Work In Progress Wednesday - 28 Nov 2012

YAY!  Some embroidery progress to post!  YAY!=)

First up is the sampler on which I've made a bit of discernible progress.  In the first photo you can see the spider web roses, the cream beads (instead of palestrina knots, which I can't seem to get to look decent and so refused to fight any further with), the three 'boxes' for more cutwork and the start of the next row.

This second shot shows where the project is right now with a row of double pekinese stitch and one of feather stitch also completed.

I'll soon be coming to a small decision point as, as you can see from the photos, the variegated thread I've been using thus far is a cool green and wine purple mix.  In the pattern, this shade continues only on to the next row, then it changes to a more olive green with petrel blue mix.  I'm considering whether to change shades as per the chart, or to keep it all one.  I love purply shades and so am tending very much towards not making a change.  Of course, I only bought these two skeins of thread to go in this design and have no other real use for them, which is a small argument in favour of changing, but having said that, I'll no doubt try and sell one or both of them anyway once this sampler is complete (they're Needle Necessities threads and hard to come by, so may well find a buyer as past sales have shown), so one skein being complete may be good. You can see the colours in this photo.  What do you think?  Would you stick to one shade or go for variety?

Another change that I certainly will make is the large square cutwork section in the lower part of the design.  You can see here in the left hand photo that the cream one is done like a gate with garden showing through, whereas the lilac (and green) one on the right is just done as a piece of fancy work.  I must say that I prefer the more realistic one and am almost certainly going to do that version instead.  99.9% certain, I would say.  The flowers you can see through it are worked on a separate piece of linen, then attached to the back of satin stitches and the whole thing seems to fit better to me.  What do you say?

I haven't done much more on the other two projects yet, but those of you with good memories may recall that I wasn't pleased with the shading - the darkest colour wasn't dark enough as I'd picked the wrong one.  So, I took that colour out and here's bun, ready to have the dark patches on his jaw and around his eye restitched, bless him!

What have you been working on this week??

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012