Learn From My Mistakes...

...or, How I Stitched the Background. LOL

Last night I worked a bit more on the pale yellow background behind Fan. The left hand side, which is the larger background area, is done. I always try to do the largest area first in a background, particularly when I am using a fancy stitch. That gives me lots of practice before I have to tackle the smaller areas where compensation is constant. As you see in the image above, Fan's right side background is very narrow along her side. I am adjusting, counting and trying to fit the background in constantly there. I wouldn't want to start in a place like this. It would be too confusing. Leave these places until later, ok?

As you probably remember, on Butterfly I didn't think to do a long row of background from one side to the other until I'd stitched Butterfly herself. That made it harder to figure out where the background diagonal ran from one side to the other. So on Fan, I did a row of background from one side to the other first. You don't have to do the entire background first, but do give yourself a guide row if your background is elaborate like mine is. The Caswell Stitch isn't hard, but it does need to be counted right each time. (eeek)

The last thing I'd like to mention about the background is that in some places I stitched right over items that are on top of the background. See the tiny butterfly in Fan's outstretched hand? It has gold antenna and I did my background on top of those gold lines. I'll put in a French-knot-on-a-stalk later for each antenna to match the same French-knot-on-a-stalk stitch I used for Butterfly's kite antenna. Reusing the same stitch unifies two canvases in a set so I want to repeat myself here.

To get back to my main point, when I stitched right over the antenna here, I made sure I carefully laid the Caswell stitches so that the paint job wouldn't show. If you hate using a laying tool, get over it for situations like this. At least do it here if you do it nowhere else. A nicely laid stitch is perfectly flat and covers beautifully, even with just two plies. I'm using two plies of my pale yellow Splendor silk. If I had not laid those stitches, the painted antenna would show and might even be noticeable after I put my little gold antenna on top.

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http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow