BCQC Progress Picture

This week I've been working on my Basic Crazy Quilting Class project.  I've had a few minor difficulties, mostly caused by my own impatience to get stitching.  I ordered pearl cotton and silk ribbon online, and they were both supposed to be here by last Monday.  When the silk came, I realized that it was not going to co-ordinate very well with the pearl cotton I chose.  So I decided to look through threads I already had and see if  I had any threads that would work.

Years of cross stitching and picking up threads here and there have left me with a collection of WDW, GAST, overdyed silks and a few ribbons from various makers, Waterflowers, Waterlilies and a whole set of DMC flower thread I got when that was being discontinued.  I don't like to work in pastels very much, and the silk ribbon I had chosen from the online pictures was very pale.  I decided to use some of the fibers I already had to get started on the embroidery.  

I should finish this assignment today or tomorrow.  I only have the French knot flowers to finish.  (A note about my French knots:  they are really colonial knots, which are easier for me to do,) The French know flowers are supposed to lean in a pattern: right, straight, left, right, straight, left.  Mine do not.  I don't have that much control over my knots!  My flowers are random.  I thought random would look better than trying and almost succeeding at the pattern.

I'm not crazy about the overdyed silk floss I used for this herringbone stitch.  I started with 2 strands, but it looked too thin for the length of the stitches used, so I went back and stitched with 6 strands which looks a little messy to me, but I'm not ripping it out again.  

I am having a hard time getting used to the GIANT stitches in this piece.  I'm used to cross stitching on 32 ct. or 28 ct linen (16 or 14 stitches per inch).  Most of the stitches in this piece are 3/4 of an inch long.  To me, that calls for a heavier thread than either #8 or #12 pearl cotton. But since this is a class piece, I'm going to have to trust the teacher (she is great!), and do what she recommends.  By Thursday my pearl cotton arrived, and I was able to use some of that even though I think it will look a little garish with the silk ribbon colors I have now.

I have had some difficulty learning to use the templates for the seam stitches.  I can't seem to keep the templates straight on the line, so I have some extraneous pencil marks here and there.  I'm hoping the busyness of the embellishments will hide some of my imperfections. Again, I'm used to working on linen and using the threads to keep my stitches straight and uniform.  If I end up doing a lot of crazy quilting, I will need to use templates that I can see through,  printed on vellum or plastic, to keep my stitching lines where they need  to be,

Linking up:  Supermom No Cape