The land of the 90 foot cat is coming along nicely.  I’ve been told he isn’t really a 90 ft cat and those aren’t trees next to him. He’s really a regular size cat wandering through the weeds.  Either way he’s quite dashing.

Today’s first mission was the background.  You may have noticed, I’m not a traditionalist.  Now while there’s a lot to be said about stitching the foreground of the design first, I prefer to stitch the background early on. It makes counting the stitch pattern so much easier!  You just have to remember that whatever stitch you put in the background everything else has to have more punch.

The background is a laid filling stitch.  I love laid filling stitches.  I started with long vertical stitches the entire height of the background in…… metallic.  They are overstitched with small horizontal stitches in a pattern. The pattern uses more metallic at the top and less at the bottom.  So, it looks like sunlight sparkling through the trees.

We also stitched the large floating leaves in the sky.  These are super super cool because they use a new thread that Anne from Gloriana Threads dyed just for us. Duchess Silk, It’s gorgeous!  Everyone loves it and it’s great to stitch with.  100% silk, dyed in typical Gloriana beauty and the perfect size for 13ct canvas.  I’m in love.

I added a sprinkling of Sundance Drop Beads across the bottom of the design to give Shamus our cat something to stand on.  I had to have a little something random and embroidery-like.

Next weekend is the Big Event so it will be 3 weeks before we finish the cat.