Flower Sampler Book – page six #2

January 4, 2015 by Carole 16 Comments

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’m quite pleased with the amount of progress that I’ve made this time.

Page six is now finished. Hooray! I have to say though, that it was probably the most fiddly bit of stitching that I’ve ever done.

The Hemstitch square was fine to do, although the cutting was a bit scary. It was interesting how the cutting was done, compared to Hardanger, and I like how it looks neater, with no whiskers. The Satin stitches around the outside of it just finish it off nicely. The Wrapped bars and Dove’s eyes are teeny-tiny. It was fun working in a sort of miniature, although a bit tricky at times. The dove’s eyes looked small through my Maglight, but without it they really are minute.

This side, with the drawn threads drove me crazy. I did the cross stitch first, as per the instructions, and to make sure I spaced it correctly, I tacked out the outline of the drawn thread section first. I still managed to get it wrong but couldn’t face frogging the left side flower so there are only three threads either side of the drawn threads at the top instead of four. I can live with that.

Then I managed to cut one of the threads wrong – my biggest stitching nightmare! I managed to patch it ok using a thread pulled from the edge of the fabric and I’m pretty sure you can’t tell the difference.

The most fiddly bit, which made me feel that my fingers are really huge and clumsy, was pulling the very short threads back through the fabric and securing them behind the cross stitch and back stitch, and then weaving the longer cut threads through and securing those. Unless you’ve done it, that sentence probably makes no sense, but take it from me – it was ‘interesting’.

Once that was done though, I could do the pretty stitches and I loved doing that. Despite the problems I had with it, and the odd mistake, I really love how it turned out.

A close-up to see the stitches. From top to bottom:
Diamond hemstitch
Herringbone stitch
Hemstitch
Somersault stitch
Long-legged cross stitch
Tied hemstitch
Long-legged cross stitch
Zig-zag hemstitch

Now that’s finished, I’m going to do some on Precious Dreams for a while, before picking this up again ready for the next SAL update.

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs:
Avis at Sewing beside the sea
Claire at Claire93
Gun at Rutigt
Eleanor at Sun and cake
Alison at Minerva’s meanderings
Jule at From the boudoir
Elizabeth at Garden 4 therapy
Wendy at The crafter’s apprentice

Do pop over and have a look at their beautiful creations.