Saturday 30 January 2016

Flashinscissors 1st Friday Frolics

Hello Friday Frolicers,

I'm Barbara from The Flashing Scissors.

Thank you for letting me join you for Friday Kitten Stitching Frolics!

On my own blog I have been talking about my Cocoa Sampler (and a few other cross stitch projects) which I started years ago, and, with the encouragement I received from some of our online friends, I was enthused to pick it up again and continue. And then I thought if I were able to join you ladies here on Friday Kitten Frolics perhaps I could speed up my finishing rate!

So on Friday I decided to delve into the dreaded cupboard for something different, and found "Tatty Teddy" which I had stitched, and put away without finishing him because I hate backstitch! Anyone who has ever stitched a "Tatty Teddy"(TT) will know .... there are an awful lot of backstitches!

I remember stitching TT quite quickly back in 2004, despite struggling to find the right cottons from my stash as the pattern called for Anchor threads and in those days I mostly had DMC.

The pattern appeared in the magazine Cross Stitcher, with a competition for the first reader to send a photo of themselves with their stitched TT to win a prize, which gave me the incentive to start stitching!

Tatty Teddy and his pattern.
TT and his pattern as I found him
 in the dreaded cupboard.

When TT came out of the cupboard he was looking a little grubby (there was a horrid tea or coffee stain to his left!) so first of all he had a little bath!

Then, before I could start stitching, my embroidery frame needed binding!

Tatty Teddy
I had started the fur backstitch in the wrong colour
 - it was much too light.

After which I found another reason he had been pushed to the back of the dreaded cupboard!  At that time I  didn't have the colour the pattern called for, for the backstitch.... but I searched through my stash of threads and lo and behold I have it now!

Tatty Teddy's pattern
The backstitch is in red on the pattern.
Here's Tatty Teddy, clean, ironed and ready for stitching!

Ready to be stitched.
Ready to stitch.

And I had to make a little start on him at least!

Close up'
You might just be able to see a few sticky out
stitches above the top blue flower and above Teddy's head!

That's all I was able to do last night!

Now that Tatty Teddy is ready to play I hope to be able to stitch a lot more next Friday night.

Thank you for visiting today, and I'm off to see what everyone else has stitched!

Hugs!

Barbara xx

6 comments:

CathieJ said...

He is so adorable. You must keep working on him. After all the trouble you went to to get him ready for stitching, why wouldn't you?

Rachel said...

Ah, the backstitch. Definitely not the best friend of stitchers unless you are working on black work designs. Lol

I think your stitching looks great. He will be a cute teddy bear when you finish!!

Carm said...

Adorable teddy! Great re-start.

Brigitte said...

This little teddy is so adorable. Too adorable to just leave him in the drawer. Great that you could start the backstitching on him.

Lara B. said...

That is an adorable little Teddy Bear Barbara, Well worth pulling out of "the dreaded cupboard" LOL

Kaisievic said...

He will be so very cute when he is done, sounds like most of your Friday night was taken up with prepping! lol!