A Bluestocking Knits

This is the "Long Flowers Panel" from Sandra Whitehead's book Celtic, Medieval and Tudor Wall Hangings in 1/12 Scale Needlepoint.  I liked it very much from the photo in the book, but I like the real thing even better — the colors are a little deeper and richer in person.  These colors are exactly the same DMC floss as recommended, except that I chose a slightly earthier cream than the ecru — the palest shade, in the centers of most of the flowers.

This piece was a bit of a challenge, as I could not get 24-count evenweave canvas at Michael's, not even for ready money, so I got 28-count instead — even finer, of course.  My finished piece is thus 3.8 x 10 cm with the edging.  I had trouble seeing it sometimes, even with two (!) pairs of glasses on.  I'm not entirely pleased with my stitching, though a light pressing did wonders for the evenness.  I missed a lot of stitches and had to go back and put them in one at a time, and I made two glaring-to-me mistakes, one in picking up the lighter blue instead of the darker, and the other in not noticing that the twisted-rope border became grey-brown for a moment, not black — I left the blue where it was, as I couldn't face picking it out at that stage, but I stitched over the black mistake with the grey-brown, which was only partially successful, as the black does "bleed" through a bit.  (Probably the blue would have been all right if I'd stitched over it, since it is two shades of the same color — I was concerned about it being too thick at this fine gauge, but the black/grey-brown bit seems fine.)  But I am so utterly charmed by the piece that it doesn't matter that much.

Whitehead suggests finishing by folding the edges of the canvas and backing it with a piece of light cotton.  I used another method with more finished edges, though, following Janet Granger's excellent tutorial on miniature wall-hangings — this uses a whipped edging.  Since my piece was so narrow, I decided not to cover the back with iron-on interfacing, as Granger does, and simply enclosed it with the turned edges of the canvas (judiciously dabbed with Fray-Check).  My whip-stitching is also rather amateur — oh, I see one long stitch! — but again, the piece is so charming that I am quite delighted with it anyway.

(I still have to add hanging loops to the top.  Next time I might try mitering the corners of the hem.)

A kit of this piece can also be found, as the "Tudor Long Panel", on Whitehead's website, Knighttime Miniatures.  There are a number of other interesting pieces in the book — many of which are also available as kits from the website — all original designs based on mediaeval and Tudor sources, mostly "tapestries" for the miniature setting.  The charts come in both color and symbol versions, which I find very handy, as I seem to work better from the symbol charts, but the color ones give a good overview of how things will come together.

Yes, I am planning an Elizabethan doll's-house …!