Easter Project - Part Three

 

I finished the stitching on my first Easter wip and I wanted to share this helpful tip.   

When I take the finished stitching out of the hoop, I immerse it in water to remove the water soluble ink pattern lines.  I make sure to immerse it because sometimes, if you just dab the lines with water, a blue spot will appear where the ink wasn't completely washed out.  I have learned the hard way to always immerse my project! 

Next, I carefully squeeze out the excess water. I have noticed that since the heavily embroidered areas dry much slower than the unstitched base fabric, often the fabric dries with a lot of wrinkles.  I always iron my projects but I don't like to iron over the heavily embroidered areas in case I flatten out the floss too much.  So to solve these problems, I try to dry it without letting it wrinkle up too much.  The best way I have tried so far is to use a big absorbent towel and some straight pins: 

I place the wet project on the towel and using the straight pins I pin it into place on the towel.  The pins hold it taut and in place while it dries.  Sort of like blocking wool projects.  I usually keep smoothing the fabric and adjusting the straight pins as it dries.

This has worked really well for me.  When it is all dry, I remove all the pins and you can see it dries without too many wrinkles or the hoop marks:

Then I carefully iron it to remove any wrinkles that did form and here is the result:

I used quite a few different stitches on this project.  Lazy Daisy Stitch for the pink flowers, Roumanian Stitch for the purple flowers,  French Knots for all the yellow and pink dots, Long and Short Stitch for the pale purple flowers, Back Stitch for the flower stems and most of the text - the E is done in Chain Stitch, and Fishbone Stitch for all the leaves:

 

Here are the floss colors and their numbers I used in this project.