Eidelweiss Part 4

It's been a long time since I've posted any detailed update on Eidelweiss. The last image I posted was this one:

Since my lamp stopped working, I've been stitching outside. This way I got better lighting, but at the same time it wasn't the kind of place I'd want to do cut work in (which is what the leaves required). So I decided to finish stitching everything else and leave the filling stitches for last. And that's what I've been showing when I remembered to post pictures.

Yesterday I finally put in the last detached chain stitch and it was time to cut.

So I went back inside and turned on my "artificial" lamp. Sorry for the color of the lighting, but you can see below I've selected the first thread I want to cut out. By the way the hard part is not the actual cutting, but deciding where to cut.

Also, here is a tip if you're worried about cutting the wrong thread, pass your needle under it until it's over the eye of the needle. Then, if your scissors are pointy enough you can cut the thread thru the eye.

Once that first thread is cut, I just had to skip the next four and cut the fifth. Doing that vertically and horizontally, I end up with this:

The filling stitch for the first leaf is a satin with cross stitch. You first satin stitch all the bars of four threads going up in a staircase pattern, until they are all wrapped. Once that's done, you anchor your thread under those wraps in the back of your fabric and cross stitch the centers. The importance here is consistency, the thread that travels between bars should all be going in the same direction and the x's all crossed in the same way.

Here is what the piece looks like overall (I waited till this morning to get better lighting). One more leaf and then it's done. I'm hoping to do it today. Wish me luck!

By the way, any Canadian stitchers out there who know of a good place that sells frames? I'm looking for something that is oval for this piece and haven't see anything in the shops I went to. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.