The hounds and pelican strip is finished!

I know of two mistakes on it, which I may or may not go back and pick out. I’m also thinking of adding another heart-bud immediately underneath the hounds’s forepaws. It’s not in the original, but that area looks a bit barren to me.

Now to go on to the next strip. Here’s the whole piece laid out, so you can see the (problematic) real estate that remains:

I was originally planning for two more strips, one medium dark, and one quite dark to add balance to the piece as a whole. But there’s this…

Damage! And not just distorted weave that can be gently stroked back into place – actual breakage of multiple warp threads, and too many to compensate. There’s no going around this. I have to end my sampler out about three or four inches short of my intended length.

How did it happen? Many reasons:

• Very gauzy, fragile linen ground to begin with.
• Abuse during two shipments back and forth to India. While it was unmounted from the verticals, I left it on the horizontals of my frame, scrolled up so that the unworked portion was on the outside. The resulting bundle was then wrapped in a thick cloth, and put into the shipping crate that held my hobbies. Where it probably abraded somewhat against the surrounding objects.
• Abuse since returning. I’ve been schlepping the thing around with me to show off at gatherings where embroiderers might be present.
• Not sufficiently padding the unworked portion. I put a couple layers of scrap muslin in between the stitched portion of the piece as I advance the scroll while working. But I did not pad the unworked portion. That was a mistake, leading to extra tension when I remounted my Long Green for work last month
• It has been what… nine years since I started this?

The aggregate result was that the area that had been rubbed and abused over time, and that had been fragile to begin with, under tension of my re-mount, began to give way. Note to self – no matter how tempting, avoid gossamer grounds and stick with more beefy linens…

So now instead of two or three strips to finish, I’m looking at one or two, in order to leave at least three inches between the breakage area and the bottom of the stitching. I may also reinforce the bottom bit by actually basting on some muslin to help take the strain of remounting for stitching – an extra precaution that I would remove before mounting for display.

OK. What to finish with. I’m not sure. First I have to measure out my area to figure out the maximum height of what can be stitched there. Then depending on how tall that workable area is, there are several classic designs I’m considering. But a couple of them I have not yet drafted up (T3CM fodder?), so I may take a quick side journey into another simple piece while I’m thinking it over.

Stay tuned!