IRCC3 - About that drawn thread work

I have to say that this stuff takes an incredible amount of time. Possibly the worst part of it is that the earlier steps kinda fool you into thinking it will work up fairly quickly...and then you suddenly discovered that you've done all of 4 inches in the last several hours and the horrible truth sinks in!

The pattern is pretty simple. Centering on the location of my 'seam', I pulled a vertical pattern of pull 2 threads, leave 4 threads, pull 7 threads, leave 4 threads, pull two threads. The outer two edges of are worked in a simple hem stitch in sets of 4 threads. (This is the part which goes quickly.) One of the bands of four threads is worked into sets by bracketing the edges of the square with stitching. (Four sided hemstich. Slower, but still feeling good.) And then the time comes to work the second band into sets while also attaching the ladder-rung-like groupings of threads the stitching has created together into X's. (Pea hole hemstich. Bang! It's three days later and it feels like nothing has been done.)

O.K. I'm doing a bit of exaggerating.

I started out using the linen threads I had removed to do the stitching but since I had already started into the threads removed from the sleeves before I completed the stitching on the body it was clear that there wouldn't be enough to complete the process. Rather than canabalizing the remaining fabric for additional thread, I have switched to cotton thread for the stitching on the sleeves. It doesn't match as well but gives a much cleaner finish and running out is not an issue.



Stitched with the pulled linen warp threads.