Still sewing.
I’m still trundling along putting flowers on my big piece, but it’s close enough to done now that it seems silly to post another progress pic.
But naturally that’s not all I’m doing.
So have y’all seen a really cute blackwork cat alphabet floating around Facebook or Pinterest? This is your friendly reminder that when you see something like that a human designed it and probably didn’t intend it to be handed out to the entire internet for free.
In this case the designer is Claire Crompton and she has an Etsy shop. Unfortunately the alphabet isn’t there – it was published in a book and the publisher holds the copyright, and I’m still investigating my feelings about whether it’s ok to use without buying a whole cross stitch book I don’t want since the designer won’t actually make anything either way.
BUT I found this beautiful alphabet sampler in her shop so I did buy that.
Fair warning, mine has a couple of small changes. I do not need yet another flat embroidered wall hanging, so after a false start involving a blouse I’m embroidering it as a single band of trim to be inserted above a skirt hem. And because I want that skirt nice and full, I invented some little spacer blocks to alternate between letters so that one trip through the alphabet should bring me up to one skirt worth of trim.
So, the letter blocks are copyright Claire Crompton, if you want to sew them GO PAY HER. The small potted plant blocks are mine so feel free to use those.
The other change hopefully wouldn’t piss her off. She actually has the word on the C centered, so it wraps around the block at the beginning and end. I found that maddeningly hard to read, so I did rotate it forward so that the first word is all on one line. Mea culpa but I think I kept it true to her basic intent.
Neurotic Owl 