Morecambe

A Pensive Face on a Pensive Moment

The many colour changes on A Pensive Moment were making for such slow progress that I was feeling like giving up. I had been thinking of starting to stitch the face for two reasons. One to check it was charted well and that I wasn’t going to stitch half the picture then be disappointed with the face and two, to see something emerge and thus motivate me to continue. With encouragement from the stitchers on the Golden Kite forum I carefully counted and stitched my way over to the face and began at the top of her head. When you are stitching it, because you are so close, you cannot see anything forming, it’s just a mass of stitches but step back and an eyebrow has emerged.

 

A few days later

 

 
 

Then an ear appeared

 

 

A Pensive Moment

As well as my other WIPS I am working on A Pensive Moment by Daniel Ridgway Knight, charted by Golden Kite. It has 200 colours and 116 blends. At first I thought it was "do-able" but I was only on the first column of sky, now that I have hit the confetti heavy foilage I have had to give up parking and stitch cross country. There were just so many colours in a 10 x 10 block that I was having to part the threads like a hair dresser just to try and see where to park my next thread. I made the fatal mistake of actually laying the pattern out and now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Can I live long enough to actually finish it, and my other wips? Should I just pack in all the advanced cross stitch and go back to Mirabilia's which seemed very advanced once upon a time but now seem easy.

 

Starting or finishing a cross stitch without turning the work over

I have been asked a few times how I start and finish my threads without having to flip the work. I am working on a Golden Kite pattern, A Pensive Moment which uses 200 colours and 116 blends and is on a 20 count aida. I use a lighted magnifier and I don't like to flip the frame to start and finish. I have many methods of starting and finishing my threads but my modified pin head stitch is the most useful, as long as you are not working on an evenweave one over one. Obviously it won't work one over one.

Here's how I start a thread. From the front of the fabric I put the thread into the fabric a few stitches away from where I wish to start, judging to leave some thread on the back to be worked over by subsequent stitches, and leave a little tail on the front which will be snipped off later. Many stitchers do this and put a knot in it, then it is called an away waste knot (I don't bother with a knot, it makes it harder to snip off) and then they start stitching. What I do, for extra security is where I start stitching I put in two little quarter stitches, that mimic the first leg of the cross. This is my modified pinhead stitch. When you work the second leg over it, you cannot see that the bottom leg was anything but a normal stitch. The aida holds the quarter stitches secure while the thread is stitched over on the back by subsequent stitches. To finish a thread I do the same in reverse - move to the next symbol of that thread a little bit away, make the two quarter stitches, bring the thread up to the front and snip it off. Later on, the little stitches will be have the top leg worked over and they vanish.

This is an illustration of the two little stitches waiting to be crossed.