Monday, December 15, 2014

Catching Up

Since I was unable to stitch Tuesday and Wednesday, I did just a little catching up Thursday and Friday mornings: 3 hours working on The Dragon of the Summer Sky and 2 hours on the Sage tea towel.   This way most everything in the week's rotation saw a little time on the hoop, scroll bar or Q-snaps.  

Most of the remainder of Friday, was spent power napping vegetating.   But power napping sounds so much more dignified.

I made Dragon Dreams' The Dragon of The Summer Sky my weekend choice piece again and made some pretty substantial progress on it.  If you count four linen threads from the right edge of the comet, you will have located the division between page one and two of the chart.  As you can see, I am nearly done with the fill stitching of page one and have made a good start on the defining stitching of page two.  I can not even begin to express how much I detest the DMC satin floss [aka rabid rayon].  If I hadn't already used rayon floss in the companion piece, The Dragon of the Winter Moon, I would have switched it out for a silk in the same color.  The wretched stuff has a recoil, requiring a very tight tension when stitching, which slows the process down.  It's like using pulled stitches.  It also has such a high loft that each stitch obscures the linen threads immediately beside the stitch taken, making it necessary to use a thumbnail to locate the exact hole for the next stitch.  This also slows down the process considerably.  It took me a full hour to stitch just two rows of the fill stitch in the dragons' haunch.  This is the last of my Dragon Dreams charts.  And while I love Jennifer Aiken Smith's designs, I very much doubt I will miss her penchant for using rayon fibers.  I will not be using the nasty stuff again with the possible exception of using my remaining and very small stash of the stuff on Christmas ornaments.  I can manage small stints of stitching with rayon and even I will admit that it gives a nice sheen to an ornament.  But large areas like my dragon's body ... never again!!!

4 comments:

Vickie said...

I hope you are feeling a lot better.
I cannot agree with you more on the rayon floss!

Linda said...

Wonderful progress Regina. Such a pretty design.

Linda

I have a few of her charts. I don't remember which ones you have. Would you be interested in selling me the ones I don't have. The one you kindly sent me will be started in Jan.

Linda

Julie said...

Your dragon does look super...even with the naughty floss.

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

It certainly looks like you made a lot of progress, even if the thread was annoying to stitch with! It looks satiny even in a photo on a ipad so I am sure it looks amazing in real life.