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Oh wow - everything is gorgeous. Great framing jobs.

Thank you

I have taken the piece out and photographed it off the rolling frame and in natural sunlight which makes it easier to see the geese:



And the back:



This one is now on hold until after I have taken it along to our sewing group.

Onward...

This is a Lanarte kit: My first impressions are not good as the evenweave fabric has been printed out of line. I first mounted it up and found I could not straighten it in the 30" of the frame so had to take it off again and cut two triangles off top and bottom to square it up:



This has shortened the fabric by 4cm Leaving about the same again for folding over the mounting. The chart has stitches over 160 stitches vertically on 27 count fabric so that is about 30cm and the pattern claims the piece is 32cm Tall So a 1cm border could be possible.

The last thing I will mention is that the photo on the front of the kit shows the background printing being a lot darker than it actually is so I will have to decide if I wish to make it more pronounced using some half stitches in single strand later.

Jo

The back of the Poppy Geese is about as perfect as a back can be. And again the whole piece is beautiful.

I'm not sure what you mean by the Lanarte kit fabric being printed out of line. My guess is that part of the design is printed on the fabric? Can you not return it for a proper piece?

Carole

Thank you Carole,

On the Lanarte fabric they have printed a green pattern, which is lighter in the middle shading to darker green at the edges. This printed area's outside is rectangular and was printed at an angle to the fabric's threads: if you followed one of the weft threads from the top of the printed area on one side to the other of the printed rectangle at the other end would be 4cm higher than the printed panel.

This kit I brought new from Amazon and has been in my collection for over a year so I cannot return it. I can only mutter on here so that others check theirs when it arrives so if they have the same problem they can act on it.

I've done a bit on one of the Butterflies and I prefer working in single strand on the Linen than working on the Lanarte evenweave which is soft and even after starching it has a lot of give in it.

Jo

A quick pic of how I am getting on with my Rome piece:



I do like working on the 36 count linen in single strand

(The two red blobs at the top are two of the every thin glass headed pins that I use to mark where I am heading for as I stitch across the fabric.)

Jo

I love the Rome piece! I use a single strand when stitching over 1 on any fabric which is 28ct or higher. This is going to be beautiful.

Steam.Jo wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2023 1:58 pm his kit I brought new from Amazon and has been in my collection for over a year so I cannot return it. I can only mutter on here so that others check theirs when it arrives so if they have the same problem they can act on it.

Even though you can't return the kit to Amazon, I would think Lanarte would replace the fabric, and should at least be told about the fabric. I don't think it is unusual at all for cross stitchers to wait a year or even more before opening a kit to stitch. I rarely use a kit, but I have some that I saw that were perfect for future events (births, weddings etc, birthdays) and we know that cross stitchers have a tendency to accumulate stash that will not be used for perhaps several years. I'd send them a message.

Carole

I've started so I'll continue it should fit.

Starting in the centre of this piece is what I believe is a Painted Lady:



The Painted Lady is a summer visitor here in the UK migrating from Africa each year arriving about this time of the year (May/June) there are a couple of generations of eggs/caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly before they migrate south to avoid our winter.

Jo

You’ve made a beautiful start. And I love painted ladies. I volunteer weekly at the Butterfly House here and we usually have several in the flight house.

What a gorgeous finish on the geese and poppies, and I love the way you document the process with what works and what doesn't. The new butterfly is looking good too!

Thank you

(There does not seem to be much going on on the forum so I seem to be posting more often to encourage people back )

I have started on the flowers and on the corn heads:




Jo

I love your photos of your work and am glad that your are posting more. My stitchy bug is on his way home (received a message from him) so hopefully y'all will start seeing photos from me again.

Carole

It looks great and i love seeing your updates. I haven’t picked up a needle for a few days now.

Lovely updates of a delicate piece! And thank you for being encouraging to us all to post

Sitting on an ear of corn I have found a Green Veined White butterfly:



As a Gardner I dislike both Large white and Small White butterflies as they wreak havoc round the garden. But the distinct vein lines under the lower wing tells me that this is their cousin the Green Veined White, a butterfly found on wild flower meadows.


The chart for this piece shows little backstitching but I think it would look better if I added some

Jo

I don't usually advocate for back stitching, but sometimes it makes a huge difference. Can you tell from the picture of the finished piece on the package whether more back stitching is needed for the finished piece? I've added and left off back stitching when I thought it was needed or not and I'm sure you have also. One of the great things about cross stitching is that there's plenty of freedom to do what you want!

Carole

Hi Carole, the chart shows very little backstitch but I believe the butterflies and other insects would be much clearer with extra backstitching. What ha...

I am currently working on the poppy:



It seems very orange to me and the centre is much greener than the type in my garden. And there lies a tale: I was convinced that the colour was wrong and unpicked 3 strands worth of stitching before I realised that I had actually used the correct colour

That encouraged me so much that I did a bit more on Rome:



Only to find I had been stitching with 2 strands and not the single one this should be done in. So not a good week.

Jo

There are some weeks that don't work! It's never fun to pick out a wrong color to find out it was the right color after all. On the Rome piece, I am hoping that you were supposed to stitch the one section with one strand and not the whole piece. The fabric looks like a very fine linen which is what made me wonder. Please tell me it is only the one that is showing in the photo.

Carole

The good news is that I only stitched 5 colours in two strands before I realised my mistake It takes about half the time to unpick as it does to sew in the first place so it just wasted a few more hours. There had been a lot more of the bottom window at one point

I am working on getting the stitching back into place. Once it is redone it is easy to forget the failure.

Jo

If you recall last year I did a study into needles so time to provide an update:

I still love the Permin and tulip needles but they are expensive.

My go to needle is now John James size 28. I initially purchased 50 of these from an Ebay seller, then last month another 100 so I can thread each colour onto a separate needle and hold them in one of those (horrible plastic) needle holders I provide a picture of not long ago. I have decided that being able to do this out weighs having the nicer to use Permin or tulip needles and have just ordered another 100 of the JJ 28s for the stash


I also have in my collection some John James 'petites', i.e. shorter length tapestry needles, so far I have not used these and have been using needle threaders to thread the very last few mm of thread through the eye of a standard length needle which has already been push through the fabric up to the bottom of the eye. I then poke it back up eye first if required. I should remember to try the petites

Jo

My go to needle is John James size 28 petite. In fact when I use a "regular" size needle it feels awkward. I also ordered a lot the last time because I hate threading needles and keep each color (or blend) threaded until I need to rethread. I have developed a complicated way of keeping the needles separated using plastic bobbin containers. Didn't start out complicated because I wasn't stitching large pieces but over the years has grown so that for my HAEDs or other large projects I may be using 6 different containers. Cumbersome but easier than anything else I have tried.

And yes once you have restitched what you picked out, it's like it never quite happened.

Carole