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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Toy Chest Etui: Black horse end

Each end of the Toy Chest has an arched panel featuring a rearing horse - based, I seem to remember Betsy Morgan saying, on her own horses. One horse is black and one white and they are designed to face the front of the etui.

I began, as before, with the framing stitches, then moved to the horse and to the ribbon pattern on the drawer at the bottom.

As suggested, I outlined the horse first, then filled in. A couple of lines across the body of the horse enabled me to better count the stitches.




I found filling in the horse extremely tiring on my eyes, probably  because it is black as well as being one-thread stitching over a consolidated space.

I tried Betsy's suggestion of using tent stitch instead of cross stitch on the horse, but thought it left gaps, so reverted to cross stitch.








It is a very pleasing design to see emerge, but I had to keep taking breaks. It has been the hardest piece so far.









  It's going to look good on the chest, though.

4 comments:

margaret said...

it is going to look brilliant on the chest never mind good, such detail no wonder your eyes are strained.

The Lady Stitcher said...

I did my horses in tent stitich,, and once you've done these pieces, reward yourself, as these are the pieces that i too found the most arduous, and certainly the most testing to the eyes.

You're going marvellously, and doing the stitching so well.

Jillian said...

Thank you both for your encouragement. It is making such a difference, knowing you understand the difficulty and are giving such support. More progress soon.

Monica said...

Yes, it *will* look good. The tent stitch petit point on my Juin sampler is done with two strands of floss, so the stitching is very dense. It may be another option for another time. I think I would baulk at cross stitching it over one!