My bleat for help to the Designworks FB group received an almost instantaneous reply from a couple of people, including the genius Adeline.

 

 

What more could I ask?  Thrilled with such a speedy answer – and keen to crack on whilst it was all still in my head – I shot back down into the studio and followed her advice.

 

 

It worked a charm!  I saved and resisted the temptation to try stitching it out there and then, for it was late Sunday evening and probably not the best time to begin.

 

 

This morning, I prepared the fabric carefully but couldn’t wait to try it out.  I had some work to do first though, so exercised a little self discipline and completed that before switching my machine on

 

 

My first attempt wasn’t too bad.  I didn’t hoop the fabric as accurately as I might have done – you can see the cross that’s supposed to be the centre.  But it didn’t matter, because my main interest was to see what happens when by simply stitching it out.  First the outline of the shape was stitched in a running stitch as a placement guide.  I ironed the shape in place then, and watched as the shape was stitched another couple of times.  The next step was the decorative stitch, which covered some of my earlier inaccuracy in placing the shape.

 

 

The precision is impressive as is the way in which the stitches are formed consistently.

 

 

I quickly lined another one up to reinforce my learning!

 

 

So, I need to sort something out about that puckering in the middle, but apart from that (and the poor colour in this last photo, taken in a slightly different place from the others – sorry!) I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Couldn’t have done it without a great deal of support though, for which I’m grateful.  What would we do without online friends?