A Weekend with Dorcas. Updating the Plan!

Well, darn, it’s actually July 30 this post was supposed to go up around the week of July 22 when I had spent a good weekend with Dorcas bus I never got my pictures taken! So here it is, back dated to the proper point of progress, and hopefully I’ll have EVEN MORE PROGRESS by the end of the week!

Written up on July 22….

I’ve been a woman on a mission this month with Miss Dorcas Haynes! I got the filling of the arcade vine done. That was fun and easy! And I filled in the pendulous pansies. Also a quick job. I like the eyelet centers.

There are supposed to be 2 more pansies on the ends but they don’t quite fit. Should I let them hang over the edges or just partially stitch them? I think I would be cutting them off with 1 or 2 columns of stitching missing so it won’t be weird. Basically I need to stitch them partially OR fully, just need to decide if I want this band to overrun the bounds of the other bands or if I want to cut them off. I think what happened is something went awry with my spacing of the arcade and/or the length of the bands above. Scarlet Letter charts don’t come with a specific stitch count, and I am also referring to photos of the antique and the Darlene O’Steen class pieces I’ve seen stitched and somehow the stitch count is different by about 4 stitches. Le sigh. Mine will look just fine but it does make it a puzzle to figure out!

Speaking of puzzles, the next thing I figured out was filling in the big flowers. This is called Parisian Stitch. It is fine to stitch but figuring out the color placement around the flower, which is very orderly but also must be round, takes some brain power.

Finally, I gave the satin stitch carnations a start. I just LOVE the gradation of silks on these flowers. I think they are really important to the design so I selected the colors pretty carefully when I was kitting to make sure these would come out right, and then used those threads for the pinks and corals in the other parts. They really are key to the solution of the colors in my Dorcas. Aren’t they nice?

My biggest surprise this weekend was that I looked back at my plan for stitching Dorcas this year and discovered that I had allotted all of July AND AUGUST to the floral arcade! And here I was worried about staying on track if I didn’t finish the filling this month! Well, I have no problem! I was intending to be ready to do the eyelet verse in August, but that’s not the assignment until September! Hooray! I am definitely on schedule.

So no drastic changes but it does allow more wiggle room for any challenges. I’m happy with things.