Adventures in hand finishing (long)

The finishing is started on this piece of competed cross stitching, that has been tucked away in the studio for several years.  It will be a fairly large needle book.  I knew going in that the finishing would be complex and physically demanding ( for me), and most of it is done with a curved needle.  Then I made it worse by using a curved needle meant for canvaswork, rather than a sharp one.

The first step was to find a suitable piece of card stock to use in the various pieces that will go together to make up the finished piece.  The poster board sold  in craft stores etc is just not firm enough, so a trip to an artists'specialty store was indicated. They had  quite a variety of stock, but most of it was quite flimsy.  Finally I did find a piece that I thought might do. It was mixed media paper, and the least expensive of the lot. The paper that would have worked a bit better was 300lb watercolour paper at almost $20 for a huge sheet. But I knew that I had a piece of 400lb watercolour at home that I could use if the less expensive one didn't work.  Other than having to use two layers for the main section  of the needle book, it worked fine.

The finishing is worked in sections, the first being backing of the main piece. This process was quite laborious, especially when worked with the dull canvaswork needle.

Next was a basic background to fit over the two sides of this main piece when finished.  Sorry, but the picture shows this in place over the main piece, before that piece was prepared.

Next was to prepare the actual needle  area.  This required some thought.  The instructions called for this to be done in the same linen as everything else, and involved hand beading.  IMHO this would not have been very functional.  So I gave some thought to changing everything  in favour of function over appearance, and made these sections using felt pages to hold the needles. 

 But, the original concept of the piece was one of elegance over function, and did I really need a functional needle case, in the first place?  I have a very nice functional needle case that I made years ago, as a teaching piece, using  the Yugoslavian Stitch.  (This is not Swedish weaving, or Huck Weaving.)

Finally, I decided to go with elegance, and then discovered that I didn't have enough of the original linen.  I used a piece of Duipionni Silk instead, and while it doesn't perfectly match, it still looks better than the felt.

So this is where it now sits.  All of the sections are ready to go, and all that remains is 3-4 days of hand stitching.  So far I have about 18 hours of time into the finishing.  Sure glad I'm not paying a professional finisher.