So after a marathon session last night, I finished my Framed Lady. I’m going to be honest with you, it was a case of “Third time is the charm”. Here she is, in all her shiny (and unpressed) glory.
Small confession, her left arm.. or is it right? The one pointing down and not holding a flower anyway, I messsssed it uppppppp! Her hand is supposed to be more… well claw like actually. I made a mistake somewhere in the ground area under it, and I cannot for the life of me see exactly where I went awry. I’ve checked, counted, checked, counted and everything looks fine, but is still somehow wrong. I don’t know. I think it’s okay as it is. Yes? Validate me.
As mentioned, I actually had two stabs at this lady before starting this one. The first go was ruined by dodgy grid product. I picked up a clear perforated sheet that is designed to let you stitch onto any fabric, then dissolve the plastic in warm water. It sounded so much easier than the waste canvas method, which I usually avoid because I can never pull the threads out cleanly. I think this stuff would work super well for very small designs, it’s not made for larger things that are worked on longer term. Things stretch, shift and generally get messy.
As I worked down the left border I realised that even though I’d been super extra careful to tack the stuff on tight and smooth, it was buckling. You can see the ripples in this shot even. It was a MESS. Stitches vary in size and tension, the whole thing is slipping on a diagonal and it looks like hell. Ghastly stuff, won’t touch it again.
The second attempt I didn’t even photograph, I just gave up about 4 rows in. I was stitching the negative space on black aida with perle cotton. It looked like a dog had eaten it then brought it back up.
Here’s my poor old dog eared chart. The yellow is attempt 1, the orange is the final attempt, and the blue is attempt numero two.
You’ll notice the design is very blocky, and it did take some will power to not throw some half stitches in there to smooth it out a bit. It’s actually a filet chart from I-Don’t-Know-What-Year, but if you’d like to see it in all its glory and perhaps have three goes at getting it right yourself, you can grab the book .pdf from right here. Made available by the Antique Pattern Library.
