Learning Hardanger

My Day 3 UCJC project was a hardanger design by Mabel Figworthy's Fancies. I had a great time learning how to do kloster blocks and motifs. I'd never worked with Caron Collection Watercolours and Wildflowers before and it was a brand new adventure for me.

I finally got around to picking up the project again yesterday. I finished all of the kloster blocks, then spent an hour trying to figure out the Queen's Stitch. It just would not lay properly for me. I must have frogged it 6 or 7 times before I gave up and altered the stitch to suit me better. It looks fine, but I don't love it.

Then I moved on to the scariest part -- cutting.  With my lovely and sharp Stork scissors, I made a few cuts, then some more, and started pulling out bits of fabric. Holy cow! I was doing it! But I couldn't figure out how to tuck in the cut ends nicely. They just would not tuck. :( So I moved on to the double wrapped bars, which I think turned out swimmingly.

Thank goodness for crossstitchforum.com and the help of several fantastic stitchers (including Mabel herself), who gave me a few more pointers and set me straight on how to tuck in my ends.

Voila!  Look at those pretty little kloster blocks with no ends showing!

I must say that hardanger is fun, quick, and beautiful, but fiddly too! Tucking in the ends will be the death of me, I'm sure.

Here's the whole piece to date: