TIF in progress

I finally began stitching on my pulled thread bands for April. Band one, on the pink, is complete and band two underway. Band one is the most traditional. I don't consider it seriously traditional because I didn't count it out exactly. It's off center. I didn't count the number of threads in the drawn section so I was lucky the twists came out even. I used perle 12 and 8 on linen, white on white.

Band two gave me fits. I scanned these images last weekend and I have the band nearly done now. The linen is 32 count and my eyes just can't see it. The sample shows the threads for the outer edge withdrawn. I did four-sided stitch with perle 12 around the edge and then folded under a double hem and backstitched it through the four-sided stitches.

I'll do more four-sided stitch around the drawn thread panel. In the scan, I'm in the process of doing the reweaving of the drawn threads for the edge of the open panel (that's the part I had a tough time seeing). I've withdrawn and rewoven a few threads here, working from the outer edge of the panel toward the center--you can see threads withdrawn all the way across ready to have the thread next to each unwoven from the center to the edge of the panel and then rewoven to the outer edge. I do one thread at a time generally and weave the threads back in before moving on just to keep things stable.

I've already begun marking the third panel, just to give my eyes a rest. It's on lugana which is much easier to count.

One tip I learned (I should have known better and paid for forgetting)--work with a well sized or starched, crisp fabric. The linen for panel one had been washed and it was really hard to keep crisp folds and to get the threads a the corners to stay put. It really wanted to unravel. If I'd added some sizing before I began I would have had fewer problems. The linen for band two behaved much better.