Another band for the Stitching Sister Counted Thread Band RR finished. This one is for Sarah in Texas. This one was a little more difficult for me to design for than the previous ones that I have done. Initially I thought that I would work some cherry blossoms, or maybe some Chinese scrolls, but when the sampler arrived, I didn't think these were suitable at this point in the sampler. Sarah had already worked scrolls in the previous band, so they were out, & the cherry blossoms were curvey & I felt this needed something geometric. So I looked to the card that came in the package for inspiration.
My eye instantly went to the key design in the border on the Emperor's robe, so I took one section, mirrored it, then flipped this to form my basic motif, which when repeated, reminded me of Chinese lattice work. Design decided on, I now needed to think of stitches. The fabric lent it'self to pulled work, something I have not done very much of, so I found a stitch called "Single Cross Eyelet" which I thought would work. So I graphed the key pattern over three squares on a graph, supposedly working the eyelets in a checkaboard pattern, only to find that this made the whole design much wider than what I intended. So then I marked the key pattern in just a single row of eyelets & it worked fine.
I worked the eyelets in two strands of DMC Stranded thread, & when they were finished I felt they were a little bland. I tried to outline them in back stitch but the eyelets are worked over five threads & this did not work out mathematically, so I tried over one thread (yuk!) and also over all five threads ( also yuk!). In the end I woked tiny cross stitches in blue over the single cross formed in the center of each eyelet.
So now this sampler is ready to continue on it's journey. Sarah, I hope you like what I did.
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