Well, the background is finished, the wide borders are done, the corners just need finishing off and the narrow borders are begun. One day I will get to the main event - the horse.
Here is a bit more detail for the corner and borders. For the narrow borders I used hemstitch with offset clusters for the side and hemstitch and herringbone at the bottom. These two borders will be repeated on the other two sides. Click on the image to see it larger.
The stitches for whitework are pretty straightforward, it's all about consistent tugs in the right direction. The effect is pretty though.
I have used coton a broder for the corners and the wide border - just because I preferred the look of it. The narrow borders are worked in stranded cotton like the rest of the piece.
I am looking forward to moving on to the horse.
I have been very lazy about posting here, blame it on post-christmas blues or something. But the stitching is coming on slowly. The background is almost three quarters complete, as you can see I have just randomly repeated rows of the same stitches to give a lacy, open effect. I have mainly used 3 sided stitch, 4 sided stitch, honeycomb stitch in 2 different variations, stem stitch, spaced satin stitch and chained border.
I have drawn the border threads and used double crossing clusters for two borders and knotted coral clusters for the other two. The bars are corded and then the first corner woven. Preparing the corners took some time but I quite like the finished corner - only 3 more to do!
Oh yes, I used coton a broder for the borders and corners, it seemed to give more substance to them and looked less mean.
I have a bit of a love-hate thing going with this piece, but I seem to with most pieces at this stage so - Get Over It!
