Hair's to You

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This morning I spent quite a bit of time on my Quilting Snowladies embroidery project.

Right now, I'm working on the middle block in the top row.  It's a fun project, and it's challenging me a little bit.  I would say it is moderately difficult.  It's not the sort of project you'd want to choose as your first, but if you are familiar with the basic stitches, it's simple enough.  

As for me, I'm completely self-taught on embroidery.  I used to do a lot of crewel work back in the 70's.  I think the last project I did was a little wall-hanging right before Erik was born.  That would explain the "last project" part of that sentence.  The question answers itself.  I didn't do any more embroidery (other than the occasional cross-stitch piece) until about three years ago when I took on the Winter Wonderland quilt.

After that, I was almost as hopelessly hooked on embroidery as I was am on quilting.

But to get back to the Snowladies...I've been approaching a section of this stitchery with fear and trepidation.  Here's a partial picture of the completed block as it looks on the pattern cover.

Can you see the dimension in her hair?  The pattern suggests using a "Fringe Stitch" and then provides the following utterly unhelpful diagram of the stitch with no instructions on how to actually stitch it.

This must be my week for non-instructive instructions.  I figure the Universe must be smiling on me with all of these opportunities for growth.  For example, it gives me a chance to learn new vocabulary words containing more than four letters.  And it gives me a chance to practice my stoicism.  These are excellent skills to put to use in the sewing room, I'm realizing; and so as the opportunities present themselves, I weep in celebration with each new insight.

So I searched the internet, including Mary Corbett's Needle 'n Thread, which I consider the seminal blog on all things embroidery.  I could find nothing.  So I turned to my other volume on embroidery stitches.  Marsha Michler's book on Crazy Quilting has some excellent diagrams and instructions for doing embroidery.  Some day I would like to read this book cover to cover and make a Crazy Quilt.  For now, I turn to this book when I'm trying to figure out embroidery stitches.  

I looked in the index under "fringe" and found lots of references.  This page seemed to be the best hope for making the hair on the snowlady correctly.  Basically, one makes a loop and then stitches a cross stitch over the top of it.  Then, you can either leave it looped, or clip the loop.

Well, I still don't know if I'm doing it right, but it seems to have worked out.  My problem is that the more loops I put in place, the harder it was to see what I was doing.  I ended up with this:

I cut the loops and then sort of mussed them up some in an effort to unravel the floss and give it a fuzzy appearance.  Just to be sure, I tugged at the individual strands, and they seem to be holding fast.  I figure snowladies aren't fussy about their hair.  Besides, I think that's probably why she's wearing a hat.  That's what I do when my hair isn't looking good.

Hopefully, I've done her some justice.  I'm not very happy about how the marker is showing below my French knots.  I might have to redo that part, possibly switching to a lazy daisy stitch.  Again, the pattern neglects to suggest a stitch or a floss color for that part of her face.  I don't even know if I'm using the right color.  In fact, as I'm writing this, I think a switch to black (like coal) might be the solution to this problem.

So for the rest of today my plan is to go grudgingly and do my Curves workout.  It's so frustrating to continually lose arguments with myself on this issue.  After that, my sock monkey would like some ears, please.  And then I'm going to start on my March doll quilt for the Doll Quilt Swap.  This is going to be a Fun Friday.  Absolutely no housework on the horizon.