hardanger SAL #1

I'm afraid that along with my lack of on-line time comes a lack of unimaginative blog post titles!  It does what it says on the tin though, this is my first post on my progress for Mabel Figworthy's Fancies Song of the Weather SAL.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, this needlework technique is called Hardanger.  This Wikipedia entry explains it all and you can find some free patterns on the internet by searching, or check out my Pinterest board.  For those who don't want to click, Hardanger is a counted thread embroidery technique, using kloster block and surface embroidery.  It also includes cut work and needle weaving and it's great fun.

I found Mabel Figworthy's Fancies Song of the Weather SAL in March, but you can start anytime and at just £3 for the whole year, it's unbelievable value!  I started January's block with every intention of taking a photo after each session.  Here's session one.

In this section I've used Perle 5 thread.   The white zig-zaggy line is made up of kloster blocks - sets of 5 satin stitches in parallel holes.  The tulips and star are all made with satin stitches, but as it's counted fabric, they look perfectly neat and symmetrical.

The end of session two actually saw me finish this as it's a pretty quick stitch, there is no cutwork in this one. If you look closely (sorry, no idea why I didn't take a close-up pic) inside the white kloster blocks, you can see a small herringbone designs, this was worked in Perle 8 thread, as were the daisies.  I struggled with the daisies - the centres are colonial knots which I'd never worked before and my petal placement doesn't work.  I may take them out and start again at some point.

And then I completely stopped taking photos of each session!  This is February's block.  This time we did cut within the kloster blocks.  I accidentally cut one thread too many, but when I needlewove the bars (alert - made up word!), the loose thread was enclosed and you can't see it.  The little patterns inside the blocks are called Dove's Eyes and I need more practise to get them neat!  The blue stitching is beaded stitch, which contains no beads, but there are beads between the lines of stitching.  I added the 2 blocks and fan in each corner, I'm planning on making 2 pieces each 2 columns by 3 rows and all the other blocks are squares so I felt this needed "squaring" to make it fit with the others.

I then started block 3 but only got as far as most of the kloster blocks.  The dirty marks you see are made by my Frixon pen so I knew where to stitch.  I'm keeping a 20 thread border between each block and will add a pattern in at the end.  I've been looking through my books to find something suitable, but I won't be able to start until June when the last block of this set is released, so plenty of time!

I'm working them all in white and shades of blue.  I had to go with Anchor thread as I need Perle 5, Perle 8 and stranded cotton in each colour.  I have 5 different shades of blue and I'll scatter them about so hopefully they'll look nice!

If you like cross stitch or embroidery, I'd really recommend Hardanger, the cutting really isn't that scary at all!

On a non-related post, I just spell checked this post and it always amazes me that the spell check on Blogger doesn't recognise the words "blog" or "internet"...?