Quick Announcement! Life in Seasons 2 is on sale this weekend! If you have this book on your wishlist, now’s the time to get a copy, at the lowest price you’ll find it. Help us make room on our shelves and add a treasure to your library at the same time! You can read about it here, and you’ll find it available on sale here!
(And now, back to our regularly scheduled program…)
Oh joy! Oh bliss! It’s the Weeeeeekend!
I don’t actually live for the weekend. For one thing, I love my job, so weekdays don’t bother me.
For another thing, Saturdays are so stinkin’ busy! If the day is successful and I get everything done, sure, there’s a lot of satisfaction in that – but it’s hard to face Saturday from the vantage point of the pillow at 6:00 AM.
But Sundays! Sundays are different. Sundays are relaxed – church, brunch with the family, and hanging out with dad. And that’s when I stitch on my “Home Project” with some serious lusty gusto.
I showed you this project and its set-up a few weeks back.
These projects are so satisfying to stitch. They are, for me, ideal “home projects” because they give me something to do with my hands, without being too brain taxing (I don’t have to think about it or make decisions about what I’m stitching), and they’re compact, requiring minimal equipment.
I’m almost finished with this one – only one more motif and the remaining leaves on the border. I suspect it will be finished by the end of the weekend.
Once I finish the stitching, I’ll hem stitch the runner, photographing the process to share with you. I have some ideas about the hem stitching, so we’ll see what develops…
One point that I’d like to stress about this type of project is that it is a low stress project (for me). I know that some people find counted work more difficult than surface embroidery, requiring more concentration, and so forth.
With these projects, though, I don’t experience any stress or tension. I just pick one part of the project that I count out with absolute precision (in this case, the double frame outline) and I make sure that everything else in the project is counted from that element. And it all works out.
As I stitch, I don’t obsess over small … shall we call them “fluctuations”? Those little errors that won’t be noticed or make any difference in the finished project.
For example, on some of the decorative gold stitches along the edges of the frame, my count somehow got off. The every-other-gold-stitches are charted with two stitches butting up next to each other, but I didn’t once that when I was stitching it.
So, instead of butting up the two stitches or trying to figure out how my count got off, I just “compensated” as I stitched the last little area, and made slight adjustments on a few stitches. I ended up with every-other-space stitched, as I thought it was supposed to be, and it looks fine.
Because I count from the frame stitches, which I know are accurate, it doesn’t really matter to me if the count on my gold stitches is off.
There are other types of “fluctuations” (ok, fine – mistakes) that I don’t let bother me, either. I just find the quick fix.
For example, on the element above, see the gold in the middle of the blue? Well, at the very top of that gold section, where there’s just the one gold stitch, it used to be solid blue. When I was stitching the blue (which I stitched first), I forgot to leave a blank space there.
Did I go back and pick out the blue?
No.
I just covered the blue stitch with a gold stitch.
Can you tell?
Up close, yes, you might be able to – if you’re zooming in on the image.
But with the naked eye, can you see it?
No.
Would it matter if you could?
No.
Would it matter if I had left the blue stitch blue?
No.
These things don’t matter. In the scheme of things, no one will ever notice. I won’t even notice, because I won’t think about it again when this piece is finished. It’s simply not That Kind of Piece. It’s just for my own occupation, at home, and it works well for what it is.
Keep in mind that these particular types of “fluctuations” (mistakes) don’t alter the placement of anything in the design, so they don’t throw off the design anywhere else.
So it doesn’t matter.
About Equipment
When I first wrote about this project, I was working it in hand.
But I have “trigger thumb” in my right hand, and working in-hand was aggravating it. I decided to bring a hoop home.
Digging through my hoop and frame bin, I realized I didn’t have any ideal sized hoops that weren’t already occupied with other projects. Isn’t that always the case?!?
After foraging a bit, I found a set of 8″ q-snaps, and they work fine.
So now I can prop the q-snap on the edge of my little sofa table and stitch two-handed, without having to hold onto the work.
Besides alleviating some of the aggravation on my right hand, I can actually stitch much, much faster with the project in the a hoop (or q-snaps, in this case). I thought I could stitch faster with it in hand, but no!
When I stitch two handed, my right hand is below the work to receive the needle, and my left hand is above the work to direct the needle down into the fabric.
On counted work like this – and with needlepoint, too – when my right hand receives the needle, I simply push it back up, eye-first, into the next stitch’s hole. I don’t even turn the needle. There’s no need to, because there’s plenty of room for the eye to go into the hole first. It makes for some fast stitching.
Coming Very Soon!
Next week, we will have this kit available again, along with a few other similar kits with beautiful designs. Look for them!
And next week, I’ll be starting a new one, too, because this one will be finished. I have one in mind that I’d like to use at Easter, and I’ll show it to you once I get going on it.
Have a lovely weekend!
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