Weekend Activities: Shading and a Kit

This weekend I spent a serious amount of time with needlepoint. I was only interrupted by a holiday outing to see a play, which was fun so I didn't complain.

I tried out some shading between two different color families. Using the Bound Cross stitch with 4 strands of floss, I tried shading downwards within a family and across between families. The colors were the purple family and the blue family. It didn't have a good start, the shading between the families look distinctly jarring. However, I persevered and I found that over a number of stitches with very gradual shading, the effect actually became pleasing. I think that the relationship between the specific colors chosen in each family is absolutely critical, however.

I did that particular exercise on my sampler. On Saturday I set that aside in favor of trying out the kit I bought a few weeks ago. I had purchased a Bucilla kit showing a house with garden. I am not particularly fond of the design, but it seemed to have enough going on that it would be a challenge and a learning experience. I am not sure how to categorize it, so I'll simply say that it is an art project worked with needle and thread on some sort of textile ground.

We picked up appropriately sized stretcher bars at Michael's, plus a staple gun which I did not previously have. My companion (a man) insisted that tacks would be too hard to push into the wood and the stapling with a staple gun is much more satisfying. I think these things are true. I had a little trouble getting the hang of the staple gun, but now that I've stapled my carpet to.. itself (accidentally) and successfully mounted the kit's textile on the stretcher bars, I think I've got confidence with it.

The next thing I did was divide up the fibers by type (floss, wool) and by color family. Some colors were quite difficult -- what's the difference between grey and dusty grey? Is pale yellow actually a cream color? But I got it done by process of elimination and guessing.

Finally, I got started. I started in the upper left (not heeding my own previous advice to start in the upper right since I'm left handed). The work involved a number of new stitches:

Satin stitch -- has gone off like a charm. I like this stitch a lot and it is very easy to do if you are just staying in the lines.

Split stitch -- I had a lot more trouble with this one. My problem is that when I bring the needle back through the canvas and split the previous stitch, that previous stitch actually becomes loose. There doesn't seem to be a way that I could manage to retighten this stitch once it is split and the new stitch is being worked. Not all of the stitches turned out this way so it might be practice.

French knot -- Again, I had some trouble with this one, which is a shame because it is used in every flower on the canvas, it seems like. I think I need to practice this a little bit on my sampler and also look at a couple of different sites with diagrams or descriptions to see if a little variation in the instructions will help me find a way to make it work.

The design is machine-stamped so following the lines is sometimes a bit of guesswork. I also think the person who did the stitchery for the enclosed completed photograph cheated and used wool for a lantern instead of floss as the instructions specified -- as the photo shows a much larger and fuzzier lantern post than what I ended up with for floss.