Thanks, Jane!

I've been following Jane's Chilly Hollow adventures as she begins working on the Tony Minieri piece, "STARS FOR A NEW MILLENIUM." Watching her careful step-by-step process has inspired me to pull out my MILLENIUM piece, which I started a few years ago and haven't touched in a long while.

I'm enjoying watching Jane as she thoughtfully considers her (many) options regarding color choices for her piece. She's even created a blog poll for interested readers to give their opinions on which colors/threads she should use. And there are a LOT of different threads used in this piece, so it's smart to plan ahead, before you start stitching.

Having said that, I must confess that that's not the way I'm tackling this project. Instead, I pulled all the possible threads I might want to use - as shown in the above photo (which has created a big knarly mess, frankly...)

My foundation variegated thread is one that I dyed myself - in my favorite pink & green combination - with some lavender and apricot thrown in for a little added spice! (This combination is similar to Caron Collections' 003 - "Meadow" or 088 - "Mountain Meadow" colors, which are favorites of mine, because they have a base green color plus pink, blue, apricot, yellow, lavender accents - allowing you to pick your favorite pastel accent color.) Below is a close-up of a few of the blocks, plus the variegated thread I'm using as the foundation...


This is such a large, complex piece, that the best way to tackle it is to focus on each block at a time. And each block is a stand-alone masterpiece by itself! So that's the way I've approached this big project: working each block as a separate item, mixing and blending threads to make each block work to my color specifications.

Anyway, this past weekend I waded back into the project by working first on the easier border and sashing (to re-familiarize myself with the design) then I continued on to get one more block finished - TA DA - thanks to Jane and her own Millenium adventure. (See Jane... I DID start stitching on it again!):


Surprisingly, I'm using more lavender and apricot threads than I expected. The lavenders are becoming the "zing" accent color, and the apricots are becoming the lightest "brights" in the piece. Totally unexpected -- but I'm letting the piece talk to me, and dictate the colors I use, block by block. It should definitely be interesting to see how this turns out!

Anyway, I wanted to thank Jane for getting me re-enthused about this large counted canvaswork piece - it's definitely a heirloom project... And if other stitchers out there are also working on their MILLENIUM pieces, please feel free to share your colors and stitching experiences as well, so we can all share this wonderful stitching adventure together!