At the end of July I showed you the little embroidery I'd started working on. Mid August I finished the main panel. There is another smaller piece which is mounted on the mount... you'll have to wait until I've finished it to see what I'm talking about!
I can't live with those french knots on the beach. I said I was going to leave them but I can't, they're going to have to come out.... It could be a problem as the straight stitches below are stitched from the same lengths of thread so I hope I don't lose too much...
I also said in my last post that more Rowandean kits were going on my wishlist, well I went to the stand at the Festival of Quilts and another kit came home with me. I love stitching these so expect to see it make an appearance fairly soon!
I fully intended to blog last week, but ended up having the week from hell and so it just didn't happen. We had some computer problems at work and in the midst of it all my spreadsheet, which has all my vital work information, became corrupted. Even IT couldn't save it and so I had to start again. Cue a double-sized work load and a new responsibility I also took on and I was at work until very late every night.
I did manage to start a little embroidery though. I bought the kit at Festival of Quilts last year, so that's almost a year. Pretty good going for me to get started that soon after buying it! It's by Rowandean and is called Scottish Beach.
The kit comes with design pre-printed on a cotton/linen fabric and the threads all sorted. They're mainly stranded cotton but there is also some crewel wool. The needle for working with the crewel wool was provided. I assume it's a crewel needle. It is pretty cruel, it's stabbed me several times already and I didn't do anything to hurt it.
The instructions are basic and the cover photo is tiny, minute even. I realise it's probably about life-sized, but it needs to be bigger if we're supposed to be following the direction of stitches! It's smaller than these photos I'm showing you. I messed up those purple hills. You can probably see that the one on the left sticks out more, like it's padded. It was the one I started on and I hated my stitching, I soon discovered a better way of doing it and so instead of unpicking, I stitched over the top. Yeah, probably shouldn't have done that.
I added some grass, a mud bank and the tree. The leaves are done in the crewel wool. The photo is a bit blurred as I took it on my tablet in the light of the living room. If I'm going to do progress shots of projects (and I want to), I kind of have to take them as I'm going along, in situ, with whatever is to hand. Yes, I'm lazy!
I added french knots with the multi-colours of crewel wool and this is my second mistake. I wrapped twice. I should have wrapped once. There is no way I'm taking them all out, this, as you've probably guessed by now, is not a piece destined for perfectionism! Rather it's a piece for me to enjoy stitching, and I really am enjoying stitching it. I've already put some more Rowandean kits on my wishlist!
