Seven strawberries

Since Scottlee is on hold for a bit, I picked up Catherine Theron's Examplar IV yesterday. It's been a while since I've shown a progress picture of this piece, but it hasn't progressed very far. I did, however, finish the top border yesterday! The strawberries across the top are stitched in a combination of italian cross and smyrna cross.

Actually, I see that the web page I just referenced distinguishes between the italian cross and the arrowhead stitch. The italian cross shown is the way both Catherine Theron and Eileen Bennett's Red Book describe it, with the bottom horizonatal stitch done first. When I did it this way, the diagonal stitch always pulled the bottom stitch up underneath it. I then referenced Darlene O'Steen's The Proper Stitch, and she describes italian cross as the website describes arrowhead stitch. In this stitch, the diagonal is stitched first, so the horizontal and vertical don't get pulled out of alighment. This is actually the stitch I used because I though it laid better.