Friday Freebie: Stibbe Roman Mosaic Borders

Most of you will know by now that I love historical patterns - especially Roman mosaics. When I saw that the Stibbe Roman mosaics were being shown to the public I couldn't resist making a pattern based on part of one of the borders and transferring the second border in its entirety into cross stitch. If you click the linked words above you will read this:

Surprise Freebie! 1st Century French Tile Floor Biscornu

It's Monday so not freebie day but sometimes it's nice to surprise people! A while back I saw a photo of a 1st Century tiled floor that was recently excavated in France and thought it would make an amazing biscornu so I made this pattern.

UFO #11 Finished! - Introducing the 8th Century floor tile embroidery

At long last this project is complete! I have to admit that I was rather sick and tired of doing it - the repeat pattern was simple enough but over time it got incredibly boring. I'm pretty sure that without the daily updates and all the encouragement I got from all of you it would still be a UFO.

This is made using a pattern from "Mosaic Masterpieces in Needlework and Handicraft based on motifs from The Holy Land" by Ann Roth (from a translated copy in Dutch printed in 1975) that I picked up in a wonderful dusty/musty/old book smell filled old book shop a long time ago. I'm not really sure when I started this BUT I know I did when I was married and mostly likely early on in the marriage as that was when I was doing embroidery, so probably around 1996 or 1997. The pattern was inspired by the tile floors that were excavated in Beit-sje'an in the convent of Mary: church of Sja Wee Zion

 

 This is what it looked like in the beginning of January 2013 - it's a short side and a small piece of the long side by late September when I last updated the project It looked like this:

I had only filled in a couple of loops after that before it was set aside again for me to work on other things. Everything else was completed after I picked it up again on the 1st of February.

I'm not yet certain what I'm going to turn it into - I'm torn between just framing it, turning it into a pillow cover and making it into a file cover.

The all important stats:
Stitches: 238 x 190
Size: 11 7/8" x 9 3/8"
Fabric: 20ct Aida
Colours: 10
Number of stitches: 22,364

The 8th Century floor tile and the much delayed TUSAL

I'm going to start with the much delayed TUSAL so as to not delay it any longer. I have 3 jars to catch up with so without more ado here is my October 2013 jar:

The contents of this jar were the result of the mini-pumpkin-box I'd made at the end of October it was a small project so not many ORTS were produced.

In November I didn't do any cross stitch at all - I was busy making a quilt which is currently blocking my sewing machine as it's in the process of being quilted.

This is my December jar the threads you can see are all from the Final claus embroidery I made in December, again not many ORTS were produced.

My January Jar is a LOT fuller at the bottom is all the pink threads from a still secret project then the blues from creating my Ice dragon using the  Futurecast pattern. and on top of all that you can see the threads from working on my 8th century floor tile - which I will show you more of now.

The last time I showed you my 8th century floor tile it looked like this:

During theearlier this month I did some work on it and by the end of the chat session with Carla It looked like this:

A bit of progress was made along the top edge and I'd been able to try out my new Q-snap frame.it was great but once I'd gone round the corner it started getting in my way so I swapped it to an oval frame instead, which made stitching so much easier. Once I had completed futurecast I decided to be strong and get back to my floor tile. So I got out my tray of threads and set to work.

As you can see each colour has a needle poked into a biscornu next to where I have the card with the thread on it, so the next colour is ready when I need it and I don't spend so much time rethreading needles.

By the 31st of January it looked like this, with the end stretch in sight. I was starting to get pretty sick and tired of doing these loops but I kept going and on the second of February I finally completed the border.

I thought that I would be taking a bit of time away from this but having started something else I found myself drawn back to the floor tile after all as I was really curious how it would look with the filler pattern in the middle So today I got started again on the floor tile - this time in a bigger hoop so I had more space to work and I used two of the colours to make a start so I could see what the pattern would look like compared to the design in PCStitch.

This is what it looked like before I started this post I didn't start the pattern with a whole diamond as the size of the inner square won't allow me to have a whole one at the top so I fiddled around in PCStitch till it was centred with the same amount of incomplete diamonds alone all the edges.

IHSW and UFO #11 The 8th century floor tile

It's IHSW weekend! I again have a child free weekend and hope to get quite a bit of stitching done.

Things I'm going to work on are:
1. Awning for the neighbour that I started last autumn and MUST finish soon.
2. Mike's Mushrooms as it's high time I picked that up again.
3. Possibly also do a bit more of the floor tile.

Speaking of the floor tile it's probably a good idea to show you where I am with it now.  Above you see where it was last time I updated you. I managed to get more of the brown (3021) thread that I needed Tuesday afternoon and I completed the framework stitching. I have also just about reached the corner with the colours as I only have 18 stitches left to do on the last dark green loop and then the little bit in the corner before I've reached the half way point with filling in colours.

While working my mind has been busy thinking about the centre area. I'm not so sure I want to go head and do the tile floor filling I had planned as I keep thinking of just using this as a frame for another embroidery - but I'm not sure what to do yet.  I keep thinking of doing something in blackwork, possibly an owl or a bit inspired by the floor tile I saw in Maastricht in the St. Servaas church last week when I was there with my bf. Time will tell what I end up doing as right now I have plenty of time to think about it :)

Tusal & UFO #11: The 8th century floor tile

 This is my TUSAL jar for the month. It's filled with the threads from the spring flowers embroidery...

with the threads from the Spring peacock...

and with the threads from the 8th century floor tile that I have been working on while travelling due to the simplicity of the pattern.

I ran out of the colour I've been using for the framework (3021) and have to wait till Tuesday to get more as they have had some odd opening times due to bank holidays and the opening times are in the morning, not the best time of day for me to get anywhere except to the coffee pot. As a result I have been filling in the framework with the colours instead. If I place my hoop correctly I can get 2 loops of the same colour done at once and do 5 loops before I have to move the frame, so I can get quite a bit done before having to re-hoop.