I volunteered to embroider a napkin for the guild's contribution to gift baskets that the Queen of the West will take to Pennsic 2007. I chose the West Kingdom for my napkin, so I needed to create a rose with red petals, green leaves and a gold center. Since this is supposed to be for a washable napkin, we were asked to do the embroidery in cotton. I chose the DMC colors of 304 (red), 3818 (green), 725 (yellow) and 310 (black) from my stash.

The napkin is 60% linen 40% cotton and has a nice machine-made edging that looks very much like period hemstitching. Mistress Isela found them somewhere online for relatively cheap. I am, however, finding that the price wasn’t the only cheap aspect of the napkin; the nice edging is starting to come undone in one corner, and I've not been all that brutal with it. I will try and fix it before I send it back to Isela.

The deadline is March 1, and although I'm making better progress than anticipated I may not make that deadline because I was busy working on my second Darkwood Tapestry panel. I'm doing one strand split stitch; I figured it was high time for me to step out of my comfort zone and try my hand at split stitch again. I did it once a long time ago on Gaius' Vesper Bear, but it wasn't that good and I was disappointed with it. But the stitching on this project is turning out well. There is some slight puckering as I spiral my way inward on the petals, but much less than I thought there would be. So far, I'm rather pleased with the way it's turning out.

This is a picture of how it stands today:

Here’s an updated picture of the napkin. It continues to go better than expected.

The project is finished. I’ve been off to Maui for the last week and got everything done on the plane and while lounging at the beach condo. I’m quite pleased with the way it came out. There are some slight puckers to the petals, and the corner edging needs fixing, but that’s not a whole heck of a lot to complain about. Again, this was a foray into the world of split stitch, an admitted weak spot for me. Granted, the project was done in solid colors, so there weren’t a lot of ways I could have messed this up. But I’m happy with how it turned out and am looking forward to doing a piece with more color variation and gradation.