Outlining the stone

For the purple and yellow stone building, I decided to use a horizontal interlocking gobelin over 4 threads.  When you look at the original canvas, you can see that the blocks are outlined.  I tried stitching the blocks without outlining, but they all blended together and showed no separate space.  Therefore, I decided to do a backstitch around each block to give it some additional depth, as shown here:

As a caveat, I thought that this stitch would stitch up quickly but it is taking much longer than I expected and goes thru a lot of thread.  Hopefully, I will get this area done soon and can then move on to another area.

Yellow and Purple Block Stitch Choices

After stitching the doorway the same as the Blue Arch, what horizontal stitch would best for the stones? Out came the scratch scrim to start playing.  There were several experiments tried and they each had issues:

The two stitches with their variations considered were the Reversed Continental and a Horizontal Interlocking Gobelin.  The Reversed Continental was rejected because it was cumbersome to stitch with the Flair and didn't provide enough texture.  The enlarged Reversed Continetal would have too much open space and need too much fill.  Now let's see if the interlocking gobelin is better.  The sample over 2 threads size had a scale that was too small for the area to be stitched.  But it  probably could be used for the top of the building. The 3 thread version had appeared too uneven.  The 4 thread version seems to be the right scale.

Now which fiber to use: Flair, Neon Rays, or Splendor?  The Flair looks nice, so far.  The Neon Rays seems to snag for this stitch and is too shiny.  Fortunately I was doing this testing at my local shop, the Rose Cottage, during the Thursday night stitch-in and was able to get some feedback.  The winning choice?  Splendor!  Rationale being we need an area to rest our eyes from all of the busyness of the piece.  Here is the start of this area in 6-ply Splendor and 6-ply Gumnuts:

Since the block areas seem to be blending into one another, some black backstitching as an outline may be needed.  To be continued in the next post...

Large purple dome building

After completing the small purple dome building, the large one appeared a little easier to tackle.  I started with the vertical stripe area.  While examining the stripes, the purple stripe to the left of the candle minaret seemed out of place and lacked continuity of the building.  So I took artistic license and changed the purple to yellow and the aqua to yellow.



The horizontal stripes were the next area and they required some counting and compensation.  There were 12 threads to the right of the candle minaret, so a stitch that was 2x6 would be a good size.  I wanted it to look a little bumpy like detailed trim on a building.  An oblong Smyrna cross stitch would be a good fit.  The shape was perfect for the right side, but the left needed some compensation.  The stitch was worked from right to left as shown in this diagram:

On the far left , the stitch would be cut off, so a partial stitch was done.  Only the areas that would be visible were stitched.  When the second row was started, I had it line up directly underneath the first row so they would look like blocks.



The last area to be stitched was the roof.  I chose a criss cross Hungarian using a 4-ply Splendor and a 3-ply Gumnuts as the accent thread.  The Gumnuts is heavier than the Splendor, so fewer ply are needed.  I started stitching on the right side so I could get a feel for the pattern.
The tricky part was when I went to the left side of the roof, the minaret was in the way and was affecting the count.  Out came the paper and pencil and I had to actually draw the compensation.  The solid lines indicate the location of the minaret tower.