Satin stitches & stash enhancement

I haven't been posting over the last several days because there didn't seem to be much entertainment or educational value in a bunch of posts titled "Satin stitches", "More satin stitches", "Yet another day of satin stitches", and so on. At last though, I'm done with the satin stitches on the border of My Way.

According to the instructions, these were to be done in #5 pearl cotton, which would have worked up fairly quickly. I didn't really like the coarser look of the pearl cotton, though, so I used 5 strands of floss in a shade darker than the eyelets and basketweave. Of course, using floss meant laying each stitch. I love the play of light off of carefully laid threads, especially when viewed at an angle.

While it takes a bit longer, I really don't mind laying threads. I get into a rhythm, and it's pretty relaxing. There's no race, anyway - except to get the borders done before the class! Now, I've just got a bit of herringbone stitch to do outside of the satin stitches. I am waiting to see how the colors are going to play in the rest of the piece before deciding what to threads to use for the decorative stitching on top of the basketweave squares.

In answer to Cyn's question: I've only been able to find one picture of Carolyn Mitchell's My Way online. It was in a pdf of one chapter's newsletter, but I was able to save the image and repost it here. This version is a bit more washed out than other stitched pieces I've seen, but part of the challenge of this piece is picking your own color schemes.

Last week I mentioned something about starting on Luan Callery's Summer Dream. This didn't get too far, yet. I've managed to get the design on the fabric and mount and lace the fabric to the stretcher bars, but have yet to start stitching.

On to the second part of this post's title - did I say something about stash enhancement? Ah, yes. I managed to get into a little bit of trouble during Gay Ann's sale week. I have absolutely no idea when I'll get around to stitching these pieces, but I picked up the Almost Whitework Sampler, English Cottage Garden, and the Drawn Thread Sampler . I managed to save some pictures of these pieces before they disappeared from Gay Ann's website. I'm now waiting for the instructions to show up in the mail!




Speaking of Gay Ann Rogers, Colleen asked a question about the colors I used in Strawberry Girl. Colleen, I used the greens called for in the pattern, namely the DMC 500 series. I did change the red of the strawberries to a darker red (from a bright pink), and substituted threads from my stash for the Anchor browns in the hair and yellow in the flowers. I hope this helps you make your decisions for stitching yours!