framed | debbidipity

I’ve finished my blue (blackwork) castle at last! It really has been a test of my patience and tenacity, but I could see it finished in my mind’s eye and even knew where I was going to hang it!

In spite of it having been worked on a stretched frame, I could see some of the horizontal lines particularly are not quite straight. Here are the last few diaper sections stitched.

It took me a couple of weeks to pluck up courage to soak it gently before blocking it, but it’s still not quite right.

More adjustment of the pins, before leaving it to dry. It’s much better, but you can see the strips of fabric are not straight.

Looking at it after the pins were taken out, I realised that the blue fabric was not big enough to stretch over a backing board, so I left the fabric to use for stretching.

I’ve laced it over a piece of mountboard that was exactly the right size top to bottom, but narrower left to right. It’s a bit cobbled, but it was the best I could do with the finished piece. I should have started with a bigger piece of even weave but, with my lack of experience and knowledge of blackwork, I only had this one piece of blue and thought it would work. I would say that I’ll know next time, but there are no plans to do more blackwork any time soon!

I had stacked it all up at the end of the kitchen table to be able to eat, and thought it looked fun with all the angles, but I had no intention of hiding any of my hard work!

I cut the mount to leave as much blue as possible at the top and sides. I am aware of leaving more at the bottom, but it grounds it at the bottom, and I remember seeing Neuschwanstein many, many years ago against a beautiful blue sky with our dear German friends. The narrower mount board meant that I could adjust left to right to centre it more easily.

These are some postcards of Neuschwanstein that we bought at the time and framed. It was only as I was hammering in a nail for the blue work that I noticed how badly marked the mount is (from an exploding radiator valve years ago). Another little job to procrastinate about, tidying up in there.

It’s in our “spare” bedroom, but not exactly hidden away, because it greets you as you get towards the top of the stairs.

Thanks to Alex for the “Blackwork Palace” workshops at “In the stitch zone”. I finished it to take to show the rest of the group before we broke up for the summer…… although many of the others had finished theirs this time last year! Thanks also to Liz Almond for the “Blackwork Journey” workshop at the Spring meeting of YHEG, which finally prompted me to start on the diaper patterns.

I’ve been having a tidy-up and sort out recently, and have been trying to deal with things as I got to them rather than the out of sight out of mind technique: a slow process.

One of the things that I have finished is the cushion stitch piece from last year. Last seen last November, and it was finished then (at least the stitching, “Move it on”), but I was not sure what to do with it.

I finally decided to frame it in a black Ikea frame, but wasn’t sure whether to mount it traditionally with cream board up to the edge. I then decided it would look better laced over card and put on a backing board. Somewhere along the line, it became a piece of black mount board. It is stitched through to anchor it. The orange cushions echo the colour of the wall behind where it’s going to live, and it looks as if it’s always been there!

The threads that have been left together have all been put away in the relevant places, in case I decide to make it bigger.

Another piece that has been around for a month or so was an encrusted letter that was started at Alex’s “In the stitch zone”. I went off piste having decided to do my initials DD one inside the other. The background is a beautiful piece of slubbed olive green silk. I tacked the outline of both Ds, then used stem stitch to work from one side to the other on the outer D. The vaguely leaf shapes were done in a lovely variegated thread that I had been rather frugal and precious with.

The inner D continued with finer perlé threads, but with no more photos taken until this week. After some discussion with Alex, we decided that I needed to echo the pinky reddish tone from the outer D. I got rather carried away with loose fly(ish) stitches going over the leaf shapes, adding more over the outer D as well, to give more definition up to the tacking outline.

Alex said it made her think of the brambles of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It’s finished, apart from taking out the tacking threads.

This is it with the tacking taken out. I’ve missed a stitch in the middle at the bottom!

At Allsorts a couple of sessions ago we made tiny plastic canvas Easter baskets. I really dislike plastic canvas to work on, especially when it needs joining together, so I really messed around using scraps cut off other things and odds and ends of threads and ribbons in yellows and greens.