Ladies of The Sea Update
How is your summer? Have you had time to enjoy the great outdoors while balancing enough time to stitch? It has been beautiful here in Virginia! Here is my progress on Ladies of the Sea and a couple of random tips. All of the ships are appliquéd, and about a quarter are embroidered with their rigging lines. My friend Sharon offered to stitch the ship names on her embroidery machine – THANK YOU! I was worried about inking as my hands shake too much.
I thought I would get clever with the riggings and use one strand of embroidery floss for the sails and #12 pearle cotton for the rigging. I also found a “rope” embroidery stitch that I was bound determined to use. The first problem was that the rope stitch was like “tatting” . . . where you stitch for a half hour, then push the stitches together and have about an eighth of an inch of stitching complete. UGH! This would take me the rest of my life to complete the rigging (I am NOT young!) I got over that stitch REAL quickly. Taking my lead from Sue Garman, I decided to use the old reliable outline stitch. After completing the sail on the far left, I felt that this combination of embroidery floss and pearle cotton was too thick and would overpower, or distract your eye from the appliquéd ships. So I abandoned this idea, too. After this “false” start, I decided on a variegated King Tut 40/3 thread for the sail definition, and one strand of black embroidery floss for the rigging. I completed the rest of the block this way, and will tear out and re-stitch the far left sail. Just my experience.
Now I am working on the first border.
PS – Mrs. J.O. you were right! The border has taken me almost a week to get ready to stitch. Signed, “Mrs. Smarty Pants.” The other problem I am encountering is that the borders are not nearly as portable as a ship block. Rick had some medical challenges this past week that landed us back in the hospital several days – so stitching on the border was not an option. We are back on track now!
What are you working on? Please send pictures.
Don’t forget, the Class Catalog for the 2018 Academy of Applique will be available August 5, 2017 and Registration is Labor Day, September 4, 2017 at noon EST.
Keep Stitchin,
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