Very slow progress on Do Right. A bison-stampede of work related obligations has me tooling flat out, days, evenings, nights and weekends. But here and there I grab a bit of stress abatement, and stitch.

I’ve decided to play with the Buttery pattern. I’ve used most of the flower/filling designs that were published in TNCM, plus several from my old notes that didn’t fit on the final as-published pattern. Now I’m off and running, drafting out more. Since I’ve got no obligation to stick to forms and flowers familiar to the Tudor period (or standard but imaginary geometrics), I’m playing. Some are sort of recognizable, some are just flights of fancy:

I think Elder Daughter will be especially pleased by that one truly incongruous motif.

Here’s a (very blurry) shot of the whole piece, so you can see the proportions and coloring of this strip in relation to what’s there:

This strip will continue straight up to the top of the currently stitched area, which means **LOTS** more flower/fruit fills.

My only moment of pause right now is that I’m thinking of picking out the acorn spot in the current strip. When I first drafted it up I committed an awkwardness. The vertical acorn has no point on it. It annoys me, and I may restitch that unit one block down and make some other adjustments so that the up-down acorn is outfitted the same as its brothers.

Aside: For those who enjoy historical patterns, check out this collection of vintage European embroidery guides. Most are graphed alphabet collections, but there are some other gems in and among the lettering – even some charts suitable for double running stitch. I’m considering a couple of the latter for my final lacy feel narrow strip across the top of this piece. And the alphabets are great. I’m thinking of doing up an entire cloth of different forms of just one letter, as the ultimate initial-laden gift sampler.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery