At the risk of further boring what few readers remain here, I present more progress on my Clarke’s Law sampler:

I’ve finished off the two bands of lettering north and south of my first voided strip, and have started on the foreground stitched panel that will be the one at the top of the finished piece. I’m using yet another pattern from TNCM. This one is on Plate 31:1, and reproduces a pattern by my favorite modelbook publisher – Domenico da Sera, from a work of his dating to 1546. The original is shown in a manner that implies working the background, which I replicated in my book, but for this piece I’m stitching the foreground instead. I’m also using long armed cross stitch for this panel, not plain old cross stitch. I’m doing it the easy way though. Instead of bending the path of the stitching up to follow the course of the diagonal stems, I’m just marching across in horizontal bands, worked back and forth with each row alternating direction. This emphasizes the plaited texture more than does working all of the rows of stitching in the same direction, a detail that I like but some others don’t. Some folk prefer a smoother top-leg-uniform result, and use a different stitching logic altogether. Also nice, but I prefer the complexity of the herringbone family long-arm cross stitch more.

The current band should take me about two or three weeks to finish – work deadlines willing. Then I’ll begin the band below the *LY ADVANCED TE* segment. That one will be another line unit pattern rather than a solid block unit pattern, quite probably one of the ones I’ve been storing up post-TNCM against my mythical second book.

Technorati : counted-thread, cross-stitch, embroidery