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A Little Ramble…
How I approached this part was a little different than the previous part, mainly because I had a whole side of existing stitched work for reference. In part 1, I started in the top left corner and built off of the flower’s stem.
In part 2, I started by building from the red zigzag as it crossed the entirety of the pattern and seemed like it would be a good reference point for the rest of the stitches. Unless I messed it up. Which I did. And the frog happily paid me a visit almost right away.
Did I remember to take pictures of this fumbled beginning? Nope! I (again) forgot to take pictures until my husband reminded me one evening… a couple days of stitching into the part:
Him: “Are you remembering to take pictures of that for your website?”
Me: O_O “Uhhhmmmm…. Yep?” (Immediately grabs phone and takes pictures)
So… yeah, this is the earliest picture I have of part 2. Sorry everyone! I aim to do better in part 3! Really!
After completing the red zigzag I stitched in the remaining red petals and then moved to the orange, and after stitching along the orange down to the leaf area (because of course I started at the top) I… got really confused.
Something didn’t add up quite right so I stitched out the stem of the leaf real quick and discovered that the orange zigzag was aligned wrong.
Turned out I hadn’t stitched the red zigzag high enough (by one zig) and ended up having to frog all of the orange and then the red from the far right to the peak.
Fortunately, after sorting that initial “oops” out, everything else went smoothly!
Ah, the dangers of using the pattern instead of using the pattern… Haha! Oh… nobody else gets it? Maybe? Ok nevermind…
So, after fixing the red, frogging and re-stitching the orange and adding the yellow just because it was easy and my brain was fried, I then turned my attention to trying to stitch in the flower under the red zigzag.
However, after staring at the pattern and my Aida far longer than I care to admit, counting the pattern, counting the Aida, forgetting my number, recounting the pattern and the aida, counting the pattern again to make 1000% sure and as a result losing my place on my aida (Sleep deprivation is fuuuunnnn!) I eventually concluded that in order to avoid additional errors, and inviting more frogs to my house than I like, I’d need to stitch to the flower rather than counting the spaces from my red reference zigzag and starting my new stitching out in empty space.
So, I went to the bottom of the page, grabbed my blue and stitched+counted my way across the bottom, only to almost immediately hit a tertiary flower. I concluded I didn’t want to change colors yet so counted/stitched my way around that flower area to get to a point where I could safely stitch my way up the stem to the flower I was aiming for.
Did this approach make sense? Not really… Are there better ways of approaching the pattern? Probably.
So I got to my goal flower, stitched it in and then had a serious episode of ADHD and bounced all over the place with no real plan or anything aside from, “Oh, ran out of that piece of floss. Well, if I’ve gotta refill the needle I might as well enjoy a new color!”
So, with lots of bouncing around (and forgetting to photograph progress) I finished part 2!!
What is/was your favorite part of part 2? What drove you crazy? Comment below or on the facebook group!
I look forward to stitching part 3 together with you all!!
See you soon!