The Fifth Cushion....

The Hound And His Mate....

I Hope you will Not be surprised, Dear Readers, to learn that the fifth cushion design also would need to be altered by the addition of the Mate for the Hound. As tempting as it was to just stitch the design as it was printed, with just the single hound, I knew I would always wonder where his mate was! I began the framework for this cushion before I had even finished the squirrels cushion, in part because I wanted to find out whether there was enough of the dark red silk thread to stitch the entire outline. As you can see, there was. And you might not be surprised to learn that I started drawing the second hound before I even started to stitch the first.... just in case there was a need for also moving the first one.

I drew the hound at about the size I wanted it to be in the chart I had printed out, so I could get an idea of what would need to be moved out of the way.

Here you can see the position I wanted the hound to take. And this is where things get complicated. Because the graph paper of the drawing is not the same size as the printed chart, (it is close but not exact) the number of squares in the drawing (ie stitches) is too many to fit in that space. So I needed to count the number of stitches for the length and height of the space on the printed chart that the hound needed to fit into... and redraw a chart to stitch from that would fit within that size.

 Here you can see the new drawing compared with the first drawing. It is smaller in the picture, but has the right number of stitches to fit into the space available on the chart. 

 Here I have taped the drawing onto the chart, with the front paw at the spot where the stitching needs to start. It doesn't look right here because the scales are just a little different, but once it is stitched it will fill a larger space!

 

Here I have begun to stitch hound number one!

 

And before long he was finished!

And the second hound is begun....

 

 

 

You can see that the proportions look right in the stitching.

 

 

Both hounds have been stitched and the outlining in the dark red is begun.

 

And here you can see both hounds outlined and the blossoms are begun!

 

 

And more flowers! I have started to design the expanded corners too.

 

 

And even more blossoms! 

And while it might seem like that didn't take long Dear Readers,

 it was actually two weeks of work! 

But the Fifth cushion with the Hound and his Mate

 is looking the way I hoped it would!