Welcome to the twelfth NFSAL of 2019! This month I went for an extra special finish - that didn't come out the way I planned, but ended up even better! I wanted to add a beaded crocheted edging to seal the seam, but I didn't have the right colour crochet thread and a single strand of craft thread was far too thin - and a full thread too much (a few strands was too confusing and I made quite the mess with it) to crochet through the blanket stitches.
So on to plan B - make a cord out of the strand of craft thread because I'd taken the time to pull out a single strand from a whole skein of craft thread and didn't want to waste it. I had to repeat the cording creation bit three times to make it thick enough as two strands isn't much of a cord, and four strands wasn't either, but eight made a nice thin cord which turned out to be *exactly* the right length for the outer edge - to the mm!
I then started adding the cording to the outer edge using a whipstitch and coordinating thread that I allowed to slip between the bumps of the cord while adding a stitch to each blanket stitch. That's when I hit a snag - the thread was too thin for the double sized blanket stitches, which doesn't seem like much of a problem but means that the cording tried to fall between the layers (though it was more or less kept in place by the stitching) when the layers were pushed from the inside. Not a good look. A bit of plotting later and I realised that if I did a running stitch over the top of the backstitched inner lines I'd make a pillow with a flat edge, which would keep the cording in place. As you can see in the photos above it came out beautifully!
These are the fabric and threads I used. The fabric is
Jodyri Designs December 2015 Limited Edition 18ct aida "
Winter Solstice" which by happy chance made the cut to the main fabric line and so can still be bought! I used DMC 006 and 008 as per the pattern but couldn't locate the 007 (I bet they used it for the new Bond film!) so I looked around at my threads and saw that Jodyri Designs "
Cafe Au Lait" 097 R was the perfect colour to go between the two instead! The craft thread at the bottom is a close match to the DMC 008 but not an exact match.
Some time between Christmas and New Year I'd like to make a post
featuring YOUR embroideries - it doesn't have to be completely finished
into something - just a picture of the completed stitching will do nicely.
Where you can send the picture:
Magical at smallbluemonkey dot net (please remove the "at" and replace
it with a @ and swap the "dot" for a . and don't forget to remove the
spaces). This is the email that's linked to the domain at which I host
all of the patterns so I'll know it is something for the blog.
What do I need to know:
What name to put with your picture... Do you want to be known as (for example):
* A. Mouse
* Anne Mouse
* Anne M
* A.M.
The pattern is 57 stitches square, but can easily be enlarged to be any size you need.
You can find the pattern
here.
Please read the information sheet carefully.
Have fun stitching and I'll see you tomorrow for the December 50 x 50 for
2019 post! Also: Look out for one more announcement post on Saturday - I just didn't have time to include it in November with the rest and needed a little more time off to recover from so many posts last month too. I wonder how many of you saw that last "To be announced" line at the bottom of the top box in the right hand sidebar and thought I'd either not added a link or had forgotten to remove the line?
That's a great pattern and a great way to finish it, too! I do love your usual ornament finishing style, but your experiments tend to turn out awesome as well :)
ReplyDeleteThank you! It's fun trying new things out, keeps things interesting :D
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