Daily Stitching

 After dyeing the fabric I wanted to make sure that all of the fabrics would play nicely together. I put several squares up on my planning wall, some embroidered and some not and thought that yes, they are compatible. I will be doing a lot of tweaking and rearranging when it comes to assembly time, but that's a long time from now.

I spray basted the fabric to washed flannel and I have cut out 180 squares. That should hold me for awhile, if I persevere that long.

But another thing that I noticed was VALUE. Even if the thread was a contrast in color, as in medium gold on medium blue, the thread was not visible at more than two feet away. These little squares will be sewn together when finished and I want every design to show up. With that in mind I will now use a dark color for the embroidery.....dark blue, dark green, dark rust, or burgundy. The last three that I did this week use the darker colors and they look much better. I also changed from two stands of floss to three strands, a little harder to pull through, but looking much better.

Another thing that I decided this week was to use just a straight stitch with as many variations as I could until I switch to other stitches.

I think I should get extra credit for this one. I spent the better part of a lazy afternoon watching CNN making  all those tiny stitches, but I do like the results.

The cold weather and endless hand washing are wreaking havoc on my poor fingers. And embroidering is not helping. The skin on the tip of my thumbs especially is splitting and bleeding. I use hand lotion and slather my hands in Aquaphor every night and wear cotton gloves to bed. That helps a little but I was still having too much pain. Then I remembered what a friend who has since moved away used to do when hand sewing and it works! Two layers of good old adhesive tape. It works like a charm. It doesn't matter if I have to wash my hands and it doesn't leave a sticky residue on my nail or finger. This will be a staple in my embroidery kit.

Linking up with Off the Wall Friday.