More frustration

The piece "The Old Summer Kitchen" continues to frustrate me.  I have added stuff, removed stuff, and done a heck of a lot of "reverse stitching".  Yesterday, when I attempted to back it and bind it,  the need for blocking became obvious.  This is the first time I used my new blocking board.  The expensive board we bought, to make it, turned out to be too hard for my T-pins.  With my husband's help we persevered and found some small brass tacks that would work, but we didn't have as many of them as we should have had to do a thorough job.  Good blocking requires some sort of fastening device every 1/2 inch around the edge of the piece, and by that time of night, heading out to buy more just wasn't an option.

But we got it stabilized and shaped.  During my time as a needle work finisher I did more than my share of blocking and this was one of the more difficult jobs, and maybe not my very best work, but the job got done.  

This morning we put it out into the yard to dry, as it would never have dried in the basement studio.  We rested the board against the fence upside down, and I'm not physically strong enough to flip it for the picture, but this actually shows the piece right side up.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread network, and Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Fridays.