Mr. Frog Came to Visit

This weekend I had a visit from Mr. Frog. I'd been working hard on Grace for the last two weeks and made great progress. I put in the short stitch holding on the kimono and was getting the majority of the foundation done.

I had some doubts but thought I was doing well, until I sent a progress picture to my teacher. See, I put in all the short stitch holding on the green foundation but there were a few areas that didn't look quite right to me. I figured maybe it was because of where I put in my temporary holding stitch.

You'll have to click on the image to get a bigger picture but you can clearly see my short stitch holding. These should sink into the foundation and become invisible. After discussing it, it was decided that I should take it out and see if it was doable without damaging the foundation.

The frogging happened from the back. I was never so grateful of how picky (and anal) I am with my stitching. Because I put in my stitching consistently going from left to right, it was very easy for my to remove all the stitches (including knots).

Since I was there, I decided to also take out the short stitch holding on the upper part of the body. Being a picky person, I knew I'd end up redoing it anyways as I wasn't a 100% satisfied of it either. It took all day but I'm happy to say my foundation is still good and I'll be able to make a second attempt. We had a nice group discussion on how I can do a better job, and here's a few things we decided:

• my temporary holding stitches will be put in 5mm apart (I initially had them at 8mm)
• short stitch holdings will be 1cm in length. I initially had them at 8mm but I think the stitches were too short, making them more angled than they should be
• there will be at most 3 columns of temporary holding stitches on the narrow part of the kimono

At the end of the day, I had enough time to start the temporary holding stitch.

Since Mr. Frog was visiting, I decided to extend his stay for one more day to work on the Contrast Color Wheel. Remember that weird green? It turns out the color was right but it was in the wrong section. After reaching out to Jen Goodwin, we quickly realized I had an extra green.

I really should have listened to my instincts. The lighter green looked nothing like what it should in the image but I figured maybe it was lighting. This meant I needed to remove all the light green as well as the darker green.

The unpicking although not fun was painless as the back of my work was neat. I could remove some areas without disturbing what needed to stay in.

I spent all of Sunday unpicking, with a little bit of time at the end for some stitching.

So after a whole weekend of unpicking, I was quite happy to see the back of Mr. Frog and I hope I won't get another visit for a long while.

Switching Gears

While waiting to hear back from Jen Goodwin on the Contrast Color Wheel, I needed another counted project to work on when I didn't want to do something complicated. I decided to pull out the whitwork sampler. 

It took a while for me to complete the fifth band. It's more complex than the previous four and I only pulled it out every once in a while. Usually for evening stitching with the guild.

I took the opportunity to take a picture of the overall piece. My fabric is all wrinkly as it's been on q-snaps for months. I think this is my favorite motif to date.

I'm still writing the posts for how I finished the Poppy Pouch. It will be in three posts, I have two completed and I'm procrastinating on the third one as I still need to take pretty pictures of the finished product. I need my sister to take the pictures for me but so far the timing hasn't been right. I'm hoping I'll have them by next weekend.

Color Wheel Progress and Hickup

Since I posted the image of my ORT with all the colors, I figured I should share an update of my contrast color wheel.

Once the big blocks were completed, the smaller hue areas took next to no time to complete. It took more time to weave in the ends than it did stitching the areas.

I'm looking at the overall piece and I'm finding that blue-green color (the one between the green and dark blue) really jarring. I can't help but feel like I have a mistake... So I reached out to Jen Goodwin and she confirmed that there is a problem. I'm waiting to hear back from her again, but there will definitely be some unpicking in my future. For now, it's all the light green in the top block and lower block (where the red is the dominant color), as well as the weird blue-green blocks.

April TUSAL

Look, a TUSAL report not covered in white! Ramadan was tough but not as tough as previous years. I did do a little bit of stitching, the majority of it on the color wheel, but I also got busy doing the finishing on the Poppy Pouch. The finishing is almost done and I will share my process soon. Hopefully, it will help another stitcher finish their own one day.