little tag supplied by The Essamplaire, and added a brief note of my own, then glued the dust cover to the back of the frame and weighted it.

I may not be making quilts any more, but I know how to put my book and magazine collection to good use!

And here she is in all her framed glory!

Would you believe after all the care taken in getting the stitching mounted properly on the foam core, all the pinning and repinning and checkingcheckingchecking, I didn’t turn the frame over before putting on the backing paper??  Argh.  Yes, I think she is the tiniest bit crooked in the frame.  I will remedy this at some point, but don’t have the heart to do so right now.

>^..^<