Slow progress...

15 September - Lesson at Tracy’s:  

Began by practising fine scale laddering in a straight line using 1 strand of cotton floss.  The correct scale seems to be two horizontal threads between each eyelet, and two vertical threads at each side of the ladder. This is the effect I want for the edge of the motif in the centre of the design.  If I can keep this very fine I will need to practise on the curve for the edge of the leaf shapes.

Next was more practise with the dreaded Herringbone which not only has to fit in a tight curved space with an elongated point, it also has to fit around the centre part which has already been completed with pulled thread stitches.   Lots of trying with this stitch on my practice piece.  Despite many attempts and much pulling out I did not have much success - I could not get an even spread of stitches around the curves.  It looks too clumsy! Abandon this stitch - try variations of trellis stitches with crosses.

After a whole day this is what I achieved:

Rubbish Herringbone! Trellis work and some laddering 

The centre part is a trial with Diamant on the horizontals & verticals, with coral stitch on the diagonal in Coton à Broder no. 30.  This will be too heavy to fit the  narrow border of herringbone replacement.

Tried Coton à Broder no. 30 on the horizontals and verticals in the correct section (2 threads apart)  with the Diamant crosses to tie the threads in place.  This seems to work better.

More practising for the laddering around the outer edge has been worthwhile, I am getting hang of it at last.  Tried a small section on my Practice work.  One strand of stranded cotton seem to achieve a suitable result. 

I will at some point have to sample different weights of trailing to finish the borders between each stitched section on this motif.  That will be fun!

I have a bit of a break before I see Tracy again so hopefully more stitching will go on the whitework...  But I do have a holiday in Ireland to look forward to as well:

I have discovered that the knot tied over the drawn thread crosses is called a coral stitch!  It is usually the knot that is tied on clusters of bars on the drawn thread borders.  One of my aside projects will be to create a sampler of drawn thread patterns.  Oh No!  I got side-tracked on Pinterest and have a page of drawn thread patterns.  I am now thinking I would like to have some borders on my design.