A Box Panel

The silk picture was going along nicely until the weekend, when the light was too bad for choosing the colours of silk. So, to keep up my not-really-a-new-year-resolution of doing some stitching every day, I started working on a new stitched box on plastic canvas. As usual, I am making this one up as I go along.

Having completed one of the short sides of the rectangular box. I thought I would copy the top pattern band to my ‘sampler’ – a piece of canvas where I save designs for future reference, and try things out. (The lower part of the box side is basically rice stitch.) As I was going to copy the design anyway, I thought I would take some progress photos so you could see the process – and I could continue with my other not-really-a-resolution of updating Tortoise Loft the Blog more frequently than of late!

Technical stuff: it is worked on Darice #10 plastic canvas as usual and uses four types of yarn. James Brett Stonewash DK is the random yarn. The mottled pinkish yarn is DY Yarns Basic DK Spray, which tones rather well with the Stonewash, and the pale cream yarn is a ball of acrylic DK which has long lost its label. The glittery thread is Twilley’s Goldfingering, a 4 ply rayon/lurex yarn. (The basics of making stitched boxes can be found here.)

The worked area of the panel as shown is 10 canvas threads high, and needs to be a multiple of 8 threads wide, plus 2 for the edges. Start by working tent stitch around the four edges. Then take the pale cream and work diagonally across from a corner, 8 threads up, 8 threads down, and so on.

When you reach the far corner, restart in the opposite corner and work back, crossing over to make a series of square diamonds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then use the random yarn to fill in the sections, as shown, the triangular sections at the edge and the central diamonds, completing each one before starting the next, to avoid harsh colour changes within the shapes. (Sharp eyed readers may spot that I’d just made a mistake when I took the foillowing photo. I had to undo that last little stitch under the end of the thread, and put it right before I went on. I wish I had taken another photo then, so I could have pretended it was all perfect! But I do make plenty of mistakes.)

 

 

 

 

 

Once all the shapes are filled, thread the needle with the glitter yarn and start working the top layer. I did this in four passes.

 

 

 

 

The pattern makes large diamonds with small central diamonds.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the panel on the sampler all finished:

 

 

 

 

 

I am happy to say that today there was some sunshine, and I was able to carry on with the silk dragon. Here’s the current progress (not a very good photo, sorry):

I wonder which project I will finish first? Have you finished any projects yet this year?