I’ve finished with the red border of the William Morris rug! At 97 hours (29 hours for filling in the red border alone), the rug is really taking shape. The interior color will take a good deal longer and I imagine working in a very light color will be challenging in its own way.
I began filling in the center with DMC 712, which was supposed to be cream. I had barely stitched a full corner when the color went from vanilla cream to flat tan. Bleh! I expected the cream and the peach/pink tones to compete a bit, but the 712 flattened out the pale green, too.
I thought I would have to use white since the 712 cream color was about as light as the colors come. From seeing the design with the white fabric background, it wouldn’t look bad stitching with white floss. When I went through my stash of floss, however, I found DMC 746, the bright creamy tone I was looking for to begin with. Before removing the 712 stitching, I did up the opposite corner with 746 just to make sure. As expected, the peach faded slightly into the background, but the pale green stayed prominent.
I went through my thread stash and found what I dubbed “secondhand smoke white.” Of course, that’s not the official name on the DMC chart, but that’s the color I’m going with. It was once white, but after years in my grandmother’s home, it became not-so-white. I’ve inherited many of her craft supplies since she’s no longer with us, and I found a whole bunch of this “white” embroidery floss.
After removing the stitches of the 712 and 746, I needed something a little brighter. I looked at the overdyed, 4150, ecru colorations a few blog readers suggested, but they were all as dark as the initial 712.
Here’s the new white…er…smoky white (upper left corner). It fills in well and doesn’t compete. We had a winner.
Also, strangely enough, it seems thicker than the dyed flosses, so I need only one strand per square instead of the two I had used for the rest of the stitching. This is 4.25 hours of white stitching, 101 hours total stitching.
The entire rug consists of 142 hours of stitching time including 29.25 hours for filling in the red border and 42.25 hours for filling in the white background.
It measures 5 5/8″ square.
The shoes and purse are by Patrizia Santi. I made the bedspread from venise lace; tutorial is available in my etsy shop.
