WIP Wednesday: SAL updates

As always I'm starting off with a picture of how my version of the Vakje per Week looked last week just so you can more easily see what changed since then.
This week we were given the first darning pattern to stitch, a bit of a challenge at first but I soon got the hang of things - no mean feat since I started stitching this soon after the midnight posting of the pattern when I was a bit tired. The main reason I got it finished before bed was that the box I had to fill was very small - just 18 lines of the darning pattern - so no surprises that it was fast to finish.

I used Cosmo 8041 for the job and it turned out to be a lovely long gradient which perfectly fit the darning pattern. I'm not sure how I'm going to continue making boxes, but I do know that I'm not going to repeat or mirror what I've done before so expect a different setup of the boxes for next week and beyond.

And now it's time for the Linen and Threads 2017 Mystery Band Sampler Stitch Along which I worked on yesterday and today with the photo above being where I left off last Wednesday.

I did of course finish February's bands as there was only a little of the darker blue left to do. I then went ahead and started March - while it was still March! The two March bands were skinnier than the February ones and I got quite a bit done.

Well quite a lot really as I completed the March bands earlier today! I used DMC 123 for the leafy band, it's one of the old discontinued colours that I still had a little of left in my stash and it works quite nicely here. Sadly there isn't much left of the thread so I may be able to do one more skinny band or two really, really skinny ones before I run out of it forever. *sniff*

The garland border was done with DMC 561/991 blended colour for the garland itself, Color Variations 4230 for the flowers and the ribbons I did with the DMC 368/563 combination I'd used before. For the bars between the bands I used ThreadWorX 1053 it took a bit of fiddling but I was able to make the colours more or less merge so it's hard to see where what was stitched and in which order.

You might be wondering by now what I did last week Thursday to Monday other than completing the Vakje per Week Saturday night and luckily for you I am able to tell you too! I worked on a challenge piece I'd taken o thinking it was going to be incredibly difficult based on my experience with the patterns previously.

The embroidery you see above is a pattern by le fil atalie - September 2014 freebie pattern that I bought as a kit with all the threads etc. included. The photo is unfortunately not very good but it was made with my tablet in artificial light so it's probably as good as it gets under the circumstances. I'll be making better photos when its finish finished. I'd chosen this for my challenge piece because it has around 100 French knots and if that isn't a challenge I don't know what is!

I started this on Thursday thinking it would take me weeks but apparently all the stitching I have been doing on linen lately has made the whole stitching process a breeze compared to the struggle I had before with one of these patterns, I did need to wear my reading glasses for the job but other than that the fabric gave me no issues. It went so well that instead of it taking me weeks to complete I finished on Saturday late at night!

As this was going to well I decided to go ahead and do the next one of the kits I had that daunted me because of the many French knots  I started this on Sunday but had to stop before I'd finished it because my back said "No." and I've learnt to listen to my back. All I had left to do on Monday was the white and yellow French knots which did not take much time at all to complete.

Although I had originally planned to pick up the Linen and threads sampler again on Monday I decided that actually, now I was on a roll, I'd complete the last of the 4 kits that I'd started but had been lurking on my desk for over a year which was where you can see it above. By bedtime this embroidery that had taken me over a week to get to this stage was finished! I am *so* glad I decided to do the challenge and even more glad I decided to keep going now I'd started!

So you can see that I was very busy last week doing projects that had daunted me for far too long and which turned out to be a lot easier than I remembered! I'll show you better photos of these projects and the 4th of the kits I got when they are finish finished.

Till next week when I'll show you what I've been working on this week. Though don't forget to drop by on Friday for the Friday Freebie Mucha Princess inspired fob.