My notebook and samplers were returned by the course teacher, Judy Jeroy, last week, along with a very nice letter with some tips, comments on what was well done and what could be improved. The next step is line stitches and filling stitches. I've begun here--outline and stem, plain and whipped. (the right half is whipped, the left plain). You can see my filling stitch boxes penciled in below. I spent time over the July 4th weekend going through my books and noting stitch diagrams to use. I sorted through the books and put many back into more out-of-the-way piles. I also made a plan for how I'll stitch the second pocket.
I've begun working more seriously on my paper topic now that it's been approved. This week I chatted with one of our reference librarians (my office is housed in the law library) about it and provided some suggestions.
While I was waiting for the package to return to me, I stitched a leaf sampler. The leaves are fairly large, a couple of inches long, and are stitched with a softly variegated knitting wool. I chose it because it has a fairly tight twist so the stitches are clearly defined and it was large enough to work with the large leaf size. And this is more my kind of green than the brighter one I'm using for the samplers. I just used a scrap of twill. I cut out a few leaf-shaped templates from paper and traced them right-side-up and upside-down then connected them with a meandering stem.
I forgot to note down the top one and I can't remember it's name. The base is a woven trellis and then stitches are whipped around each intersection.
Buttonhole
Cretan Stitch Variation
Wave
Open Fishbone
Leaf
Raised Fishbone
Cretan
Flat
Fishbone
Romanian Couching
Sources: Fry, Christie and Thomas
