I took a chance wet blocking this piece. You never know whether a thread is colorfast. In fact, cross stitchers who normally wash their background fabric both before and after stitching and who also wash their threads before stitching with them, deal with running colors all the time. I used a lot of synthetics which in my experience don't run. The red smile nylon thread was my biggest concern but it only ran a smidge and it isn't noticable in person although you can see it in the photograph.
This sat overnight and dried. I will reblock today as the lower right corner could be a little less prominent. But he's going to be much easier to finish as a square than a parallelogram!
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
4 comments:
I thought I was a chump because I never get blocking "right" on the first try. I can't tell you how reassuring it is to see Real Needlepointers routinely blocking twice. Apparently, it's just, you know, HARD. Phew! Thanks for posting this!
As far as I'm concerned, you are a real needlepointer, too. Put thread in needle, then put needle in NP canvas equals NPr.
And you do original work which I rarely do (the snowman being an exception that shows exactly how limited my drawing skills are--see that lopsided face!).
I've blocked items 5-6 times and still not gotten them totally straight. I mostly stitch everything on stretcher bars and I have been needlepointing since 1988 so my tension is pretty even. That helps a lot. I also use basketweave when I can instead of half cross stitch or continental. They pull the canvas out of true more.
Note how my canvas is fringing itself at the edges after I dampened it. This is something to watch for. On large pieces I've turned under the edge and hemmed it with my sewing machine or covered the edge with bias tape that I sewed with the machine. This fringe often doesn't matter but it depends on how you are going to finish the piece. Often folks do 2-4 rows of tent stitches around the perimeter of their piece to help give the finisher something sturdy to sew through, too.
Finishing just takes some imagination and practice. I've got an old finishing book from the early 1970s I'll send you if you ship your snail mail address to me at chilly hollow athot maildot com.
J/CH
This is so cute! I love him! Great job!
Thanks for the nice compliment, Pat. He's still damp tonight from Blocking #2 but it has rained for several days. Hopefully tomorrow morning he'll be dry so I can work on finishing him tomorrow night.
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