Thursday, March 30, 2017

Sashiko adventures

I was planning to turn my Sashiko panels into cushion tops but than decided not too. I have too many small cross-stitched finishes for this very purpose. Made "flower cloths" our of them. In fact, original Japanese cloths are not supposed to be bound but since I had raw edges, need to make them to look pretty. Used cotton leftovers from a quilt. Obviously, just scraps.




Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Calendar. April.

Joyful World calendar (April) by The Snowflower Diaries (free) - http://thesnowflowerdiaries.blogspot.com
Start No 12, finish No 9 of 2017.
17-26 March 2017.
Had to outline the bunny, my fabric is too light for white floss.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Cottonwood leaves

Finally I felt ready for weaving.
CottonCloud's Cottonwood leaf towel kit was waiting for too long.
As I am not fond of measuring warp and dressing the loom, it takes a lot of time for me to made up my mind. It seams I "overwaited". As a result I made three major mistakes that took two weeks to correct.
First of all I measured wrong number of 10 brown threads (6 instead of 16). However, I noticed this only after the loom was fully dressed. Initially I thought I miscalculated natural ones and this would only make my towels a bit narrower. No big deal.
Wrong! Big deal!



As I could not leave the warp as is, I decided to do everything properly and measured 10 more browns and was planning to add them to the left part of the warp, it's not that I need to re-dress everything.
Wrong again!
Somehow the threading did not work, it was supposed to end on Shaft 3 but it did not.
I recalculated all ends and realized that I had 2 extra ends in the middle, 307 instead of 305. Not a problem, just take them out. But still no match.
I checked every thread and every heddle twice, everything seemed to be correct, but still no match.
Two days later it finally came to me that I misread the threading chart. It had one thread at the end of the middle section for balance and I viewed it as part of the pattern and repeated it three extra times.

Happy end.
I am proud of myself for not giving up and finally having everything in order.



Monday, March 13, 2017

Winter

For me the winter is over. Finished Seasons in Chalk - Winter (Just Cross Stitch magazine February 2016).
Start No 2 Finish No 8 in 2017.
2 January - 10 March 2017
Fabric - Slate by Hand Dyed by Stephany
The favorite part is the snowmen; he is sooo happy.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

February finishes

Two more finishes this month.
Joyful World calendar (March) by The Snowflower Diaries. 17-26 February 2017. 

Ink Circles' Turtles All the Way Down. Stitched with DMC Color Variations 17 Jan-28 Feb 2017.

Big turtle shells from top to bottom:
DMC 48, 4040, 4190, Anchor 1344, DMC 4180, 4220, 4100, 4060, 4170, 4020, 4050, 4120, 4240, and other DMCs as charted.