Mystery project A complete

This was made for the #stitchingpirates Sailing the fruit contest however as the rules say that there must be 2 pieces of fruit this is not my final entry - I need to add something else before it is eligible hehe. That said I just couldn't wait to share as I'm rather pleased with the end results.

When I first saw the competition my eyes lit up as I have been wanting to make the patter for this ever since I saw the pattern in a magazine called Ariadne way back in September of 1989 and I've been keeping this magazine for this very pattern ever since. I always looked at it and thought - this is too difficult - I can't do this. The main reason being that it's 3 threads over 2 on 28 count even weave, not just any old 3 threads but 1 - 3 different colours of floss per 3 threads that get used. with just 11 base colours I created 30 colours of blended thread and only 2 were 3 the same colour together. As a result it used a LOT of thread and I used more than 1 1/2 skeins of one of the reds and used a lot of all the other colours too. Towards the end when I had again ran out of red I was looking at the bits of leftover floss from the other combined colours to find enough to finish - I had the same issue with the orange, however I wasn't able to find enough of that so, as I didn't want to wait till Wednesday when I'd have more money for floss I decided to look at what I did have and use an alternative to the orange 

Before It looked like that it looked like the picture above - reminded me a bit of those Caribbean hats with fruit on them that they used to do on adverts.  and I was wondering if it would ever come out right - fortunately it did but it was really fiddly to do.




I dyed a bit of leftover corset rope (as I call it - it's a really thin cotton rope) with coffee to make it brown and used that as the "stalk" I used black floss to make the "fluff" you find at the base of apples.

Size: 2 1/2" wide x 1 3/4" high / 6,35 x 4.45 cm