Poink!

That’s the sound of bluets popping up all over.  There are five, and I think I’m done for now.

This is what a color chart looks like.  I don’t generally work from color charts—I’ve just shrunk this down and screen-capped this since, if you squint, it looks like they’re stitched on white.

It’s more or less how big they’d be stitched over one on about 30-count.  Slightly bigger than life size.  Over two, they’d be twice as big–truly gargantuan, but recognizable as bluets nonetheless, I hope!

This is how they’d look stitched over-one on a very fine taupe fabric.

Oh, those colors are going to be so much prettier in actual thread!

And if you were masochistic enough to stitch them on 40-count silk gauze, they might look something like this.  On my laptop, that’s a bit smaller than life size.  They’re bitty!

So after less than a week’s work I have a chart that makes five little bluets.  I can mix, match, re-arrange, flip left to right, repeat for a border, etc.  It’s a very versatile pattern.  I might have to dig out the waste canvas and put some on a sweatshirt.  Or a bookmark.

So that’s bluets and draba.  I’ve got one design that would be more or less life size stitched over one on 32 ct and one that will be about right stitched over two.  I probably won’t put the two in the same finished piece, but now I have some good proof-of-concept samples, and I am MUCH more acquainted with my software and its eccentricities.  I just need to figure out how to make it quit putting stray stitches far outside the boundaries of the actual design so that it wants to print a chart with umpteen pages, all but two of which are essentially blank graph paper, I will be even happier!  (Actually, I just figured out how to to select and clear all of the area of the workspace that is not actual chart, so I’m good.)

Looking at things, I’m not sure either of these designs says “Gerda,” but they do say, “Monique!”  It tickles me that, after processing my sketches through graph paper and a charting program, how the charts look so much like my hand drawings!  Style is not lost in the process!

What’s next?  I think I need to find the good paper and the perfect pen, sit down, and make pretty little lists of what plants I want to do, and which ones might be in the same finished piece.  Just looking at the names is soothing.

shepherd’s purse    golden hedge-hyssop   pointed phlox    toadflax    sweet clover  spiderwort    day flower   blue-eyed grass   buttercup.

This is a lot of work, but it’s also fun and exciting.  There’s a real thrill to watching an idea take form, and it will be even more fun to see a finished stitchery.  Guess I’d better go  leave out a saucer of bread and milk for the brownies.   They are coming to stitch up all my designs for me, right?