Filling in Your Mat! We're Almost Done!

Today is the day we finish our punching! We are all filling in our backgrounds, so remember 4 s.p.i.!

As you recall from Friday, we each got our lettering, scrolling, and borders completed. The fast punchers even got some extra completed. Those taking it a bit slower are just starting to fill in the gaps.

 If you're using a fine needle, like Heidi, you will want to make sure you are going in every hole and skipping a row in between. Heidi sounds like she is just super quick as she punches along, while those of us who aren't her or Cotey, sound like we are just plodding along. We have told her more than once to "slow down speedy!"

I'm going to let you in on a little secret now, Heidi, Cotey, and I each have completed one. We had some extra time and started a second. You can see Heidi and Cotey working on their seconds above. When Cotey did her first, she made the letters gradually change in shade. The second one, she decided she was going to have the background have that effect and she also added some lovely dots and circles for some pizzazz! 

Heidi used much of her same color pallet but she up'd the contrast levels by using a much lighter and brighter variegated blue for her scroll work and in her bead stitched letters. 

Above on the left are Heidi's original colors, the right are the colors for her second mat. 

If you'll recall as I worked on mine, my colors were bright, as in BRIGHT. (Cotey may have called them ridiculous) When I filled in my background, Smokey Extra Light really toned the brightness down. We were shocked, SHOCKED I tell you! When I decided to do a second one, I wanted to see what having a dark background would do to the colors. So I moved the Smokey Extra Light to just the bead stitch and Dark Roast to the background. I also hadn't used the Magic Magenta in the first. I just couldn't find a place I really wanted to use it, so I switched it with the Halcyon purple in my second piece. I didn't take a picture of the colors before going into it since I used all the colors I had already photographed, just in different places. I can show you the two welcome's with borders, before backgrounds were punched.

Christy's Blackberry color is gorgeous with the greens and blue that she used. It really made the her vine stand out. Christy was worried a bit about the lettering, however. The yarn she chose was a soft yarn and squished a lot, but because she doubled the strands that helped them to stay pretty straight. Christy did waffle with the idea of pulling them out and using three strands. In the end, she kept them as they were. 

He changed his mind! Doesn't it look stunning? I love, love, love his color combo. The tweed like color he ended up using for his background also has these beautiful rusty gold accents flecked throughout it. The Tortola color really stands out. Look how the color changes though depending on the colors it is adjacent to. It looks so different in my piece. It's brighter, but in Sid's it's really toned down and the color is a deeper richer blue. 

Christy was able to finish her Welcome Mat after I left for the day and when I mean finished, I mean, the whole thing! Hemming and all! That stinker.

Christy's is stunning though. It looks like a watercolor painting with the variegated in the yarns that she used. I love how she turned the scroll work into a vine with leaves. It's a very elegant piece that she created!

Now comes clean up time! I find this to be incredibly satisfying! 

You're going to want to start by rolling your scissor handles over the loops vigorously and  releasing all the tails that may be stuck down by the loops. You'll want to take all of these little tails sticking out, waving hi and snip them. Pull up gently on one and then snip as close to the loops as possible and then just keep on going! You are going to snip each end until it's all nice and clean looking. You'll also have a nice pile of fluffy ends sitting on your couch next to you and if you have children like mine, BE CAREFUL! Mine like to take that pile and throw it into the air while yelling "It's Raining!!" So... once you're done cleaning up that mess, or telling your children 50 times to clean it up, not to mention picking bits of yarn ends out of your dog's fur, you can go ahead and remove your frame cover and gently take the monk's cloth off your frame. Congratulations! The hard part is over!

HAHA Just kidding. Now you get to do the finishing, but I will save that for the next post! 

I can't wait to see all of these projects coming off of the frames! Don't forget to tag us (@amy.oxford) and use the hashtag #OxCoPALS

~Hannah

Here is a peak of ours at the end of this day! (I leave earlier than the others, so they were still working when I left.)