No, not inflation – at least not overtly. I’m just about 25% done with the frame around the outer edge of my Italian multicolor piece. Closeup posts of the bit currently under the needle are going to be repetitive from here on in, so I present the full canvas of this “painting.”

If it looks to you like I’ve sped up production – I have. I had wanted to mount this piece on my big Millennium frame, but I had no extra wide twill tape on hand. In person shopping being a bit unwieldy right now and not wanting to rely on goods sight-unseen I’ve stuck with the hand hoop, the sit-upon hoop being an inch wider across and even less suited to close-edge work than this smaller one. But I decided to stick the little hoop into my Lowery floor stand. That lets me work two-handed, one above and one below. And working that way for me is about half again as speedy as holding the hoop in one hand and stitching with the other. So one “up” repeat including initial outlines, meshy fills, and Montenegrin lines took about an evening and a half to stitch using the floor stand, but took three+ evenings with the hoop in hand.

The sharp-eyed will note that the center of the repeat currently in the frame does NOT align with my basted line that marks the center of the cloth as a whole, while the center of the repeat along the short edge, where I began does line up with the horizontal center line.

This was on purpose.

I took pains to do the math for the short edge, hoping to get close enough to the final diagonal needed to make a graceful improvisation for the corner. At that time I hadn’t realized that the original stitcher fudged the corner that most resembles what I wanted to do. I made it without that fudging, but at the expense of stitching further towards the serged edge of the cloth than I would otherwise prefer. You can see how low in my hoop my stitching is – a very inefficient and precarious placement that barely grasps the lower end of the fabric as I try to achieve and maintain optimal tension.

Since I hadn’t graphed out the corner and had only a rough estimate of depth, and knowing that my plans for a neat turn might not fit, instead of beginning the piece along my original posited outer edge (the basted line at left), I skimped on the edge area there, too. Not quite as much as along the second edge, but enough to make a difference. My logic was that when I continue around, if I need extra width or some odd bit of kludging to get to a neat corner on the second turn, I’d have more options. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be inconvenienced by the extra unworked cloth, and could cut it off in my finish.

Having narrow margins around the stitching (however inconvenient) and removing any excess play into my plans. My intention to finish this piece is to imitate the original, with “poetic interpretation” of what little remains of that treatment – a narrow turned hem, with neatly spaced blanket or buttonhole stitch and corner tassels. The hem-covering stitch of the original is probably plain old blanket stitch due to the way it has deteriorated. I would think that the edge reinforcement of tightly twisted knot like bits along the free edge in buttonhole stitch would have been preserved better, resisting large runs if snagged. But little remains. It’s very hard to see in the photos I took and the museum’s own shots, but there might even be a very narrow, barely there strip of needle lace along the edges – not wild stuff with dags and picots – just a simple solid band. I’ll be squinting at the photos to see if I can learn more. I’ve done that type of edging before, on The Resident Male’s SCA fighting shirt, in black, long ages ago, so it would not be a stretch to do it again. In any case, plain stitched hem or fancified hem, there will be little reveal of plain cloth between it and the established stitching. There will be plenty of linen left for the hem, regardless of how wide or narrow the stitched part ends up being.

Now where the true vertical center point of the piece as a whole is will matter when I get to the wide bar I am planning to add. That will span the middle, across the short dimension. It may be aligned with the center of the pattern iteration I’m currently stitching. That’s about an inch left of the basted line. BUT if I get near the other end of this side and I decide to devise ANOTHER corner treatment, and that treatment needs additional width, it might move either closer to the cloth’s original centerline, or to another point in that general direction. No clue right now what I will be doing, so stay tuned!

….Isn’t the suspense of Bungee Jump Stitching furiously exciting?