I'm continuing to work on Brightneedle's Lady's Collection. Unfortunately, the more I stitch on this, the more I seem to be finding to complain about, and although I'm sure I'll appreciate the finished project, I think I'll be most happy to be finished with it.
I'm increasingly disappointed with Brightneedle's color choices. So far, everywhere it's been charted that I use yellow in this project, it's too pale to really show up in the finished stitching. Where you can see yellow in the scans, you see it better in the scan than in person ... and you don't see it at all in some areas, even in scans. Overall, I think several of these color choices, when stitched in close proximity to each other, tend to make the piece look washed out, at best, or dirty, at worst.
Here are the next two pieces of this project. On the first one, I ended up off center with "Needles" by two threads, and then purposely put "26" off center to make it less noticeable. (So, why am I telling you? LOL ... ) Also, there' a big linen slub right in the center of the round part of the "6," which annoys me.
On the next one, the "28" is a thread or two higher than it should be because I goofed while stitching the "2" but didn't notice it until I was halfway through the "8." I only ripped out the "2," though, and stitched it again as charted but slightly up of where it should be so that it would go properly with the "8." And I noticed that the green silk didn't stitch smoothly in the "N" -- see how it looks sort of blurry compared with the "N" in the 26 piece above? Some of that is the fault of the linen because the thread between the left and right side of the "N" was extremely thin, but I'm still unhappy these NPI silks seem so inconsistent. (Especially when their price is about to go up per skein from $2.70 to $3.70! Sorry, but I just don't see the quality I require to justify even their current price compared to other silk brands -- or cotton brands, for that matter.)
You may have noticed I'm suddenly complaining about the linen in this kit. I don't know anything about it, other than that it is supposed to be 32 count, as no information was included about it in the kit other than regarding the count. I also don't know whether it was Brightneedle or Elegant Stitch who kitted this project. However, I definitely know I'm not impressed with this linen. There's even an area, which fortunately ended up falling between two stitched pieces (instead of inside one where it would have significantly messed with my stitching), where three horizontal threads merge into one -- and stay that way.
On top of it all, this linen is cut too small for my preference. I've been using an 8-inch Q-snap, and as anyone who uses any size Q-snap knows, you need more than an inch of fabric available to wrap around it. There's not enough for that here, so I'll have to resort to a hoop or stitch in hand for the rest of the pieces (and I'm going to have to turn my fabric the other way to fit them all on, which could make things a bit difficult when it comes time to do the finishing work). I'm not going with the option of using another piece of fabric because I don't feel like dealing with the hassle of finding fabric that matches this one well enough, and I'm certainly not going to ask for another piece of this rather crappy linen.
I wonder if today's complaints were affected at all by the fact that I was watching Hacking Democracy while stitching? I jokingly described this very important documentary to a friend as a horror movie because it certainly is horrifying, and that's regardless of your political persuasion. I would highly recommend this very interesting documentary movie to all Americans. I now understand much better what I should be looking and fighting for in order to achieve a voting system in which my vote is truly secure and actually counted.
I hope you are enjoying whatever you're stitching on right now a lot more than I'm enjoying this project!
I'm increasingly disappointed with Brightneedle's color choices. So far, everywhere it's been charted that I use yellow in this project, it's too pale to really show up in the finished stitching. Where you can see yellow in the scans, you see it better in the scan than in person ... and you don't see it at all in some areas, even in scans. Overall, I think several of these color choices, when stitched in close proximity to each other, tend to make the piece look washed out, at best, or dirty, at worst.
Here are the next two pieces of this project. On the first one, I ended up off center with "Needles" by two threads, and then purposely put "26" off center to make it less noticeable. (So, why am I telling you? LOL ... ) Also, there' a big linen slub right in the center of the round part of the "6," which annoys me.
On the next one, the "28" is a thread or two higher than it should be because I goofed while stitching the "2" but didn't notice it until I was halfway through the "8." I only ripped out the "2," though, and stitched it again as charted but slightly up of where it should be so that it would go properly with the "8." And I noticed that the green silk didn't stitch smoothly in the "N" -- see how it looks sort of blurry compared with the "N" in the 26 piece above? Some of that is the fault of the linen because the thread between the left and right side of the "N" was extremely thin, but I'm still unhappy these NPI silks seem so inconsistent. (Especially when their price is about to go up per skein from $2.70 to $3.70! Sorry, but I just don't see the quality I require to justify even their current price compared to other silk brands -- or cotton brands, for that matter.)
You may have noticed I'm suddenly complaining about the linen in this kit. I don't know anything about it, other than that it is supposed to be 32 count, as no information was included about it in the kit other than regarding the count. I also don't know whether it was Brightneedle or Elegant Stitch who kitted this project. However, I definitely know I'm not impressed with this linen. There's even an area, which fortunately ended up falling between two stitched pieces (instead of inside one where it would have significantly messed with my stitching), where three horizontal threads merge into one -- and stay that way.
On top of it all, this linen is cut too small for my preference. I've been using an 8-inch Q-snap, and as anyone who uses any size Q-snap knows, you need more than an inch of fabric available to wrap around it. There's not enough for that here, so I'll have to resort to a hoop or stitch in hand for the rest of the pieces (and I'm going to have to turn my fabric the other way to fit them all on, which could make things a bit difficult when it comes time to do the finishing work). I'm not going with the option of using another piece of fabric because I don't feel like dealing with the hassle of finding fabric that matches this one well enough, and I'm certainly not going to ask for another piece of this rather crappy linen.
I wonder if today's complaints were affected at all by the fact that I was watching Hacking Democracy while stitching? I jokingly described this very important documentary to a friend as a horror movie because it certainly is horrifying, and that's regardless of your political persuasion. I would highly recommend this very interesting documentary movie to all Americans. I now understand much better what I should be looking and fighting for in order to achieve a voting system in which my vote is truly secure and actually counted.
I hope you are enjoying whatever you're stitching on right now a lot more than I'm enjoying this project!
2 comments:
Well, looks like you are not enjoying this project lately. Looking at the pics progress you have posted in the last days i can see that this is going to be a nice accessory, hope the outcome pays off all the effort you are putting on it.
Cheers!!
It looks like it's turning out nice, even if you're not enjoying it much right now.
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