High Atlas Pillow – Finale

Time to add a border and finish this pillow. More projects wait in the wings.

The border has three parts. The first part is the Gobelin Stitch over 3 threads done in Cappiccino. This gives a nice finished edge to the rectangles.

The second border is something new for me. The small photos I have of these rugs doesn’t give me the best view of some motifs. Making them bigger just causes them to become blurry pixels. So I created this motif to look like what I could see and don’t know how accurate it is.  It was created using just long cross stitches over 4 threads. I did the 3 rows of Ginger stitches first. Then the Natural stitches go from the middle of one Ginger cross stitch to the middle of the next one. I like it. The Rhodes Stitch at the corner was done with 3 colors. I like to experiment with this stitch. Maybe just 2 colors would have been enough.

The last step was to go around the pillow one more time in Cappiccino – Gobelin over 4 threads this time. Using the darker color for the inside and outside border sets the border off from the rest of the pillow and also unites the whole pillow.

And finally, the whole pillow which is now complete. It measures just over 9 inches square.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 5

I’ve completed the last of the rectangles surrounding the middle square. I’ve used one of my favorite stitches – Sprat’s Head – to do the main part of the design. The center was done with another another of my favorites – Rhodes stitch. I like doing this stitch with two or three colors rather than only one. I like the white canvas showing around the stitch as well.

Now all that’s left is the border. I’ll show how that is progressing in my next post. Here’s the pillow after all the rectangles were completed.

Is the last rectangle too fancy for the rest of the pillow? In the rugs, I can alternate the fancier bands with plain bands to keep the whole rug balanced. I’m not sure about this pillow. Would love to hear your opinion?

I’ll start working on the Middle Atlas Rug on 18 count canvas next week. I’ll do the stitch guide as I work on it so the stitch guide will be available by the end of November. Look for that to show up after the pillow’s final post next week.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 3

Another rectangle is now complete, but I’m not sure I like it. I used white Trio to make long stitches and then used Ginger to stitch over it. I think this looks fairly good. The other sections are brown Splendor and yellow Trio. The sections in the middle of three in each row are one stitch wider than the other two. This alters the design a tiny bit. Then I found out that the rectangles are not 5 inches like I thought. They’re 4.75 inches. The individual sections are one inch long and that leaves one section about 4 stitches shorter than the others. I decided to put the smaller section in the middle of the rectangle and reverse the colors  - just to be different.

There are two more rectangles to go – one will be completely filled in like the first one, and the second with have some open areas like this one. Even the border will have some open canvas and some solid stitching. I’m still experimenting and learning.

Here is the pillow as it looks today.

I will continue to work on the pillow as I have time. But I have something different planned for several posts next week. We’re going to study Zellig from Morocco. Stay tuned.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 2

With the center finished, it’s time to start on the large rectangles that surround the center. The photo of the rug detail below shows most of the motifs that I will be working with for this pillow.

I started with one toward the left. The triangles were stitched over 2, 4, 6, 4, 2 threads. I have a limited palette of colors since I’m using only the colors I had left from the rug project. I’ve used several combinations of light and dark threads for the triangles and the satin stitched stripes. The stripes were stitches in varying widths, from over 2 threads to 4 threads. The rectangle measures 5″ X 2″.

Here is how the pillow looks right now. The next pattern isn’t working the way I had envisioned it, so I’m rethinking how to proceed. It has some more open parts and I’m not sure I like the look. We’ll see what I can come up with to make it look better.

High Atlas Pillow – Progress 1

There are several reasons for doing a pillow from the High Atlas area of Morocco.

1. There are so many wonderful rugs from this area and I don’t have time to work with all of them.

2. I have quite a bit of Trio and Splendor thread left from stitching my High Atlas rug.

3. I have a photo of a rug that has intrigued me since I first saw it and now I’m going to create a pillow using some of the motifs from this rug, which is shown below.
I’ve picked six motifs from this rug, which I will put together in a pillow. The design will be about nine inches square. The first motif I’ll work with is the white  diamond band that is shown twice in the photo above. I’ve done this motif before in the small red Zemmour style rug late last year. But I wanted it to be the center of the rug this time, so I had to do some thinking. Below is the line drawing of the major part of the pillow design. There will be a border around this which is not drawn on the canvas yet.

There are four diamonds in the center section. I started by stitching the outlines of the diamonds in white Trio using Backstitch. When that was completed, I went around the rest of the area with dark brown Trio, again using Backstitch.

There will be a lot of open space in the center, even after I finish the design I have planned. In the white diamonds, I added a large Smyrna Cross. I stitched the large + in a darker shade, and the X on top of it in a lighter shade. I’m not sure you can see that in the photo, but I like the look of two different colors for this stitch. Then I needed something for the diamonds created when I stitched the dark brown shapes. Just a few stitches in yellow were added to complete the brown diamonds. Then I stitched a border in Cappuchino – Gobelin stitch over three threads. Here is the center, all completed.

I’ll work on the four rectangles around the center next. Each one will have a different motif. See you next week with another update.