More Stitching

I put the last stitch into Mini Pineapple Stitches last weekend.  It was a quick project, if a little bit fussy.  I love the colors- yellow and yellow green are not part of my normal palette so it was nice to stitch with something different.  The overall color palette of the project is unusual and very nice- lemon yellow and spring green with olive, rust, and dusky purple.

The linen, 32 ct Burmese Beige, is just a little darker than the model and has a subtle hand dyed effect to it.  I love the way it turned out.

As I mentioned, the project was a little fussy.  I made several mistakes and had to frog quite a bit.  The left pineapple in the row of three was off and had to be ripped out and re-done.  Because of that I also made a mistake in the green swirl right above it and had to rip that out.  All that was my own fault, of course.

Oh, and see those purple and rust flowers right above the smyrna crosses?  Those are stitched over 1.  They look great now that they are finished but they were a pain to stitch and I messed them up, too and had to rip and re-do.  Ugh.

I did not enjoy working with the Gloriana wool that came with the leaflet and which was used to stitch the pineapples.  It was thick and fuzzy, and the strands did not want to separate easily.  The Gloriana silk, however, was a dream to work with, as was the Thread Gatherer silk.

I made two small changes to the design.  I changed the "pineapple stitches" right above the row of 5 pineapples to smyrna crosses.  You can see the pineapple stitches as charted in the multicolored row right above the over 1 flowers.  Smyrna crosses are much easier and soothing to stitch and I like the look of them much better.  I also changed the diamond motif at the center bottom from a cocoa brown color to purple to echo the motif right below the center pineapple in the row of three.  The leaflet came with a small copper pineapple charm which I have not added yet.  It goes on top of the pale yellow/pale green stitches right above the purple diamond at the bottom.  The pale yellow and green stitches are silk and I like the way they shimmer.  The charm pretty much covers them up so I have not decided if I will add it yet.

I have not stretched this piece yet, so that is why it looks a bit wavy and wrinkly.  I will probably have it framed and hang it in my kitchen.  It's small, finishing up at about 2.5 X 5.5 inches, so even framed it will be small and I know I can find a good spot for it.

In sewing news I actually went to the sewing room today and jumpstarted my mojo with a new project.  (The McCall's suit is on hold for the moment, but I hope to get back to it soon.)  I hope to have something new to blog later this week.  If the time doesn't totally mess me up- I hate that it gets dark so early now!