Azure Tit and Blueberries

In my last post I showed pictures of a new WIP I started. Here's a little history on the project.

I discovered Ajisai Press last year and absolutely fell in love with the designs. In particular the Birds and Berries collection in blue and red. Since then, there have been other designs released like Romantic Winter Blooms and the Butterfly collection. But let's concentrate on the stash that I do own for now.

In the fall, I bought this gigantic piece of 28 ct Confederate Gray Cashel Linen, enough so that I'd be able to stitch all 6 pieces on the same fabric. The reason for this is, when I saw the collection I imagined all 6 stitched, framed and hung in bedrooms with a blue room and a red one. This is all in my imaginary future house that I will own one day. The same house, where my Spirit of the Southwest will be hanging near an ocean colored them powder room. We're all allowed our dreams ;)

Back to Azure Tit. I toyed with the idea of stitching the pieces in reversible cross stitch. So I did the research and asked around for tips. Until I remembered, I plan on framing these pieces. No one will ever see the back of them. So I quickly dropped those plans, but here are the links I found for future reference or in case anyone is interested:

• Punto croce reversibile (a doppia faccia) in Italian, but there is a section in English at the bottom
• Reversible Cross Stitch

Since I was going to stick to plain old cross stitch, I quickly jumped in with both feet. It is a VERY quick stitch. Took about a week stitching part time to do it.

The next part was adding in the back-stitch which gives life to the azure tit bird. Even the blueberries look amazing and not like blue gumballs.

The back-stitch was done using the Holbein stitch which gives you a nice front and back (Ajisai Press has an excellent tutorial video here). This is why I wanted to try the reversible cross stitch. I keep dreaming that one day I'll stitch the perfect back.

That's all the stitching I will be doing on this piece for now. There is still the blackwork filling stitch to do, but I'm planning on taking this piece with me to work on in the train and plane in May. The next decision I need to make is if I want to stitch the Holbein stitch using one strand of regular DMC thread or #12 perl cotton to give it dimension.

Now that I've finished this one so fast, I'm wondering if I should stitch another one to take with me. You know, just in case I finish this one too fast ;)