Running A Little Late

Monday is usually embroidery update day, but I was just so excited about the give away (and confounded by my binding mistakes) that I was distracted yesterday. So, here we are a day late.

I recently started to embroider plain linen with a design by Carina of Polka & Bloom that caught my eye.  This pattern is called Tree of Life and I think it's absolutely beautiful.  If you look at Carina's blog, it's the heading design with stitching that will far surpass mine. 

I love Polka & Bloom designs, but have realized that I need to interpret them my way.  By that, I mean Carina's stitching is beautiful and precise and mine is not.  She provides patterns that can be directly placed on transfer paper and that may be the wise way to go as you can directly follow the lines.  Recently that seems like too much work and my iron transfer patterns have been sitting unused in a pile.  I have not been stitching if there is too much prep time, so I have to give up some precision in the transfer.

Lately I hold the pattern to the window on a sunny day and draw on the fabric with a water soluble pen. With that, you loose the exactness of the pattern, and therefore I can't follow the lines when stitching.  I am sure I'll get better at the transfer process, but for now I need to be happy with the colorful thread, the pretty design and the content-ness of having something handy to do when watching TV at night. 

I am embarrassed to show you my progress thus far as it's really spotty.  Maybe in tomorrow's update?  A cliff hanger ;)