OhSewCrafty Blog

I started the Summer Bellpull from Stoney Creek magazine, Winter 2016, during Stitch Maynia and worked on it 3 days.  Actually, it was only 2 days since I messed up the positioning and had to frog everything I stitched on the first day.  The fabric is 18 count Anne cloth, Afghan size, by MCG textiles, 100% polyacrylic (I divided it into 4 bellpull cuts for the seasonal charts). This fabric is quite “open” (easy to “roll” stitches) and it ravels like crazy.  It has a nice drape and it’s very soft, though.

I might blame the fabric a little for my mishap; it is supposed to be 90 threads square, but it’s actually only 88 across.  Still, the fault is mostly mine, as I was seriously exhausted when I started it, and basically off my game.  But it was a bitter pill since I was hoping to finish the first block.  I’m not sure why I thought the pattern would be a quick stitch, the stitch count is 85 x 510.  It’s not full coverage, but there are a lot of color changes and little details.

I gave this project another week of effort at the end of June.  The first two blocks are finished and the third is about 50% complete.  I’ll try to work on this more throughout the summer.  It’s coming along, but I think my original plan (to stitch each bellpull in the appropriate season within a year’s time) may have been too ambitious. The other patterns are published in Stoney Creek Magazines: Spring, Summer, Fall, 2015.