Joining Stitch 6

Back to my joining sampler after some disruption. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic? I’m not sure. Maybe due to a dyeing workshop and its aftermath. Or due to finishing my panel for the 25 Million Stitches project. Or some general re-evaluation and reflection. Or due to the online weaving workshop I started on impulse. Always many factors.

So today I finished stitching all the William Morris squares together. A good milestone. They looked beautiful in a heap. The variegated sewing thread Joanne V. gave me looked great with the colors of the prints.

Then I really got frustrated trying to stitch an acceptable Mountmellick stitch. I couldn’t follow the explanation in Joinings, Edges, and Trims. I looked it up on YouTube. I followed Mary Corbet‘s video. The results looked terrible so I unpicked it. Diagnosed the problem as possibly coming from the single strand of thread I was using. Tried again with a double strand and produced an acceptable if not beautiful join.

My complaints:

It’s very hard to keep the stitches even.

I couldn’t decide how best to hold the work and kept flipping it around.

It’s one-sided. It doesn’t fold well. It doesn’t show on the back at all.

And I don’t think my thread choice was right, even after doubling.

But this is what a sampler is for, right?