September 19, 2006

Tiny Sampler and More Whale Hunting



Here's some stash that came in the mail on Saturday from The Sampler in Plymouth. It's supposedly a mini needlepoint sampler, but I'd describe it as petit point, although technically that may not be correct. In any case, it's tiny, measuring just 1 1/2 by 2 inches. I've taken out the silk gauze and placed a penny on it for scale. Silk gauze has an interesting texture like fine, strong net and is not as flimsy as I anticipated. I may stitch it in hand, although the pattern gives time-consuming directions for sewing it to a piece of cloth, stretching the cloth in the normal way on a Q snap or hoop and then cutting away the cloth behind the silk gauze. Yikes--I'm way too impatient for that--only as a last resort. I think I'd buy a larger piece of silk gauze and stretch it directly first if hand-stitching doesn't work. Oddly, silk gauze is relatively inexpensive--that piece purchased alone would be about 75 cents. I would never have bought the kit based on the package picture; I don't think it looks that striking. But I saw it IRL framed with a lot of other mini samplers by Threads Through Time at The Sampler, and it blew me away. So tiny, so intense, mounted in its tiny frame. An eensy work of art. Probably perfect over the mantel of a dollhouse fireplace if I went for such things.
One drawback to it, of course, the very helpful woman at The Sampler warned me, was the near impossibility of frogging out the stitches if you make a mistake!


This picture's a bit bleached-out because of the flash, but here's a progress pic of Whale Hunting. I looked back through my posts and realized that I have been working on this less than a month, and I have most of a set of three vertical charts done and can then move left or right and do another column. Three charts is roughly 1/4 of the design, since it's comprised of 12 charts, so I feel happy with my progress.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the Mermaid Sampler. I've never stitched on Silk gauze but I have felt it. Let us know if you like stitching on it :). By the way, when is your birthday?

Annemarie said...

Great progress on Whale Hunter indeed. But what a large project! The Mermaid Sampler is cute! I have something very similar in lokk and size. Haven't stitched it yet, though, so I can't tell you what it's like to stitch something so tiny.

Anna van Schurman said...

I once took a silk gauze class and I've never finished the project because of the unstitching problem. Our project was mounted to a piece of matt board with a hole cut out the size of the gauze. I'm an in-hand stitcher but I don't think I could have done the silk gauze project in-hand.

I gave up silk gauze stitching because the price of the gauze was outrageous--way more than you paid. They must have found an improved process!

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