The second ‘hermitting’ weekend of the month! We were spoilt this month weren’t we?!
It coincided quite well for me, as we also had our second ‘Coffee Cake and Craft’ morning on Saturday, so whilst I was ‘hermitting’ with all you lovely stitchers around the world, it was done with a little bit of company too.
Most of the progress over the weekend was made on a new project (yes, another one!!). This is another online course I have decided to do with Tanja Berlin. This is her more introductory silk shading course, with the design a beautiful purple pansy. I decided to this time round try the prick and pounce method of design transfer. The design looked ‘simple’ enough that I wouldn’t get too confused with all the dots!
I did learn a couple of things about the prick and pounce method this time round that I didn’t realise previously. Firstly, Tanja noted that whilst for small and non-complex designs like this one, you can quite successfully transfer the design without the fabric being taut in the hoop. For more complex designs, she mentioned that it is a lot easier to have the fabric all set up in the hoop or frame and nice and taut before pouncing the design onto the fabric. This apparently helps to stop it from moving slightly, and hence producing blurry or incorrect markings. I also learnt that this is about as large a design that I can successfully ‘prick’ in one sitting. Even with this size, my ability to prick the design accurately and with evenly spaced marks was struggling towards the end. The beginning was much better! So it might be a case of practice, and taking short breaks.
Compared to the red fox, this was a lovely easy stitching activity (and just what I needed as I wasn’t feeling all that on top of things!). Firstly, rows of stem stitch were stitched for the stem of the flower. Tanja has said I should add an extra row on the right so my leaf isn’t hanging mid air! Very wise advice. Carrying on from my crewel work class at the RSN, I tried to keep the stitches as even as possible. I felt I was much more successful with this in the cotton thread than I was with the wool. I was reasonably happy with the end result.
And to finish off the lesson, a split stitch was worked around the leaves. I was worried I had made my stitches too long, but Tanja assures me that is crazy talk, and mine are considerably shorter than hers! So I don’t need to be quite that tiny which is reassuring as I find it difficult to be consistent with such small stitches.
I also did a bit more work on the fox – but more on him later.
I hope you all had enjoyable weekends and were able to spend some time relaxing with your stitching.
What a lovely design and just the thing to pick up when the urge to stitch takes over! I have to confess I’ve not done any stitching for quite a few weeks (apart from EPP hexies), your Coffee, Cake and Craft mornings are a brilliant idea and bring like minded people together, and you seem to getting into a nice routine of stitching … which is something I need to do.
Thanks Ann – it’s always lovely to have projects on hand isn’t it? Although I have a few too many at the moment! A group of people to stitch with is really lovely, and something I have missed over the past couple of years. I hope you get the time soon to stitch again!
Catherine, your stitches are so perfect. You are lucky to be in this class. I would like to know her critique. I am hoping next time she offers this design as a class, I would like to be in it.
Thanks Kathleen Mary. It really is a wonderful way to learn. The advantages of modern technology! If you sign up to her newsletter you will get notified of when she next runs it.