Three-quarters of the blackwork map is 34.5 towns, but since I’m stitching them in pairs but then ran out of thread and didn’t want to start and stop another, here’s 35.5:
This segment had the fun Piermont-Haverhill puzzle piece border.
Just the bottom 10 (and a half) towns left!
Actually, more than halfway, even by the numbers but definitely by area. I ran out of thread shortly before finishing town #24 (West Fairlee, the skinny tall one near the top) and left it so I could make an update now without unnecessarily starting and stopping a thread, but after it there are only 22 towns left. Three of them are like-size to West Fairlee, and three of the towns in the easternmost “column” are also small (that won’t help me finish faster, though, since I’m rationing my stitching).
This time I sewed a little casing into the bottom of the fabric before washing it. I used warm water and dish soap instead of laundry soap to be sure to cut through any oils from my fingers. When I hung it to dry (via large binder clips around the top of a metal deck chair) I slid a dowel into the casing for weight and even stretch. I think that helped get more of the embroidery hoop marks out, compared to the previous update. The dowel came in handy later as well – rain was threatening, so after the fabric was mostly dry I brought it in and hung it between two chairs inside via the protruding ends of the dowel.
Onward and upward! Well, some upward, but more rightward and then downward. You’ll see this again at the 3/4 mark, in a month or so.
I’ve kept stitching away whenever my husband plays Skyrim, which means slow but steady progress on my blackwork map. When I showed you previously I had five towns done; now I’m up to 14.
I had to rip and re-stitch part of Pomfret, where I accidentally stitched over 3 strands at some point and couldn’t disguise the problem. I actually hemmed and hawed so much about whether to redo it that I finished stitching the whole town, but concluded that it would be silly to spend so much time on this project (it’s at least an hour per town for me) only to leave in an error that really was plenty obvious. Fortunately I was able to take out the bad part without disturbing too much of the rest, and still have enough loose thread to re-secure the ends.
Before taking the photo above I washed the fabric. I’ve had problems in the past with long-term projects becoming irrecoverably grungy, so I plan to wash this every time I’ve finished enough to give another update.
Remember that you can make your own map or hijack the filling patterns for other purposes by visiting Upper Valley Fiber Crafts.