‘Ring of Roses' coming along beautifully

Well, the idea was to put in a bullion rose on the Brazilian piece each stitching session, but I'm afraid it got forgotten whilst I've been making such good progress on the Ring of Roses design!!

As you can see, I didn't get very far the first session, (but I also didn't spend very long on it), so this is where I left it on Wednesday night.

However, I've made up for that since, helped greatly by enjoying a drama series at the same time (a relevant one, of course - I was watching 'The House of Elliot' with all it's lush 1920's designs, beaded embroidery trims and passion for textiles!!).  I can't just sit watching telly with nothing to do - it seems such a dreadful waste of time to me, so I get on with some routine sort of stitching and so I left the piece at the point seen in the photo below when I left it on Thursday.

Last night, I finished off the surface work and even got the drawn threads cut and removed as well.

All that remains now is to wrap the exposed threads and then insert some filling stitches.  I think I'll be using square filet filling on many of the 'holes', but I also want to include a few strategically placed spider's webs for variety and just 'cos they look nice.  As they look better in #12 pearl cotton and now that there is one in shade 002 (antique white, which I often prefer to 001, bright white), I'll give that a trial and see how it looks.

Now I really must do some bullion roses though and I'll try wrapping the thread around the needle in the opposite direction, but the instructions say to wrap clockwise and, as it's an Edmar kit using their own threads, you would think they would know what they were talking about.  However, it's worth a try, isn't it?  I'd like both of these projects to be ready to hand over in two weeks time.  The scatter cushion cover isn't far off complete and I've got the backing fabric, zip and some nice thick ribbon to use as a piping as well.  The other piece isn't very big in total and I can present it in one of those oval shaped snap frames I was given a few years ago.

After a bit of a dry patch recently, I'm really enjoying my needlework again, so that's great!  It's also a good thing to bear in mind - don't force yourself, (unless you have to for a deadline or something) to stitch if you're not feeling interested in it at the moment.  Do something else for a while and the interest will probably return of its own accord later on.  You also don't need to explain or apologise or make excuses for it, just go with it.=)

Oh yes, something I'd like to ask you regular readers for your opinion on.  Rachel came up with, what I think is a great idea the other day.  She suggested that, for as many of the gallery photos as possible, it would be good to provide links to any relevant tutorials and WIP posts and photos.  What do you think about this?  I've already added links to the tutes on the stumpwork and ribbon work pages and to the only project that really had its own label.  I'm thinking of creating a special label that won't appear in the usual sidebar cloud, but will be used to create a link to a whole WIP series for each piece.  I'm already starting with this piece.  What do you think?

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012