Mini Mystery Monday Floral Surprise pt. 2

Now that you have your simple lattice foundation stitched, we can add a bit more stitching around it.

Here's the graph to follow for this week:

Outside your stitched box (the narrow borders) you need to lay a pair of metallic ribbon stitches "in the ditches", going the full length of your center box - as shown by the red arrow above.

Or, if you prefer, you can count up/over and stitch the outer scalloped border first, using 1 strand of your lighter green thread. If you stitch your scallops before laying the ribbon threads, just be sure to count carefully to leave/skip over enough canvas threads for your long ribbon stitches!  The green arrow above points to a good place to begin stitching your scallops.

After you have the long metallic threads laid, and the scalloped borders in place, you just need to add a bit of gold metallic accent stitches, as indicated by the pink arrow above.  First, place a straight stitch across the center, then add the elongated cross stitch on top, so it holds down the laid metallic ribbons, using 1 strand of your fine gold #8 braid.  While you're traveling around the square, you can also add the other gold accent stitches in the corners when you reach those spaces.

That's it for this week!  Next time, we'll start filling in the diamond spaces with a different little flower, which will get us ready for adding the special flower in the center diamond.....  Have fun!!

(P.S.:  If you're having trouble opening the graphs with Internet Explorer, try using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.  My blogsite doesn't do well with Explorer, but interacts fine with Chrome and Firefox... go figure!! )

Mini Mystery Monday: A Floral Surprise

Now that Spring has definitely sprung, and we're fast on the way to full Summer, I thought a floral design would be appropriate for the next Monday mystery.  So grab a handful of threads and join me in this one!

There's no variegated thread in this one, but here are the threads I've pulled to stitch with:

I've grabbed some half-skeins of DMC #5 pearl cotton 3345, 3346, 797, 792 with Kreinik #8 Braid 3280 (that's just what I had laying around, but any other gold will work just as well)...

Basically, you'll need:
     -  TWO greens - one dark, one medium
     -  TWO blues - one dark, one medium
     -  ONE gold braid you have on hand
     -  and an 8" x 8" piece of 18 ct. canvas, either eggshell or sage green is fine for this piece

The size of this piece is apprx. 4.25" x 4.25" on 18 ct. canvas (and apprx. 3.5" x 3.5" on 24 ct. Congress Cloth, if you choose to stitch it smaller; if so, adjust your threads accordingly to finer #8 pearls or stranded floss/silk with a thinner #4 metallic braid).

And here's the graph you can start stitching from:

It's a standard grid/lattice formation that we'll have a lot of fun filling with our mystery flowers later on.  Here's how mine looks at this point, with half of the blue Smyrna Stars stitched:

Well, that's all for the first installment of this mystery project..... Enjoy getting your lattice set up and I'll see you next Monday for more fun stitching!

Friday Flowers: Pansy Faces

Last fall I planted lots of pansies/violas around my backyard, and I deliberately chose a variety of interesting colors and patterns.They settled in throughout the winter and then in spring they really started to flourish, turning up their faces to the increasing sunshine.  Recently, I went out and got down on my hands and knees and took up-close photos of all the different varieties of colors and faces and thought you'd enjoy seeing their amazing variety....  (And now when I go out in the backyard I feel like there are crowds of happy pansy faces all smiling at me!)

 

 

 

 

 And to end this post, here's Katie's pensive pansy pose:

HAPPY FRIDAY!