November TIF progress

My November TIF project is finally underway. I’m feeling my way here and I think I should have set it up differently perhaps. First, I tacked my paper form to the ground fabric, using the floche I’ll stitch with. I think perhaps I should have used something thinner. Then I basted the ground fabric to muslin. Which I probably should have done before basting the letters on. Here’s a picture of the basted piece, ready to go.

When I was at Designer's Desk in Geneva, I had walls of fibers to choose from (literally, there are moving pegboard panels four deep along two walls of a room, loaded top to bottom with fibers. A third wall is cabinets and more pegboards. And the DMC and Anchor flosses and perle cottons are in boxes elsewhere).

I like floche for satin stitch and they have a good variety to choose from. I brought my rust-dyed fabric with, thinking I'd go with a dark brown color. But the blue just jumped onto my fabric. A rich, royal blue. I also got a nicely complementary rust, in case I want to add some touches in that.

I began stitching on Monday night. It’s a bit awkward working with the paper but I think it can also help make some nice satin stitches. I’m using floche and that helps, too.

Here’s a photo of the progress I made on Monday. I began stitching in two places, to try and get the paper firmly onto the fabric. I have removed some of the basting as I’ve stitched. Mostly because the stitches holding the paper are made too far from the edges of the paper and thus stick out.

It’s tough going. The rust-dyed fabric is a bit heavier than the cotton I’ve hand quilted before and I’m finding my hands hurt after a couple of hours of stitching. But so far, so good. I hope to finish it this weekend.

Right now I'm planning to do the letters all in the one shade of blue, so the graphic effect will be similar to the maroon. (It's on maroon paper because that's the cover stock they were throwing away that I grabbed to use for projects like this--it's white on one side and shiny maroon on the other and will go through the copier and print on the white side.)

I did some searching online to see if I could find any photos of the small monogram letters of pressed paper used like I'm using my huge one, but I didn't find any. I remember seeing a box full of little glassine bags and each had several heavy card letters in an Old English or Germanic font for monograms. I've also seen them in a script type. The letters were rounded in the center of each stroke and would work like pad stitching. The largest were maybe an inch high. The instructions said to baste them onto the ground fabric and then satin stitch over them. I can't imagine they would be washable but many of the clothes in the 19th century were not washable.