WIP Wednesday, March 8, 2022

Hello Everyone and welcome to Works In Progress Wednesday or should I say, New Start Wednesday. During this past week, I’ve started 3 new pieces and have restitched parts of one piece multiple times it seems like I’ve had a new start.

Let’s start with my morning stitch, though, Winter Rose Manor.

I’ve continued to make good progress. This week I stitched the green bird and flower it’s on and continued to fill in the house. The flowers under the green bird are supposed to be the same color as the small birds. That’s the same color as the green birds beak which is very close to the house color and doesn’t show up. I think I’ll replace those couple of stitches in both birds beaks. Also I had a hard time with the color when taking the picture yesterday. The house is more pink than it’s showing. This is a hard piece to photograph.

It’s time for spring and we’ve had a few nice warm days, but for now, we are back into the mid 40’s and low 50’s for high’s. I guess that’s March in Virginia. To celebrate spring, I had three new spring starts last week.

First is Gathering Clover by Luminous Fiber Arts. I’m stitching it on 32 ct Sparrow Lugana using Cosmos variegated floss. I’ve stitched all of the “Gathering” borders 10 stitches at a time to help keep track of where I am, either 10 across or 10 down. Since this is a very variegated floss, it became blocks of color going across instead of flowing nicely like it did going down. I like the way the side looks, so I will go back and stitch up and down on the top instead of in rows so I get the same sort of variegation as the side.

I also started Let’s Talk Spring by Hands On Design and worked on it for two days. It’s stitched on 32 ct Charcoal Lugana with all the called for DMC floss. I hear floss tubers talking about how quick letters go, but they don’t stitch up that fast for me. I’m going to plug away on it a couple of days a week and hope to have it finished by mid-April.

My final new start is Seasons of the Heart – Spring by The Blue Flower. This is another Fiber on the Whims fabric called Brown Sugar. It’s a 40 ct and I really enjoy stitching on it. I’m using the called for DMCs on it, too, stitching 1 over 2.

I have to say, I’m having a tough time with Patriotic Rose by Threadwork Primitives. I had to restitch several of the leaves, then I had the left wing finished on the Eagle and was off by two stitches, then I decided I wasn’t happy with the red I had chosen.

You can see the original red I used above which is Licorice Red. As I was working on the eagle, it jumped out at me that it was too pink. The called for color is Barn Red by Classis Color Works. That’s the only thread I didn’t have. I’m also stitching it 2 over 2 on 32 ct instead of 1 over 2 on 32 ct because I wanted more coverage. You can see that the picture is much more primitive and muted looking than mine.

I switched the red to 2265 Aurifloss which is a warm red, and although it doesn’t look so bad in the picture, it really is much brighter than the leaves. The substitute DMC for the Barn Red is DMC 3777. To me that will be too dark, especially with 2 strands. I pulled out Weeks Red Rocks thinking that might work, but it’s very similar to 3777. DMC 349 and 817 are similar to the Aurifloss color, but may not be quite as bright. In the picture, DMC 22 looks like it’s almost the same color as Licorice Red, but it is a lighter version of 3777. I’m going to use it for a stripe or two in the flag and see if I like it before I rip out the Aurifloss.

It would seem that a good part of this week will be spent taking out stitches. Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

I don’t have any new stitching starts planned this week, but I’m taking a day off from quilting and will be cutting fabric for my nephews quilt. I need to get that done in order to meet my goal of having the top finished by the end of March. I hope you have a good and productive week. Thanks so much for stopping by.