Restless this week

I've been all over the place with my needlework this week - just feeling very restless and unfocused.  I get like that sometimes. 

After finishing Mermaid of Atlantis last week, I did some work on Midsummer Night's Fairy, since I'm really close to getting her done.   I've got almost all of the regular stitching done except for a few scattered leaves here and there.  I still need to do the backstitching and the beading, but having just spent a couple days of beading on MoA, I actually want a little break from it.  I also need to get another set of 17 inch Q snaps or my scroll frame to so I can bead her.  So Middy - nearly done - is put away for just now, and I'll get back to her very soon.

In the efforts to address some of the older works-in-progress, I picked up Meeting on the Turret Stairs again. 

I've been working on Meeting for a little over a year now - it's slow going because it's solid confetti stitching.  Sometimes my patience for working on the confetti stitching is there, and other times it's just not.  LOL  Well apparently this is one of those "off" weeks to the point where I was questioning why I was torturing myself with it - that I'm really NOT under any obligation to finish the piece if I really wasn't enjoying the work.   So for the sake of my sanity, I decided to just pack up Meeting for now and I'll get back to it when my patience is a little better.

Well, you know that doesn't mean I totally put away my stitching for the week, right?   With a solid finish and one on the edge of being finished, I decided I needed something different and a new start (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

Althought I'm not completely a sampler kind of girl, I am interested in different kinds of historic needlework.   Redwork has always been of interest to me - story goes (don't quote me on this - it's just what I've put together from snippets of info) that redwork pieces were used to teach young stitchers how to do specific motifs and that one color of thread was used because that was the least expensive way to do it.

This floral urn is a redwork piece that I did years ago (it's actually in the Land of Unfinised Projects pile).  I think it will fit into the lid of a Sudberry box that I have in the stash, so I may use it for that.   It's done in DMC floss on 28 count evenweave (lugana maybe?).  Date-wise, it's probably from the late 90's.   It's a nice piece but not a lot going on.

I stumbled across Long Dog Samplers a while ago, and if you like redwork or similar designs - they are very intricate and detailed.  And huge LOL.

So I picked out Scarlet Ribands as a project.  Since it's just the one color of floss, I spent some time mulling over if I wanted to stick to the usual DMC or Anchor cotton floss, or if I wanted to maybe try something different like a silk floss.   After a couple of recommendations and some shopping around, I settled on using a 100% silk floss from Hand Dyed Fibers in 1147 OMG Red.  It is comparable to DMC 816 in color, so it's a nice, dark red.  

So this is what I started this week.  This is the upper left hand corner of the design.  I'm working on 36 count antique white Edinborough linen.  The camera doesn't pick it up, but the silk has a lovely sheen to it and is really nice to work with from a stitching perspective. 

Unfortunately I seem to have completely underestimated how much floss it will take me to do the project.  Once I finish the first page of the design, I'll have a better idea of how much floss I'll need for the overall piece and can reorder.  I originally got 20 skeins but the small corner that I've completed took over a full skein, and I suspect I'll need another 10 or 15. 

I think this will be a really fun piece to do  - the only issue is that all the red may get a little monotonous.  But that's why I rotate around projects, right?