Buy the Kit!

Doesn’t mean you should.

LOL.  That was the theme of the second lesson of our current mystery class Beep Beep!  We started with a lesson about controlled random.  Did that “controlled” word make it better?  So many stitchers are intimidated by random stitching.  You may know I love it.  Seriously love it.

These fun concentric arcs on Mario Van Meeples tummy (shout out here to Liz) are stitched randomly in different stitches.  The golden arc is filled with Smyrna Crosses.  Fill the area with as many as will fit. Each Smyrna needs to be complete.  Fill the rest of the area with Tent Stitches.  Easy peasy, right?  That’s random.  To make sure it looks random you need to change up the position of the stitches in each row.  Just because you can line up all the stitches doesn’t mean you should.

The orange arc uses the same logic but this time with Mosaic Stitches and finally the red center uses Scotch Stitches!  All random but kinda organized.

He’s such a handsome fellow, zipping by a giant cactus!

The cactus is stitched in a Laid Filling Stitch worked with lots of happy colors.  Lay long vertical stitches and then stitch over them with Cross Stitches.   What to do where the colors change?  I wanted one complete stitch pattern across the entire cactus.  Normally you would work complete stitches only, allowing the colors to blend from one stripe to the next.  That plan will work just fine,  Just because you can…  I wanted the stripes to be bolder.  I chose to compensate my stitches at the color breaks, this draws attention to them. I then took it even further and made rules for how to compensate at the color changes so that all the color breaks were very bold.  All of this is detailed in the instructions.  If you are stitching this with us, you can of course choose to go off script an make your cactus a tad more subtle.

There you have it, lesson two if full of color, a bit of random and a lot of crossed stitches.

We have additional canvases on order, so If you would like to sign up to have a complete kit sent to you at the end of class, click here and we’ll get you in the queue. Or give us a call at 410.296.0405.

Lesson three of Beep Beep is in three weeks.

xo
ruth