Fabric & Floss

These last few days I have done some editing of the Heart Note Alley chart, changing a few bands that weren't working for me. When I first put them together it was more to get an overall feel for the piece and now as I'm getting ready to put floss to fabric it is time to finalize the design. Though there will doubtless be some changes as I stitch the particular bands, I think I can safely say that the design is as final as it can be at this point in the process. And this is what it looks like.

I also spent a fair amount of time looking at silk floss considering possible colors. In our very rural area there are no brick & mortar shops I can go to to actually see floss so I ordered some online, hoping that the actual colors were close to what my monitor was showing. Thankfully, most were and after trying many combinations of possibilities, getting rid of the 'disturbers', I've decided the color palette.


For fabric I'm using Zweigart's 18 count Aida cloth in ivory. I've tried many types of fabric over the years and I come back to such an evenweave because I simply enjoy how it feels, looks and stitches. I have friends who do gorgeous work on linen and this design will hopefully work well on whatever type and count you might prefer yourself.

The floss I'm using is silk. Since first trying silk floss I haven't used anything else, again it is just what works for me. This time I'm using silk floss from both Vikki Clayton's Hand-Dyed Fibers collection and some from Carrie's Creation Threads

The palette will be three shades of green, three of mauve and two purples.
From Carrie's Creation - Wild Orchid (dark mauve), Violet (medium mauve) and Garden Green (dark green)
From Clayton's HDF - Wrasse #3315 (medium green), Wrasse #3313 (light green), Ultra Violet #2121 (light mauve), Sue-Purple #6115 (dark purple) and Sue-Purple #6109 (medium purple)

I began doing some sample stitches to see which color I want to use for the border, hopefully you can get an idea of what they look like in the photo below. The second group with the medium green won and will be the border.

As soon as I receive full skeins of the selected colors I'm more than ready to get started!