Which Way Does Your Floor Board Lay?

It's been another hectic weekend in Chilly Hollow but luckily the stitching for the top of the old wooden bar and the floor in the Cape Cod Dogs bar went quickly. With just one ply of the darkest brown floss from the wooden shelves, I did an over 4/under 1 darning stitch for the floor. The top of the bar was a stair step like stitch over four threads done on the diagonal. After the stitches were in a few long stitches in a contrasting thread added the edges of the boards. Very easy stitches but the trick is to figure out the direction to lay them that will give you the best effect.

In the photo above you can see the floor darning stitch best in the background near the wall where the thread color doesn't match the painting underneath. This stitch was a _ stitch done horizontally like this ____ - ____. The little - is the thread of the needlepoint canvas the real thread goes under before coming up to cover another four threads of the canvas.

The bar darning stitches are best seen covering the white patch of sunlight reflected by one of the glasses. To do the stairstep stitch, I turned the canvas on its side so that the window area was at the top. As I said, these are easy stitches (it took me less than 2 hours to do both areas including the top stitches that are the edges of the boards) but I did spend some time experimenting to see which way the stitches should run and which side of the canvas should be facing the top while I stitched.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
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