Anti Atlas Rug – Progress #9

I’ve had a busy week and didn’t get much stitching done. But I finally have the first of the green squares to show you. Lots of forest green, toasty browns, and a pale yellow.

On the left is the original pattern, and on the right is my adaptation.

 

 

 

The original looks like it’s all one color to fill in the background and the diamond shapes. I wanted more variation than that. With the basketweave squares almost all one color, I thought it would look better to have more colors to add to the design. The pattern squares has 3 shades of toasty browns and two lighter shades of green. The same green family is used for the basketweave squares and the outer border.

The overdye for the inner border is from Valdani. I like the thread, but as you can see the colors don’t change as quickly as those from Needle Necessities, ThreadworX, or Watercolors. I think it will be okay in this case though.

The whole rug so far looks like this. The end is approaching. I hope I have more time to stitch next week so I can have this finished by the middle of the month.

Moroccan Needlepoint Pillow Done

I have completed the pillow, to disappointing results (to me anyway). After doing the Blue Rug, everything seems bland, so-so. Not every design is a good one, but I’m learning with every project.

I ran into several problems. The count on the center square must be off – doing the off-white background ends up off at every intersection. The last row of background is different depending on which corner you look at. The darker brown border presented a different problem. After having trouble with the background, I wanted a stitch that could be used around the entire piece without have to change directions constantly. I decided to use the Brick stitch over two threads. All the stitches go the same way. Maybe it needs to be wider or a darker brown. I’m not thrilled but it’s complete and I’ll move on to other things.

And the other things include a new Moroccan Rug from the Anti Atlas in the far south of the country. Information about this will be posted next week as it’s on the May list of things do. Be prepared for something very different!

Moroccan Pillow Update

The blue pillow is coming along, but it hasn’t been easy.

I stitched the little corners of the underlying square in medium blue using the Diagonal Mosaic stitch. I didn’t like how it looked – too light – so I ripped it out. Then I came up with the idea of doing the stitches that were over two threads in the medium blue and the stitches that are over one thread in the dark blue. This is easy to see in the photo above. When you back up a little, it gives more of a solid color look and is not as dark as the dark blue or as light as the medium blue. I like this better.

Then it was on to the background. Again, I didn’t like the stitch I had chosen and ripped it out. Tried a second stitch and ripped it out. Decided to wait a day or two to see if anything better came to mind. So now I’m stitching using a straight stitch over four threads and following the triangle shape from the underlying square.

I didn’t want the stitch to go in the same directions for the entire design, so I’ve stopped the background stitching at an imaginary diagonal line going from the corner of the top Milanese box up to the outer edge of the design. I don’t like the space where the two stitched white areas meet, so I will have to do something about that when it when the background is finished. I still have to add a darker brown border after the background is completed. Here’s what it looks like right now.

Not exactly as I had imagined it, but okay. Not thrilled, but okay.