I am stitching the William Morris rug shown on the front cover of the book Miniature Needlepoint Carpets by Janet Granger.
Her patterns are made for 18ct canvas, but this rug would measure about 9″ x 9″ using that material. Too large for my purposes, and 18ct isn’t as fine a finish as I prefer. I decided to stitch the pattern on 28ct fabric, which will result in a rug just under 6″ x 6″. I also decided to cross stitch this pattern to eliminate the tendency for the fabric to show through the usual needlepoint stitch.
I made a color copy of the pattern to attach to my magnetic board and liked the colors better than the original, so I visually matched the thread colors from my stash instead of using the suggested colors in the book. This is the rug after about 13 hours of work. Long way to go.
Now at roughly 33 hours of work. I’ll be finishing the second half of the design before filling in the background and border. I’m still undecided on those colors, though I have some ideas. I just love the design itself so much, I don’t want to detract from it.
At just under 70 hours, the entire design is done! :D
Now comes the long process of filling in the background colors. I am sold on the rusty red for the outer border but I am torn between the vanilla and silver-grey for the interior. My plan is to work on the red border for now and decide on the inner portion once that’s done.
I think the vanilla will be really rich looking – like red velvet cake with butter cream frosting. Yum! But, the silver-grey has its appeal as well – the peach and pink floral shapes will likely stand out more against the silver-grey.
