I have enjoyed this month’s stitch and learned by trial and error what would work.

I’ll present my failure first.   I could find little in the way of instructions or patterns so I chose a Blackwork pattern and changed it to negative, then covered fabric (not a good choice as it turned out) with Waste Canvas  and with 2 strands of DMC proceeded to stitch.  The 2 strands seemed to be sufficient to cover the holes.  I used a single strand to outline the pattern first.

The failure

It was difficult to stitch right up to the outline so I left these bits to finish at the end.  I dampened the canvas and the threads came out easily but still shifted the DMC so it didn’t lay nicely and the over all look was Yuk!

I intend this exercise to head straight for the bin but finished most of the left hand corner and overstitched the outline there too.

The fabric had slightly raised lines in it and I think this distorted the stitching too.  The thread should have been thicker and I’d never use canvas for Assisi again.  I should remember the advice to practise first.  Okay, that’s out of the way.

Then I made a freehand contemporary work using a pattern from Eileen Campbell’s Medieval applique book, which had the kookaburras on the initial.  I just added a background to this with various threads, starting at the base with DMC perle 8 and then DMC cotton in 4 strands reducing to 1 in the background.  Surprisingly it didn’t take too much time to finish. I think this leans more to Negative work rather than Contemporary Assisi but I like it.

Contemporary Assisi work

I had a break from cross stitching and happened on an Assisi pattern in a 1982  Harmony Guide book and this last work is from that.

Assisi work

This was the most enjoyable to do, surprisingly as the fabric had such fine weaving and I didn’t think my eyes up to working on it.  I don’t know what it’s called but has a 32 count.  I used a DMC 5 perle.  Again I used one strand to outline the work but went over this later with 2 strands which made such a difference to it.