A decision.

After many hours of stitching ! I don't like it at all.

Instead of using my brain I made a bad choice. I love the variegated colors in Catherine S. carpet. So what did I do?  I just bought all those colors instead of mixing them with the solid colors also suggested in the stitch guide. Then I just merrily started stitching. Oh yes, I noticed things were looking weird but like a moron I continued. 

The problem is... Every new color lot of these variegated dyed threads comes out differently. Some lots might be light batches some are dark and yes I bought the same color lots. As I stitched along the color changed so dramatically it looked like I started a completely different color. So the design gets lost in a blur of changing colors. I like that in the body of the red background but not when it comes to defining the design elements. That needs to be distinctive. Following the chart I have changed colors only to discover that say the pink is so close to the red I might as well not have bothered to re-thread my needle. The gray is so close to the blue at times, you can't tell those apart either.

So an executive decision has been made. I am going to scrap this piece and start ALL OVER AGAIN. Kill me now as my friend L. M. says. 

Oh yes, I feel like a total idiot but hey..... If  I am going to do all this work, I want to like my carpet when it is finished. 

This is how it should have looked below. The colors are consistent in the middle of the design..

What Luck! It's A Perfect Fit

This frame belonged to my grandmother. It had a gorgeous (unfinished) piece of her embroidery on it. She passed away before she could finish it. I never had the heart or any reason to remove her work from the frame. I really had not even looked at it for many years. It has been packed away in a closet.

Oddly enough, it was the perfect size to stitch Catherine Soubzmaigne's petit point carpet on. If I stitched it length wise. I decided it was meant to be!

One problem, I had no idea how to mount it. So I decided to wing it. Learning what I could while removing my grandmothers work and devising my own methods as I went along. My grandmother was not stitching a canvas.

Here it shows how it had to be whip stitched onto the canvas like tape. Which is part of the frame. The sides had to be laced on the frame.

It took forever!!!!!!!!!!! First, I turned under the edges of the silk gauze under and based them. Then I decided I needed a bias tape over that all around the edges so I would have something more substantial to stitch onto the frame. I back stitched the tape on through the doubled gauze by hand because I do not own a sewing machine. It is as tight as I dare make it so perhaps it will be OK

Now I can get down to the business of stitching the carpet. ALSO investigating the new Proxxon Fet saw that arrived not long ago.