Anniversary stitching

I haven't really been in any rush to share these photos as they're more a story of frustration and failure than anything else! =(

The meerkat bookmark was finished up as you can see here.  It looks OK and the tassel worked out - eventually, but I agree with Sir when he said that something is missing.  So, I plan to remove part of the backing sometime soon and add in some small 'landscape' features, such as a few tufts of grass etc.  Nothing much, just something to place our cute meerkat in context.

This is the second and larger catastrophe.  As you can see from the first picture, I had the nice tree design from the outline sticker all prepared to use as a pattern, complete with colours chosen etc.  Then I realised that there were three problems with this: 1) There would be a lot of work involved in getting it done on time and time wasn't something I had a lot of, 2) I didn't have a very clear idea of how to do certain parts of it, and 3) once the outlining was done (with couched Kreinik Cable abutted by this lovely multi-coloured Japanese couching thread in stem stitch), the colour scheme and whole look simply didn't work.  However, it was too much to take all the stem stitches out and doing so would probably have damaged the sheer fabric that I appliquéd to the main fabric into the bargain.

So, I had to change directions.  Thankfully, the 'Ultimate Cross Stitch - Oriental' that I'd ordered popped through the door at the right time and, in a section of small designs, I found something I could work into the card.  I erased the old pencil design OK and then used some Kreinik #8 fine braid in 027 (orange) and some Needle Necessities overdyed Kreinik #8 in a variegated light blue to do the water effects.

The whole thing doesn't 'go' terribly well and the koi carp design would have been better half an inch lower down, but it can't be helped now.  Anyway, it was done in time and that's more or less the only good thing I can say about it.  Oh well, it happens...

It's my tenth blogoversary tomorrow and  I'm just about to start work on a series of posts going over Sew in Love's 10 year history with highlights from each year.  Hope everyone'll enjoy that. =)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015