SAL: Royal Garden

Before I tell you about my progress on the Royal Garden counted needlepoint SAL organised by FiberTalk, just a quick shout-out about my sale of Heathway Milano Crewelwool. There is not much left, so if you want to take advantage of this sale, you better start ordering. Each 10 m skein is only €1 (was €1,75) and 500 grams can be shipped WORLDWIDE for only €3,70. Skeins not sold by the 1st of August will become part of my stash :). As the current price is what I paid for them whole-sale, there will not be a further price reduction! Equally, there is thus no bulk discount, etc. You can order your Heathway Milano Crewelwool here. Hurry! Only 11 days left.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen frequent progress pictures on Royal Garden in the past few days. What is Royal Garden? This is a counted canvas/needlepoint design by Debbie Rowley of Debbee Designs. FiberTalk organises a SAL for it. Yesterday, saw the first live-show in which Debbie demonstrated the double fan doubles stitch. There will be future live-shows, but there doesn't seem to be a schedule for them yet.

Counted needlepoint uses embroidery stitches such as: waffle stitch, walnettos, Jessicas, crescents, sword amadeus etc. to form colourful and highly textured geometric designs. You use a plethora of speciality threads like those produced by Rainbow Gallery, together with stranded cotton and perle. Counted needlepoint is huge in the USA, but not very well known in Europe. That's precisely why I joined the SAL!

The embroidery technique is not very difficult as long as the instructions are well-written and clear. And Debbie's instructions are. However, I did stumble upon a few mistakes. I've pointed them out to Debbie and she has corrected them in her master-copy. Future instruction booklets will be updated. However, if you already own a copy, you might benefit from knowing what these mistakes are:
- on page 5, the before last sentence should read: 'Bring the needle up one hole above 5 and park the needle on top of the canvas.'
- on the master chart, there are two blocks of reverse Scotch stitches missing on the right-hand side just right of the waffle stitches.
- the numbering in Diagram 31 on page 22 is partly illegible. If you email Debbie (address on the instruction booklet) she will happily mail a correct diagram to you.

Woven Filling

Condensed Scotch Filling

It was all plain sailing until I hit the weaving on page 32 :). I just could not get it to look pretty. And my hands hurt a great deal after working only one side. Asking Debbie for help during the live-show did provide me with some helpful tips on how to manage this stitch, but I kept struggling. As one of the points of advice was to perhaps change the stitch, I decided to do just that. To keep a bit of a 'woven look', I opted for condensed Scotch stitch. It worked a treat!

If you would like to swap the woven filling stitch for the Condensed Scotch stitch, I think you will be able to use the above photograph for stitch placement. However, if you struggle, do let me know and I will ask my husband to produce a technical drawing.

Who else is joining in with the Royal Garden fun?