My horse revisited

My horse (whitework) returned to me last week, so here is the final, mounted image. I used pale green silk behind the piece.

The RSN may not like him, but I do!

What a difference the lighting makes.

I have been working on the trailing. I must say that I find it quite difficult to keep it smooth and shiny. Only practice will improve it I suspect. I have started on the eyelets which means that you can finally tell that this is an Appaloosa! 

I have put in two photographs designed to show different things. The first is a shot using normal lighting.

The next one uses side lighting, which highlights the trailing.

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Well, I have started the trailing which means that, finally, the horse is starting to appear.

It's fiddly to do and my curves aren't so very smooth, but at least I am making some progress. I am using a single strand of stranded cotton over a six strand core.

Enclosed!

Well, it snowed last week, again. I was supposed to be going to see Tracy oin Durham on Thursday, but it wasn't possible to get out of the village - and it certainly wouldn't have been possible to get back. The horse remains untouched. On the other hand, both the wide and narrow borders are now complete.

Snow willing, I will go to Durham on Friday and get the horse started.

Boundary!

 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. 

Slowly,slowly!

Well, it's been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that but I have been busy stitching. With whitework "reverse stitching" is pretty easy - a welcome change from blackwork where it was pretty difficult. Anyway I am making progress now and trying to catch up because I am behind schedule with the Diploma course.

This is what the piece looks like now. I have removed the threads to make a wide border all round and have worked almost halfway up the background behind the horse in a variety of stitches. The stitches that I have used so far are: chained border, three sided, four sided, waffle, honeycomb and spaced satin. For the Diploma you need to use about five stitches, but I have taken a more the merrier approach so far.

This photograph gives a slightly closer view of the stitches. As you can see, I have just left the space within the horse outline completely untouched.

The border has been hemstitched; the drawn threads woven inand blanket stitched and the bars worked.

There is still a lot of work to do though.

Beginning whitework

Well, after a bit of a false start, my whitework is actually underway.

It is pretty hard to see the design on this photograph, but it is a horse trotting.

All that I have done so far is to start on the borders - a bit of drawn thread and hemstitching, and then started to fill in the background to the horse with some pulled thread stitches. So far I have used chained border and three sided stitch. There is a photograph below of the tiny bit that I have done.

The idea is to use a whole variety of stitches to make up the background. Should be fun!
 

Whitework begins

Well, I have mounted my blackwork and handed it in, so it is straight on to whitework. I am running a bit behind schedule, so there is no time to draw breath between pieces. There is very little to show for an awful lot of work so far. Like so many things whitework is all in the preparation. So the linen is on my slate frame; the design is tacked on; the centre is found and I have counted and recounted threads into multiples of 12. There is really nothing to take a photograph of at present, maybe next time.