Sunday, January 16, 2011

Petit point in progress for a pole screen

Over the last couple of days I've been working on a little project for the Blue and White Room -- a pole screen.  I've got a McQueenie Miniatures kit I picked up from eBay, and I've designed a piece to fit -- it's 51 stitches square on 40 count silk gauze, and I based it on a Ming dynasty dais cloth, so it's the right period :)

It's actually coming along really quickly, even though I have to count like the dickens when I stitch it (this is the second time I've started it -- the first time I made a basic mistake in counting and tried to rearrange things around my mistake and then I chose a colour for the central motif that was far too close to the background.  It was really ghastly!) 


And here's the McQueenie kit -- I love their kits, even though the mahogany they use is not period for projects before about 1730. I'll do my usual -- stain it oak to tone down the red and see how that goes :)  They're all well constructed and go together easily.

It's a really pretty screen design.


You can buy McQueenie kits either directly from their website or from Minimum World.

(There's a wonderful article on the history of fire guards or pole screens in The Antiquarian.)

8 comments:

  1. Wow, Nina! That's a gorgeous pattern! I love the oriental dragon! You are amazing!

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  2. You're off to a good start - it looks lovely.

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  3. Your work looks so gorgeous once again!

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  4. Thanks so much for all your comments!

    Daydreamer -- I'm glad you can tell it's a dragon :) It's a wild one, for sure, really ornate and curly.

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  5. Oh, it's beautiful, Nina!!

    I've tried to work on 40-count silk gauze - you should have heard the swearing, lol! :D

    Glenda

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  6. Even before reading the comment by Daydreamer, it became clear to me that this is a beautiful oriental dragon :-)
    I love this type of decoration and I think that, once completed, will be perfect for your beautiful room!!!
    Thank for the link :-)
    Mini hugs, Flora

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  7. Thanks, Glenda -- you should have heard the swearing when I tried knitting socks -- I swore I'd never do anything so tiny and fiddly :) Sometimes fate laughs at us, eh?

    Thank you, Flora -- I'm glad you could tell it was a dragon, too! I think it'll look nice in the room when it's done -- I hope so, anyway!

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