My experiment at alternating projects (Cape Cod Dogs and South Seas Fiji) didn't work too well. When I started Cape Cod Dogs I was finishing up my little Leigh ornament of the Chinese red dragon Ch'ing and could alternate between the concentration needed for Ch'ing and the boring basketweave of the border around Cape Cod Dogs. Once I started South Seas Fiji while Cape Cod Dogs was well underway, I had to think on both pieces.
Obviously this overloaded my brain power and I put South Seas Fiji away. Now that Cape Cod Dogs is done (I'm still looking for the perfect tote bag to put it on, though) I am ready to pick up where I left off on South Seas Fiji. I think I can do a set of May couching stitches on the Glittering Kimono mystery project each night and once that is done, work on South Seas Fiji. The best laid plans rarely work out the way you think they will but we are flexible here at Blog and will try juggling two projects again since Glittering Kimono has a repetitive section to tackle that I want to take in small steps to avoid mistakes.
Because it was early July when I started South Seas Fiji, I'm going to repeat what I said about it then below. You also need to remember that I have a copy of this design that is not standard. The black areas on my canvas are supposed to be grape. Leigh thought she caught and destroyed all the mistakenly painted ones and offered to replace it, but I like my unique and special black version. Besides, I can always put some grape thread on the black leaves to see if I like the effect and switch colors if I like the color by stitching with a dark grape-colored thread. Here is what Fiji is supposed to look like. This link shows all the South Seas ornaments in case you are curious.
I've posted a photo of my progress to date above. Remember, I've only stitched part of the right side. Nothing else has been started yet.
Ok, I'm quoting myself here, just to bring everyone up to date:If you hang out at vintage clothing and fabric stores, you'll be familiar with barkcloth. I always associated it with the 1940s but a quick search showed me that it was popular in the 1950s-1970s. Barkcloth is a heavy (upholstry weight) cotton fabric that is slightly ribbed. It was used for curtains, pilows and casual chair coverings when I was a child and gave a tropical feel to a room. In my area I see the vintage fabric recycled into tote bags and pillows. Here is a fabric site with a good selection of reproduction fabric in typical patterns.
http://www.jandofabrics.com/products.asp?id=18&PageIndex=2&PageSize=12&viewall=TrueWhen I looked at my Leigh South Seas Dynasty ornament (the original unstitched canvas is shown in the left column), barkcloth was what I thought of. Doesn't the right side of the ornament look like fabric to you? The areas that aren't black have washes of color on top of the sea green NP canvas. I don't want to loose that shading and I want to make this look slightly ribbed so I choose to lay long stitches horizontally across just the green areas with one ply of Thread Gatherer's Seaform Green (a sea green-blue-olive green mix). These stitches do not cover the black areas. I will handle them differently.
The photo above shows what I have done so far. I am busy couching down the silk with Accentuate 331 which is an opalescent white. The couching stitches are in a sort of brick stitch pattern, which is often referred to as Burden Stitch. It's slow going. I have to make sure I don't mess up the pattern as I jump from area to area. I started work by doing one long vertical line of couching stitches across the widest part of the area that covered as many green spots as possible. Now I'm working each section based off that. You have to be careful not to pull the couching stitches too tightly or the long horizontal stitches are pulled out of straight lines.
It's not only basketweave that is slow and boring stitching!
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
