Spring Stitching

As I write this, it's pouring with rain (of course it is) but the weather has been mostly sunny lately and Spring is definitely in the air. Which means it's time to start my Spring cross stitch sampler.

As regular readers will know, my daughter and I are stitching seasonal samplers from Little Dove Designs. We started with the Autumn one last September so this is the third in the series. It looks like it will be a lot more stitching than the Winter one, what with everything having burst into bloom. I've started the line of purple flowers across the middle (primulas?). 

I'm ahead of Rose at the moment but I suspect she'll soon overtake me as I'm also working on two other embroidery projects and keep flitting between them. First, there's this Brambly Hedge embroidery kit from the 1980s that Rose gave me for my birthday.

I'm using one of my new Q Snap Frames which is the perfect size for this little piece (this is the 8" set). It's been a long time since I did any freestyle embroidery but I'm pleased with how it's going so far.

I'm using my bigger set of clip frames for my other project which is quite a major undertaking.

I discovered Blackwork Journey's Blog last Summer and enjoyed reading through all the back issues; they're in the form of pdfs, one for each month. The designer behind Blackwork Journey is Elizabeth Almond and she has the most wonderful patterns, including many free ones. She explores a variety of techniques and I was particularly drawn to the pulled thread work. So, my project is a big sampler that combines pulled thread work, blackwork, cross stitch and pattern darning stitches.

It's called Pandora's Box and you can buy it as a pdf from the site or download the Free Instructions which were originally released as a Stitchalong. I bought the pattern which also includes tips and extra patterns as you go along - it's more than 100 pages which I thought was a bargain for £8.

The first step was choosing which threads to use. As well as a thicker white thread for the pulled work, you need a solid colour and a variegated one from the same colour family and then a metallic thread and some beads. I ending up ordering enough for two colourways so that I could choose between them. The first one was a mixture of blue, turquoise and silver.

In the end, I settle for these autumnal colours; I shall keep the blues for my next project.

You can see my pulled work grid in the background to these pictures. Although all the counting was a bit nerve-wracking, this was such a lot of fun to stitch. Basically, you use a crochet cotton and pull the stitches tight as you go, creating patterns of holes. That's all there is to it. This stitch is called four sided stitch and gives you little crosses on the back of the fabric. Here's a close up view of the front ...

And here's the whole grid ...

Now I just have to fill all those little boxes with stitching. This is the pattern for the first five squares.

The chart is the top row; the stitched squares are the row below. From left to right the patterns are: Blackwork, Assissi work (reverse cross stitch), Pulled Thread, Cross Stitch and more Blackwork. So far I've done the first three squares.

Despite being only about two inches square, each design is quite detailed and takes a long time to work. That intricate blackwork square is like drawing with thread. When I was a child, I used to doodle in squared maths exercise books and those doodles were just like this sort of pattern. The firs two squares will eventually have gold beads too but I shall add those at the end. I got a bit carried away with the whole 'pull the stitches tight' thing on the third square and ended up distorting the fabric so I had to unpick it all and re-do it. 

This is a lovely project to work on gradually, enjoying the process as much as the finished thing. Each square takes me about two evenings to stitch (not counting unpicking).

While all this stitching is going on inside the house, Spring is showing itself all round the garden too. There are primroses all over the place, mostly the pale yellow ones ...

... but there are a few renegade coloured ones too ...

The primroses are wild and just turn up where they feel like it but I have planted lots of daffodils too.

That's the old sink from the scullery.

It's not all random prettiness out there though. There's also this ...

This is the honeysuckle that started life in next door's garden but decided it liked it better in mine so came over the wall years ago. It now only has roots in my garden and is determinedly trying to march across it to the other side. Not this year though. As you can see, I've been waging war with it recently and there's now a good three foot less of it. If you look closely in the picture above you can see some green wire mesh amongst it. My son and I found that last weekend, still attached to a fence post which had once presumably held it on top of the wall. We managed to cut out most of it (and the post) but the plant has grown through the mesh for decades so we'll have to leave some behind.

As you can see, we had to cut off lots of its greenery; I'm hoping that it has time to grow some more this year. If not, it's going to be the highlight of my garden display all summer. The brown patch on the ground shows where it used to reach to. Oh and there's the post and meshing we got out from inside it, lying on the grass.

Gardening - 50% planting, 50% destruction.